Vermont farmer. [volume] (Newport, Orleans County, Vt.) 1870-1877, 1872-10-11
Correspondence.
A WORD WITH THE WEST
WARD-BOuND.

10 Ue EdetOf OF WC IeFhlOiH FdFnttT:
An experience of four years in the West
may perhaps entitle me to a few minutes
attention from those who are proposing to
seek homes in the Gland of the setting sun,
If may be allowed to indulge in the lat
ter romantic clause. To attempt to say
much of the state in which four years of my
life have been passed (Minnesota) in single
communication, would either necessitate the
use of half the space devoted to your corre-
spondents, or compel condensation entirely
beyond my capacity. However, we will say
what seems best at this time, and tell the
rest on some future occasion if it is ever told
at all.
The editor of the Nev York TriJUie
has written history, full of very wise
things, no doubt, but ISnust say that in the
light of actual experience a great deal Of his
wholesale advice in reference to the West
has been ill-timed. Mr.. Greeley visited the
West a noted character, and as a matter of
course such man would naturally meet aud
be familiar with only those who were sue
cessful From such men it is natural to
expect he would gather ideas that could not
be applied to the masses. He would ride
over the farm or farms Of some individual
of wealth, who made large sums Of money
from wheat or cattle, and at once advise ev-
erybody to go West and make their "pile"
in one or the other of these ways, when the
truth is that to make money either in grain
growing Or stock raising, in the West as well
as in Vermont requires capital to start with.
True, man may 60 there with little or
nothing. and by patient waiting and hard
work acquire wealth, but this does not apply
to the thousands who are constantly crowd
ing towards those rich plains. There are
few more enthusiastic than myself over the
section of which am speaking, though for
the present my interests are here; and yet l
say let none be over.inAuenced by Mr.. Gree
loy's unvarying panacea for the unfortunate,
the young, and the landless, viz; go
West" Though the soil is rich, and land
to be had for almost nothing in many Sec
tions, no man-ospocially one with family
has any more right to push forward blind
ly westward, than he would have to embark
his babies and goods lin wash-tub to cross Lake
Erie. A hard task is before the man who finds
himself located on a Minnesota prairie with
out decent surplus after building his house
and buying his team. The first year little
can be raised, for the prairie sod is too tough
to be handled as We handle new land. He
must get along as he best can until the sec.
ond year, when he may expect good crop
if the weather is favorable, &c. When
harvesting is over, during which he has paid
a high price for help, he must look out
about getting to market II he is near
railroad,-and by this mean within eight
or ten miles,-hc is fortunate, as he can take
advantage Of the rise in prices If there is
any. But to be thus situated aud get cheap
land, is an exception. In the town in which
my business was ocoted for the two years
before the railroad came, it was no unusual
thing to count fifteen or twenty teams in a
string coming from sixty miles west and 60
ing to a station forty miles further east to
market their wheat, making round trip of
two hundred miles to get perhaps Is cents a
bushel for load of forty or forty.6ye bush
els. These are facts, aud Of the kind that
probably did not fall under the notice of
Mr.. Greeley What is true of the single
article Of wheat holds good with regard to