The Democratic press. [volume] (Ravenna, O. [Ohio]) 1868-1901, 1884-05-15
Nebraska Letter.
LINCOLN, NEB. May 3, |

DEAR HARRIS Since writing you
last 1 have travelled through some
twenty counties in Kansas, and in
general terms, I call it good country.
L have talked with the people, I have
been the guest of all classes, the old
settler and the new conner, her home
s;eader and the purchaser L have
eated bread produced from the ground
where buffalo roamed, as it were, but
yesterday 1 have slept in the mansion
general prosperity and confident hope
fulness. With as many hundred dol
lars in Kansas as it takes thousands in
Ohio, family can make just as COM
put his plow into soil that continued
cultivation continually improves. with
not a stone nor root to clog the crash
ing coulter and this can be done to
day within sight of school houses, and
within hearing of the locomotive
whistle. And what is true of money
is true of time. Ihave seen very many
farms four years from the raw prairie,
that are better improved and are in
every way better fixed for money
making than very many Ohio farms
90 years old. If you have but few
hundred dollars you can buy what
land you want by paying ten per cent
down. You can buy lumber and build
just such house as you want just as
cheap as you can in Ravenna. You
can hitch an ordinary team to the i'm
proved breaking plow and break two
acres day all Summer, and in many
seasons you can go back where you be-
gan and replow all Winter. and your
farm of black mold, without a clod, is
ready for the planter, While you have
been doing this your wife has reared a
couple hundred poultry, and your
breeding sows have filled your pens
with shoats and pigs, and you are
nearly ready to add car to the long
trains that draw the food to the hun
cry millions.
x
you few personal histories as encour-
agement and inducement to men of
small means and men of no means, for
to this class | belong, and with this
class are my sympathies. Prosperity
is here, and comfortable homes on vir
gin soil, famed by the breezes of this
pure air, are in the line of possibilities
for all who grasp the opportunity, in
all this geographical center of this
great United States. What ia true of
| Kansas is, of course, true of Nebraska,
and what is true of both is true of
100, 1000 square miles Ofterritory. Train
arriving every day, to avail themselves
of the advantages these two States offer
to all classes and conditions of men.
This is country of constant change
everything is ON the advance, and
the spirit of buying and selling is al
ways up to high pressure auction
interest. A man will sell when he gets
his price. The homesteader sells and
| Dnheo LIS easily aS4uIlCu CdptIdl anu
moves west to do the same thing again.
He and his family rather like the ex-
perience, and it pays. They are going
now, from southeastern Nebraska to
Western and Northwestern Nebraska,
and they are going with good teams,
good wagons and good money. They
are leaving good farms, but they had
a price and they got it. Men from the
East who sold their barren, rocky hill
sides for $75 to 800 per acre, are buy
ing them out, and they load their fam
lilies and few necessities into their
strong wagons, and hitch four strong
mules to the west end of it and depart
with as little ceremony as people going
on days picnic. Experience in a
boundless country has taught them
that God Almighty has no fixed dwell
ing place. The universe is their Church
and the fullness of the earth is their
evidence of the munificence of their
God.
1 write this from Lincoln, and l
might say many things about the
place that would interest few, but so
many ofyour readers have been here
that pen picture is unnecessary, and
as the young Capital of the great State
of Nebraska, its geographical position
is as we'll fixed in the public mind as
is that of Cleveland, Chicago or ST.
Louis. Taking into account that the
first city stake was driven twelve years
ago, in country very sparsely settled
with people of very slender means,
and that its growth has been retarded
by the undecided permanent location
of the Capital, with the natural calam-