From the big farm agencies run for profit you can get lists of thousands of properties for sale.  Some State Agricultural Departments cooperate with real estate men in their own states, by referring inquiries for farms to them.  Some states issue from time to time lists of “abandoned farms,” but these change so constantly that they help but little except in the way of suggestion.

When you start farm-hunting take along a good map.  Then you will know a few things on your own account.  Verify railroad maps and “facts,” as they are often biased.  Don’t waste your time wandering around a strange locality by yourself.  The local real estate man knows more about his community than you can learn in five years.  In trying to find out things for yourself you will waste in aimless journeys, undertaken in ignorance of real conditions, more time and money than a real estate man’s commission amounts to.

The only way to form a correct idea of the production of any given section is to examine a particular farm in detail.  Within well-recognized limits, all tile farms thereabouts will be found of similar character.  Before spending money to look at land, learn all you can by correspondence.  Whether it is more profitable in the long run to buy that good plot of land in a high state of cultivation with good buildings on it, at a high price, than to buy this exhausted piece of land with poor buildings or none at all, is a question for the individual to decide.  It depends on your energy, grit, age, and how much money you have.  It is much easier to take advantage of what the other fellow has done, than it is to build from the stump.  You must bear in mind, however, that well kept land in a high state of cultivation seldom goes begging in the market.  On the whole, if you have the capital to do it, you can make the biggest wages by buying rough or neglected land, and hewing it into shape.

If you have a knowledge of soils, you may be able to find land that will grow something that no one supposes it will grow.  This will be particularly useful in the case of land thought to be valueless.  The lands about Miles, Michigan, were considered sterile until some one found out that they would grow mint, a valuable crop, which made the land salable at high prices.

Get hold of a desirable bit of the earth.  All that men wear or eat or use; everything—­shelter, food, tools, and toys comes from the land by labor.  Even the capital used to make more of those things is taken from the land.  The employer and the capitalist are, at bottom, only men who control the land or its products, who own rights of way, mining rights, or the fee of valuable lands.  Thousands have “made” money by finding unexpected products in their land or of their lands, oil, coal, mineral, plants; thousands more because their land was needed by some one else, and they were paid to get out of the way.

To speculate on these chances is risky business; to keep land that enables you to make good pay while you wait, is profitable.