Page:A History of the Pacific Northwest.djvu/303



excess of speculation in farm lands. Two closely related facts, orcharding and irrigation, have served as the dynamite for breaking up all the old conceptions of farm land values. Several favoured localities, like Hood River Valley, Yakima Valley, the Payette region and Rogue River, demonstrated the possibility of turning ordinary farm lands, worth from $10 to $25 per acre, into fruit orchards worth from $250 to $1,500 per acre. Since there seemed no convincing reason why other areas should be deemed incapable of growing fruit "just as good "as that of the places named (and others equally successful), and since the market for certain kinds of fruit appeared to be almost unlimited, men strove madly to multiply orchard areas.

There was a rage for planting and especially for planning new orchards in all sorts of soils and every conceivable situation. It became a common practice for realty companies to buy up a few cheap farms, located as chance might dictate, and to throw them into a single tract. To this they would then apply some poetic or at least promising name and begin to sell it off in tracts of from five to forty acres. By means of lavish expenditure for advertising, all of which would be repaid with usury by the unwary purchasers, conscienceless promoters often reaped a rich harvest. Their victims in too many instances have reaped sorrow only.

Cases of this kind poisoned the minds of the farmers, who readily seized the chance of selling their farms