The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-06-10
SPIRIT OF THE PRESS.
Editorial Opinions ofthe Leading Journals
upon Current Topios-Compiled Every
Day for the Evening Telegraph.
TOWN OR COUNTRY?

IOhN Oh OOON
From the NJ Y. Times.
Sixty miles beyond st. Paul is a farm
worked by seven sisters. The parents of
these girls were both invalids, and very poor.
They went from Ohio to Minnesota barely
three years ago for their health. Under the
Homestead law the family secured a pre-
emption claim of the usual hundred and sixty
acres Moved by a natural sympathy for
family so unfortunately situated. their neigh
bors helped them to put up log house, and
they were able to hire men to split rails for
fencing and to plow the land. All the rest of
the work has been done by the seven girls,
and last year they sold nine hundred bushels
of potatoes, five hundred bushels of corn,
two hundred and fifty bushels of wheat and
some six hundred of miscellaneous vegetables.
They are now comfortably off, and find time
to read books and newspapers.
Now, there may be occupations more suita-
BILE to women than those connected with
agriculture, but the interesting facts we have
related convey lesson of no slight import
ance. If family of women, several members
of which are young and weak, can compass
within two years such results as these, begin
ming with absolutely nothing, it is easy to
guess what strong men might do. And yet,
in the great cities of our Atlantic coast there
are thousands and thousands of stout hulking
fellows who complain that they can get no
work, or, what is nearly as bad, who perform
in shops those ornamental duties which
women can discharge as well, and from which
the practical monopoly of one sex necessarily
excludes the other. The rapidity with which
a comfortable position can be obtained in
Minnesota, and other Western States, can be
partly estimated by considering the rate of
growth of the States themselves. 1t is, for
example, barely twenty years since Mime
sofa was organized as territory The popu-
lation in 1850 was less than 5000. In 1865 it
was more than $50, 900, and the new census
will show, it is said total of half a million
souls. OF course, property rises in value in
varying proportion to this, but there can be
no doubt that any one who settles on fertile
land on the old lines of railway and who is
honest and industrious, will amass compe-
tency III ten or fifteen years The value of
real estate in Minnesota is set down in the
official reports, made to the State Legislature
last January, at one hundred and twenty
millions of dollars; it was worth,
if anything only the Government
plice twenty years ago; and this
is a tolerably fair example of the progressive
augmentation of values. To reach this
swiftly-growing community costs about
thirty-fve dollars, so that its accessibility to
the poor man bears a moderate relation to
the cost of establishing himself on arrival.
advantages as these, and it is strange that, as
this is the case, so large ratio of our native
as well as imported population should OBJ
struct each other in the great towns.
For those who have their way to make in
the world, country life on the broad and
fruitful prairies of the West is the most pro-
missing ard happy that can be adopted. Inde-
pendence is there within easier reach from
small beginnings than in any other locality.
A young laborer may leave his Eastern home
for the plains beyond the Mississippi, and
find himself the possessor of a handsome
fortune in early middle age. Such things
have been, and will continue to be, until an
equilibrium of population is arrived at; and
this, even at the present rapid rate of pro-
gress, will need several generations to attain.
The increasing density of our urban popula-
tions-the present corresponding discomforts
and high prices, and the future decrease in
wages that will result from twill of course
create direct pressure calculated to thrust
superhuous thousands toward lands compare
lively empty. But it is unfortunate that,
without waiting for such process numbers
do not now perceive their own true interest,
and seek for themselves and their children
the health, comfort, and independence which
are afforded on such easy terms by the smiling
rrairieS of tha Vast