TS mission is to help distribute the new wealth of the continent. Nature has created that wealth, great organizations are developing it, and the need exists for a publication to show what this wealth is, where it is, and how to get a share of it.

No such a magazine has existed before. There are publications devoted to western lands and mining investments, to business, agriculture, railroading and manufacturing. Many of them are interesting, valuable, and serve a useful purpose. They do not, however, cover the field of Opportunities of To-Day.

This field consists of the entire continent, so far as any portion of it has new wealth which can be placed in the possession of the opportunity seeker.

This new wealth may consist of real estate, the value of which advances rapidly with the incoming of new population and the utilization of the land for agriculture, horticulture, stock raising or the building of towns and cities.

It consists also in the timber wealth which still exists in some portions of the West, but which is rapidly diminishing. It consists of mineral wealth which is distributed through certain clearly defined areas where organized effort locates and develops it.

It consists of the revenue which can be created by the utilization of business opportunities and chances for establishing factories or other enterprises which will profitably employ capital and labor.

Realities-Not "Glittering Generalities"

All the wealth with which this magazine will deal will be reduced to tangible terms. Opportunities of To-day will not indulge in glittering generalities. It will not say, "Vast fortunes are to be made in western lands and mining," but it will state just where and what these lands and mines and towns

and factory sites and water-powers are; just what

it requires to get a share of the wealth they rep

resent, and every fact and figure presented will
be from the highest sources, reliable
beyond question, such as the great rail-
roads, government depart-

ments, the or

ganized infor

mation fur

nish

ing

bodies of various communities, and the agents which this magazine will have wherever new wealth is being developed, and who will keep us fully informed.

Additional to this will be the special services of men employed upon the staff of the magazine, who have had extended experience in gathering such information, personally visiting every portion of the newer sections of the United States, Canada, and Mexico, and spending months, even years, in familiarizing themselves with the great facts which it is necessary for a magazine of this character to ascertain.

The purpose of the magazine is not to promote the interests of any given locality or organization, but to give the reader an outlook over the whole field of opportunities, so that he may select with his own intelligence and a knowledge of his own requirements and capital, just the opportunity that is best for him.

Appealing to the Intelligence of the Reader

The magazine appeals to the intelligence of the reader. It does not dictate to him that he shall go West and help build up the country, or invest his money in mining or wheat land, or purchase stock in an irrigation enterprise. It merely places before him all these opportunities as they are, and assumes that he will make up his mind for himself.

It aims first to win his confidence. It will do this by being worthy to be trusted. Scanning its contents the reader will become impressed by the fact that it has a clean-cut purpose that is sufficient unto itself-to collect and publish such a vast amount of valuable material that it will make the magazine indispensable to millions of opportunity seekers.

While thousands of advertisers will utilize its columns to announce what they have to offer, the reader will see that both the reading matter and the advertising are absolutely reliable. To remove all doubt upon this point, when we do not know the advertiser we shall require a guarantee of his reliability from some railroad or bank. In other words, no matter what the inducement,

our columns

are closed to

all doubtful

exploitation.

Our Columns Will Not be Open

for Any but the Best

There is no possibility of our columns

being able to accommodate the vast volume of reliable advertising which it will require to put before the people the opportunities which exist

for profitable and safe investment.

It already takes an enormous amount of special

literature from railroads, communities and various enterprises to depict the land, etc., which are for sale in sections where new wealth is being created.

To have a representative portion of this literature reflected in the advertising columns of Opportunities of To-day, will mean that our space will be completely occupied as far as we care to dedicate it to paid matter.

The body of the magazine will be wholly devoted to our main purpose, a comprehensive analysis of the various fields of opportunity into which millions of people are about to enter, and in which billions of dollars are to be invested, and still greater billions to be realized in the wealth that will be developed.

This wealth can be subjected to the same analysis that a banker uses in "scrutinizing collateral," which is the financial term that describes the process by which the financier eliminates "hot air," "blue sky," and promoters' delusions from propositions submitted to him.

The Bankers Safeguard Our National Prosperity

The bankers of the United States are the safe-guards of national prosperity, and to a large extent the advisers of the people. If all consulted the local banker before making investments, less money would be lost in wild-cat speculation.

Although the United States has no branch banking system there is a harmony of effort among the banks by which they work for the welfare of the country and particularly of their own localities and customers. This amalgamates them into a vast organization covering the nation, the same as the great branch banking system of Canada covers the Dominion.

How this system operates for the benefit of all concerned is made the subject of a series of special articles prepared by the editor of Opportunities of To-day, and which will appear in early issues. These articles indicate the attitude this magazine assumes toward the great fundamental system of national prosperity.

prises, new towns and cities. We know that the railroads

do not derive their profits from selling land to these people. Few railroads have any land for sale. They do not derive their profit from carrying the settler and his effects to his new home. They derive their profit solely from locating the right people where they can improve the right opportunities and thus yield revenue to the road in the shape of traffic.

James J. Hill estimates that every settler along the lines of his railroads is worth three hundred dollars per year to the road in money he will pay for transporting his products, for travel of himself and family, freight upon commodities he will consume, and the resultant general business activity which follows the building up of new sections.

That is why Mr. Hill and all these great railroad men are willing to devote the energies of their railroads to creating conditions which mean prosperity for the settler. They do everything that is possible to copper-rivet his success.

Of course they want the right sort of settlers. The wrong sort cannot cultivate the land, nor build cities, nor run enterprises successfully, but when it comes to the money that these people will invest, that is a minor consideration.

Bring Brains and Brawn-Cash if you Have It The capital which the railroads want the settler to bring with him, is in the shape of strength and intelligence to raise crops, or cattle, develop the mineral resources, or timber lands, build cities. and towns, or conduct business and manufacturing enterprises.

Cash capital is much easier to get. The shrewd financiers of all

na tions recognize that the best security in the world is that afforded by the potentiality of the West. That is why they so generously ca pitalize the railroads which develop this country. They know when they put five hundred millions into the Union Pacific, six hundred millions into the Hill System, and three hundred millions in to the Canadian Pacific, that the people who will flow in to occupy the land these roads serve will create the permanent wealth and traffic which make railroads pay.

Banking capital takes the same view of the commercial requirements of the West. In Canada, where the banks of the East have scores of branches all over the West, they send out millions of dollars to be loaned at a low rate of interest to farmers and business men.

In this country banks are being established all through the new sections to use eastern money for the same purpose.

Conservative capital from the East and from foreign countries also flows westward to develop other great enterprises, such as grain elevator systems, flour mills, irrigation enterprises and land companies.

Attention is called to this attitude upon the part of the foremost financiers of the East toward the wealth of the West, in order to show that investment in that field has the endorsement of those who know the most of what constitutes safety and profit.

More Money Is Needed for Western Development The volume of money, however, available for large enterprises in the West, is not sufficient to finance the smaller enterprises, and thus the individual investor is given the opportunity to follow in the wake of the great financiers of the world, and reap a profit for himself in developing new real estate, mineral and manufacturing wealth.

In fact in the story of the West the most fascinating chapters are those which deal with the success of the individual. Hundreds of thousands of people of moderate means have acquired competencies through wise investment in western opportunities.

They have seen that the land out there offered almost free, and generally purchasable at from a dollar to ten dollars an acre, was destined to become worth from fifteen to fifty dollars an acre, the moment a railroad went through.

So these shrewd people secured tracts of land, in many cases paying only the first installment upon the purchase price, and cutting it up into farms or orchards, in six months or a year sold it at from two to twenty times what they paid for it.

The population sweeps in as the tide comes up over the flats in the Kenebec River on the coast of Maine, or the Columbia on the Pacific slope. Every acre of the land is bound to be taken up, and, soon as occupied and under cultivation, will attain a certain fixed value.

The Story of Manville Illustrates Hundreds of Cases To illustrate, here is a little village called Manville- not its name, though an actual village is in mind.

In certain other sections farmers have been learning the Campbell method. They see they can make money where no one supposed it possible. The Department of Agriculture helps them.

They reduce the dry farming proposition to a scientific certainty. Land becomes scarce and high in that section, and they seek a new opening. Further west they find it.

Their agent strikes Manville. It is in the "dry farming" section. The rainfall is insufficient for abundant crops unless the farmer uses the Campbell method. He writes back, and four or five farmers come out, till the soil one year, and find that land they can buy for five per acre quickly becomes worth three times that. Their reports bring the following year four or five hundred families. Manville has grown from four houses and a hotel to a population of nearly a thousand, with several big hotels, two or three banks and any number of stores.

The farmers come pouring in, not with prairie schooners, but each with a car or more containing his household effects, his live stock, and his family.

Land jumps to thirty dollars an acre, stays at that price or goes higher.

In three years the empty prairie (worth, we will say, for a section of two hundred thousand acres, something like a million dollars before the settlers arrived and ten millions after they get there). represents an average increase of twenty-five dollars per acre in value, which does not take into account the enormous increase in price of town lots, which would start in at five or ten dollars an acre and run up to five hundred to a thousand per lot all through the center of the town, or two hundred and fifty dollars to five hundred dollars a lot in residence sections.

This means quite a number of millions additional, all of which is new wealth permanently created by the conditions which exist. They Do Not Have To Do Much Except "Take the Profits" Those who make the money out of this advance in values are not obliged to put a dollar into building a railroad, or advertising the new country, or bringing in the people. They merely have a deed to some land or an agreement to buy, on which they have made a payment or two. Their's is the profit that accrues to those who seize opportunities.

Nothing in the world can prevent enormous new wealth being created and distributed in just such ways as this, and when a dry farming section is mentioned it is because that is the lowest grade of property.

Hundreds of millions of acres of splendid prairie, where good crops are assured averagely every year, owing to an abundance of moisture and fertility, are being occupied and put under cultivation. just as surely as the sun rises and sets in its course, and those who secure early ownership of these lands get the profit.

Land worth five or six dollars a few years ago, and you could have bought it by the millions of acres at that price, is now worth from ten to twenty dollars an acre all through the new sections of the West wherever the railroads go.

A great English syndicate took up five hundred thousand acres in alternate sections through a certain portion of the West, making

a first payment of about two dollars an acre. Immediately afterwards a railroad went through. They knew in advance that it was coming and began selling their land, almost before it was surveyed, at twelve dollars an acre, a price which they soon advanced to eighteen dollars, and thus before they had made their second payment, they were receiving the money to pay for the land, not from their shareholders, but from the purchasing public.

What They Think of Western Investment in Conservative London

It took just one day in London to get the first million dollars for this enterprise. In fact, a million and a half was subscribed,because the shrewd English public know what a sure thing it is to get hold of western land in the track of a railroad.

Members of our staff have been invited to travel over western railroads with the high officials who lay out extensions. Under these circumstances a man is able to see where five hundred or a thousand miles of railroad track will be laid within a year or two through a country now a wilderness, but which in five years from to-day will be populated by prosperous farmers and be supporting scores of thriving towns.

One of the staff of this magazine has even been asked to name as many as a dozen new towns in that western country name them before they were created. When a railroad is laying out its extensions it provides for a town every so many miles. Investment based upon foreknowledge of the location of town sites is certain wealth.

It is not the purpose of Opportunities of To-day to pry into the secrets of railroads, but to keep so closely in touch with them that it will know where new sections are to be opened up, and thus

place its readers in position to avail themselves of the earliest possible information.

Railroads recognize that this magazine is a clearinghouse of opportunities.

But returning to a broader view of the subject, we find we are in the midst of the process by which nature is distributing to mankind treasure she has been accumulating for him through endless ages.

This distribution is upon a gigantic scale. Millions of people are being distributed to the various fields where their opportunities await them and billions of dollars of new wealth are being distributed to these people and to the millions of others who are participating in the development of the continent by investing their savings but not their services. Man's industry, inventive genius and capital are being organized into a great machine for utilizing all that Nature has provided. The treasure that is being developed and distributed is the product of the centuries. It has taken hundreds of years to put the land of this continent into condition to yield its largest amount of new wealth in the way of fruit, grain and vegetables, while untold ages were required to produce the mineral wealth which is now being mined. Exact science locates this wealth and enables us to develop it with almost entire elimination of chance.

Thus the concrete cash which lies in the ground in the form of agricultural, horticultural and mineral wealth is being drawn out and distributed to mankind with the same degree of certainty that surrounds drawing money out of the bank.

It is the railroads that enable mankind to secure the wealth nature provides. Before the railroads were built we could not go to lands of new wealth. To-day the opportunity seeker can scan the whole American continent and wherever he decides his opportunity to be there is a railroad to take him there, or one will be built in the near future.

Crowded in the Old Sections, But Room Enough in the New

In the eastern and northern sections of the United States a large proportion of the population is congested in limited areas. This is because when the country was first settled there were no railroads and so the people remained near the seaboard. Their choice of location was not made on knowledge of the relative residential or wealth-producing advantages of the country. these same people to come to the American continent to-day they would settle most largely in the South, the Southwest, the West, the Northwest and western Canada on account of the superiorities of climate and soil, the greater ease with which a living may be made in these sections and the greater degree of health and happiness which are assured.

Let a man travel throughout the United States and Canada observing different sections and he would inevitably say that new communities possess every advantage over the old. They have been