West Virginia freeman. (Parkersburg, W. Va.) 1881-1886, 1881-06-01
A Word to West virginians.

A Word to West Virginians.
ED. FREEMAN In the last Is
years, not less than a half dozen per-
sons who left West Virginia to seek
their fortunes in the far West have
made special applications to us for
money. We have an instance be-
fore US now, of poor fellow who
left Tyler county little over year
ago, for Nebraska, who now writes
US that he must have help before
harvest or he does not see how he is
to get along. We well recollect
when we babe him farewell at the
platform in Parkersburg, when he
and his family went aboard the
train, bound for Lincoln, Nebraska.
In Tyler county he had comforta-
bic little. home, all paid for, and
was doing as well as a poor man
could possibly expect to do any
where, and far better than a poor
man can do in those extreme Wes-
tern states and territories.
Several years ago whole neigh
borhood in Tyler county became ex-
cited about going West; and to the
West they must 60, against the per-
suasion and good advice of friends.
Many of the heads of those families
are now dead, one of them is blind,
and four of them have written per-
sonally to us for money to buy food
with. The Western fever took hold
of a community in Harrison county
about the same time, and men who
had comfortable little homes sold
out and went to Southern Missouri,
as did the Tyler colony. The result
was that those who could get back
returned impoverished and broken
up, having spent all their money ;
but the saddest of all was that some
of them had buried their dear ones
out on some distant prairie, in a
lonely spot where no one will care
for their last resting-place, as they
would have been cared for, if buried
IN some neat but plain cemetery at
their homes in West Virginia. 1t
may be argued, with feasibility too,
that some one must go West to oc-
cupy this vast domain, and make
it bring forth grain and fruits to
feed the teeming multitudes that
are thronging our shores from the
Old World. Very well, West Vir-
ginians have more than their hands
full to do that right at home. West
Virginia ought to furnish to all of
the mark cts Of the world, beef, pork,
mutton, fruits, geld, silver, lead,
coal, iron, salt, oil and timber of
every species. There is not anoth-
er such State in the Union. Mil
lions of wealth upon the surface,
and billions of wealth under the
surface. 1t has been said by COM
petent judges, that there is more
coal in the great Kanawha Valley
alone, than there ever was in all
the coal fields of England, and yet
great as are the deposits of coal in
the Great Kanawha, it is as small
garden compared to the rest of the
coal-felds of West Virginia. Cap
italists have bought large districts
of timber land, at sums ranging
from $1.O0 to $3.50 per acre, and
have cut the timber up for the va
rious markets, and then had farm
left worth $1,000 per acre, and it
would be impossible to tell the val
ueof the land underneath the sur
face. AS to health, where is there
q healthier State in the Union
Farmers, Of West Virginia, if you
have home, though it be ever so
homely, hold on to it-there is a
better day coming And if you are
only an ordinary liver, whether
there is better day coming or not,
you will not better your condition
by selling out and going West, es-
pecially if you were to 60 to those
new places in the Far West.
Hear one who has spent his life
in West Virginia.
Respectfully,