Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1872-10-23
Misfellauepts.
ADVICE TO NEW ENGLANDERE GOING
MEST-'DONT."

1he Springfield Union, says Waiting
iof tram, not long since, in Maine de-
pot the writer made the acquaintance of
company OF stalwart, muscular men
pound 1or the west, on prospecting tour,
anu Douud to ind home somewhere at
tended in its support with less hard work
and hardships and misfortune than they
had found in the Pine Tree State. Their
ideas were somewhat rose-colored abont
the profit of farming on the prairies, and
they had no idea of the sacrafices and pri-
vations necessarily attending the pioneer
in new country. They had been distress.
ed for two years by drought were forced
last winter to sacrifice their cattle at any
price to keep them from starvation, found
themselves, this fall, burdened with an
enormous hay crop and no stock to feed
and fatten on it.
Besides the winters were long, which
made stock raising in competition with
Texas precarous and Improbable. And
so nothing was left them but emigration,
to fly from the hills that were about them
to the west, with its fevers and agues and
low prices, where corn is burned for fuel,
and the husbandman's profits are few and
far between.
Now take them as a class, New England
farmers are better off than the farmers in
any other portion of the country. The
stories which travel eastward Of great
success and sudden wealth attending hus-
bandry at the west are the exception and
not the rule, just as the man who succeeds
in Wall street finds his good fortune told
the world, while nothing is said of the
ninety and nine sucked in by that finan-
cial maelstrom and ruined forever. Of
ny la,, l. al,
refer to ihe new lanes where emigrants
Hundreds and hundreds of families are
out there to-day on the borders of civiliza-
ton who only regret their infatuation in
leaving the homes of their childhood, and
who would return tomorrow could they
scrape together sufficient to satisfy the
eXorbitant railroads. We said to our
Maine friends, if you will be content to
live here for the next ten years as you will
have TO live at the west, work as hard, de-
priye yourself of what seems here to be
II necessity. keep your children from
school, from church privileges, from Sun
day influences, live in a house such as you
would take your family to in the new set
tlement, spend Us little tor dress, we will
insure you in 1882 five times the money
which emmigration will bring You. A
thousand bushels of corn sounds large, but
suppose it brings no more than New Eng
lands one hundred. If any reader, dis
couraged by drought and tornado ard
frost, contemplates selling his farm PIE
paratory to finding western home, let
him first go west TO the new settlemt nts
and work one season, and he will ccme
back content TO make his home in New
England still, especially when he shall
find his taxes nothing less than enormous,
in paving railroad bonds and all sorts of
wildcat usury.
As never before, new avenues OF busi-
ness are opening in every direction, new
opportunities are Offering themselves to
farmers sons all about us; and to go West
in these days. especially from New Eng
land, is to go away from society, and
health, and money, is to go away from the
market which asks for his produce and
crops at his very doors. As for the farm
ers of the Connecticut valley they have
made more money in the last five years
than any OF the trades that make up our
business centerS.