Wessington Springs herald. (Wessington Springs, Aurora County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1891, 1883-07-07
Bonanza Farms,

A few months ago a sensation was
created in California by the murder of
a great ranch-owner who had long been
famous as a representative of the new
school of farmers. DR.. Glenn's wheat
field, the circuit of which was a lively
days ride, was celebrated in books of
travel, and every stranger wished to see
it as a specimen of the ssbonanza farmsn
which were to revolutionize the agricul-
tural systems of the fertile West. He
owned enormous productive estates in
various parts of the Pacific slope, and
gave employment to armies of laborers..
When his affairs came to be settled af-
ter his death there was another sensa-
ton. 1t was doubtful for a time whether
he died a millionaire or a bankrupt.
There were debts to the amount of q
million dollars on the principal farm.
1T was a dry season and the crop was
light. At last it is announced that
there will be a considerable surplus to
divide among the heirs; although the
vast fortune which report very natur-
ally assigned to this great wholesale op-
orator in farm labor has shrunk to mod
est dimensions.
The collapse of the Glenn enterprise
is not to be regretted. 1t was carried
on, as We now know, with difficulty
and danger. Drought and other acct
dents of husbandry, which brought dis
appointment and perhaps embarrass-
ment to the small farmer, might sweep
away from the bonanza wheat-grower
the last penny of his fortune and the
last shred of his credit. 1t is we'll for
ambitious men to see something of the
risk attending the absorption of inn
mense tracts of land in a single estate.
Because most kinds of manufacturing
are economically and efficiently con-
Quoted in large establishments, we are
apt to assume that the tillage of the
earth can best be managed on the same
wholesale plan. The tendency toward
this experiment has been strongly
marked at the West, where large tracts
of fertile land await occupation. But
nobody seems to succeed in keeping
such overgrown estates together. IF
they are not broken up after awhile for
business reasons, they are sure to be
divided by the interference of death.
There are landowners now in Calfor-
MIA who are fully aware of the dangers
of undue concentration, and are cutting
up their estates a. a matter of policy,
believing that one of the greatest inju-
ries they could do their children would
be to leave them too much land. The
farm laborer in this country has univer-
sally the ambition to become a farm
owner. He is not content to work per-
manently for wages; he will not look on
patiently while a few rich men absorb
all the available land and ask him to
do for them the work which can not be
done by machinery; and if the bonanza
system should ever be carried SO far as
to make a real division between the
laborer and the land-owner-one class
holding the property while the other
had the numbers and the votes-we
should see some startling social disturb
ances and some wild legislation.
The small farmer has been the great
safeguard of our civilization. II we
have never had any serious and pro-
longed conflicts between labor and cap
ital; if the people have always been or
%der-loving, just, and in the best sense
of the word conservative; if we have
been able to receive millions of the poor
and the discontinued from foreign coun-
tries and convert them without the least
friction into thrifty and useful citizens,
it is because we have made it cur ma
tional policy to give every man who
wants it a stake in the country. The
typical American farmer is laborer and
capitalist at once; and wherever the two
great forces of society are thus united
there must be prosperity and peace
N. Y. Tribune.
The Grass Valley (Cal.) Tdimgs
asserts, from personal observation, that
Cinnamon freshen up stale fish and
eliminate their odor by dipping them in