EXPANSION LEAGUE NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3114, 19 November 1913, Page 3

EXPANSION LEAGUE NOTES.

societies and clubs for promotinjr tno growth of cities, communities, and dig* if 10 * 3 . P ow thoroughly established in Lreat Britain, the United States, andotber countries, and it is proposed from time to time to give in this column something of wlxut is being achieved by such organisotions. An advance step in the higher develop* ment of agricultural and suburban subdivision property is that marked by the completion of an agricultural laboratory by the West Sacramento Company on the property which they are offering for sale just across the Sacramento River from Sacramento. This building of reinforced concrete will bo equipped similarly to university laboroties, and when finished will represent an expenditure of 25,C00d01. It will bo used for the purpose of making soil tests and to furnish the farmers and settlers with every assistance in the matter of intensified farming and scientific soil cultivation. The service will bo free to every property owner. The people of the Antelope Valley have organised p, chamber of commerce based upon the principle of development in its broadest sense. The speculator will not bo encouraged. The idea is a united effort to bring to the valley men and women of achievement, who will follow investment with work, ultimately bringing under cultivation many thousands of acres of now idle land. The spring of the year 1913 witnessed the importation of 200,000 deciduous fruit trees, pears predominating, for planting in this valley, yet planting lias scarcely begun. Another year will record probably a larger acreage in fruit, while alfalfa, the staple forage, will bo sown on many new farms that are now untillod lands

In Madiera County, California, more than 120,000 acres of the largo holdings havo boon subdivided into small tracts within the last year. Two of these tracts wore thrown open to settlers in the four months of 1912. Within six months from their opening 1500 settlers bad moved in to aid in the transformation from grain land to orchard. Everywhere is heard the hum of the electno motor or the staccato exhaust of the gasoline engine. Everywhere is heard the musical tattoo of the hammer and the rasp of the saw. Madiera, the county scat, is a, thriving city of 3000, grown from a village ‘ within the past few years. Here are located largo lumber and manufacturing concerns. Under the terms of the Logged-off Land Act, passed by the last legislature, Washington jwoposes to extend definite tangible help to the settler who will aid in rendering productive the State’s vast area of cutover land. It proposes,'-through the medium of local agricultural development districts, to buy low-priced, cut-over land for the settler, to employ him in clearing this land, and to sell the cleared land to him at actual cost on payments extending over 20 years. The purchased land is to be cleared as needed, the maximum cost in no case to exceed a hundred dollars an acre. Settlers having purchased land directly from tho owners, are given tho right to turn 20 acres over to the district, with the preferential right of repurchase after it is cleared. Thus tho district undertakes not only to mirchaso and clear 20 acres for every desirable applicant, buT, it also gives the settlors employment pulling stumps at living wages until the land is ready for farming. The law is tho outcome of a campaign carr;cd on by the South-west Washington Settlers’ Agency, a public body organised to attract settlers and to aid them to select, purchase, clear, and farm tho best tracts of cut-ovc» land at the lowest possible price.