And now we cross the Atlantic to the new land which was isolated from the peoples of the Old World until civilization had advanced through fully 6,000 years.

The peoples found here, presumably descendants of tribes coming from Asia in the distant past, had been handicapped in the development of agriculture by lack of large animals suitable for domestication and by ignorance of the wheel and the use of iron. They had, however, learned to conserve soil and water in a notable way, especially in the terrace agriculture of Peru and Central America and in the Hopi country of southwestern United States. Some have held that this knowledge was brought across the South Pacific by way of islands, on many of which such practices are still found. In any case, lacking iron or even bronze tools, these peoples for the most part still depended largely on hunting, fishing, and gathering -- along with shifting cultivation -- for their livelihood. Thus, the soil resources seem to have been for the most part almost unimpaired.

To the peoples of the Old World, the Americas were a land of promise and a release from the oppressions, economic and political, brought on by congested populations and failures of people to find adjustments to their long-used land.

North America, as the first colonists entered it, was a vast area of good land, more bountiful in raw materials than ever was vouchsafed any people. Its soils were fat with accumulated fertility of the ages; its mountains were full of minerals and forests; its clear rivers were teeming with fish. All these were abundant -- soil productivity, raw materials, and power ror a remarkable civilization.

Here was the last frontier; for there are no more new continents to discover, to explore, and to exploit. If we are to discover a way of establishing an enduring civilization we must do it here; this is our last stand. We have not yet fully discovered this way; we are searching for the way and the light. Here is a challenge of the ages to old and young alike. Here is a chance to solve this age-old problem of establishing an enduring civilization -- of finding an adjustment of a people to its land resources.

Our land is like a great farm with fields suited to the growing of cotton, corn, and other crops and with land for pastures, woods, and general farming. In the West, our country has vast grazing lands well suited to the raising of herds of sheep and cattle and fertile alluvial valleys in the arid regions, overawed by high mountains that condense the waters out of moisture-laden winds to irrigate garden lands. Such is the American farm, capable of feeding at least 350 million people when the land is intensively cultivated under full conservation and fully occupied with a complex division of labor that will give us a higher general standard of living than we enjoy today.