okay , dallas shouldve been forward thinking in their view of what the future would entail , but it wasnt , so instead of annexing the land around it and paying the farmers and ranchers the blackmailingly large sums of money they demanded for their acres of dry grass and dirt , dallas allowed some downright ingenious private developers to come along and give those farmers and ranchers just about anything they wanted because they knew the weary workers of dallas would happily fork out a tidy sum of money for the privilege of living as far away as possible from the growing population of immigrants and laborers who were flowing into the city daily .