The Cass County Republican. [volume] (Dowagiac, Mich.) 18??-1880, 1859-02-17
The Other Side of the Picture.


Horace Greeley, whose talk has hith-
erto been of Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa
and Minnesota, upon actual view, dis
covers certain merits even in poor Mich
igan, and classi6es the same, in letter
written to the New York Tribune from
Ann Arbor:
/. Michigan is considerably nearer to
market than Illinois, Wisconsin or Iowa
insuring to her farmers better average
prices for their products, while she is so
surrounded and permeated by naviga-
BILE waters that she will always enjoy
superior facilities for the expectation Of
her produce.
O. She has great abundance and
variety of valuable timber, including
the choicest White Pine, which Illinois
and Indiana, as well as more Eastern
States, must buy of her, not only for
building, but often for fencing.
8. She has the benefit of three COM
pleted lines of Railroad, each running
directly across her territory, or long her
southern border, in the direction which
her travel and transportation would
naturally wish to take, so that scarcely
any point within the area above indica-
ted is more than thirty miles from a
railroad, while most of her smart vii
lagos are directly upon one. These
railroads have been so built as not to
involve either the State or her several
cities and counties in debt, while such
land grants have been obtained from
Congress in aid of transverse or north
and-south roads as insure the construc-
ton of two or three within the next
half dozen years-all without tax or
sensible burden on the people.
A. Her climate is milder and more
equable, because of the vast bodies of
deep water which nearly surround
her, than that of the prairie
States, while her dense woods check
the force of the harsher winds, render
ing the groth of Apples and other fruits
far easier here than on or near the great
northern prairies.
S. Her population, owing to the pau
city of recent immigration, is more
American and homogeneous than that
of the prairie States, and assimilates
more readily and completely with new
settlers from New York and New Eng
land.
6. Speculation has not, since 1886,
ragged here as it has done further West;
hence the prices of lands and lots have
not been so wildly inflated, and the peo-
pie are not now so generally in debt.
Those who hold lands are able to sell
them at moderate prices without losing
so much on them asthe holders of choice
locations further West are often re-
quired to do.
| l do not say that these considerations
render Michigan a more advantageous
location than Illinois or any other
Western State, for this is point on
which every one interested must be his
own Judge; but 1 do say that the mat
ter is by no means so one-sided as has
been generally supposed. Other things
being equal, there can be little doubt
that location including timber and
prairie, SO as to build in the edge OF
and obtain timber and fuel from the
former, while cultiyating mainly the
latter, affords the best chance for the
pioneer intent on making a new home
stead. Yet the miles of just such To-
cations through which / passed on the
Western borders of the Illinois bot
toms thrifty just above Naples did not
seem nearly SO as the settlements more
recently hewn from the wilderness
which l passed in Kalamazoo, Allegan
and Kent counties in Western Michi.
gan.