Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1886-04-15
DaiIu Kennebrr 3ournaI.
Good Advice.
AN INVITATION TO LEAVE THE CROWDED
INDUSTRIAL CENTRES AND TAKE UP A
FARM In AROosTOOK.

For more than 40 years, in Maine, there
has been a constant go from the country
and farming towns toward the manufac
turing towns and cities of Maine, New
| York and Massachusetts. And thew have
gone so much and so long a time that il
has produced glut in the labor market
and a cut-down of prices, until these emf
grants from the farms, think they can nc
longer live upon the wages capital is will
ling to pay, and hence the strikes, ''shut
downs" and clock OUTS" we are con
stantly reading about in the papers; and
the poverty, distress and restitution which
is said to exist in the manufacturing
towns
This deserving the farms to remove tt
the large villages, towns and cities, as
have said, has been going on 40 years
and at last has produced its normal, iegit
innate fruit The young men and girls
who 80 and 40 years ago, left good homes
and farms and went to the shoe, cloth and
manufacturing towns of other goods, have
many of them married. raised up families
who have grown up among shoe lasts
wheels and spindles, and know nothing o
any other way of getting a living, are
now starving for want of food, freezing
for want of fuel, and cannot attend church
because they have no clothes good enough
to wear, nor money to pay their pew rent
whilst the brothers and sisters of theil
parents who had the good sense to stay at
home upon the old farm, have sons and
daughters who have spacious, well-tur
nshed and carpeted homes and halls, car
look out upon their broad acres and fruit
full fields. with their herds. fiocks and
rushing steeds, and hundreds of them can
show bank account with our savings
banks, larger than can many capitalists,
with whom their poverty stricken cousins
are quarrelling.
know what the homes are of families
of limited circumstances in city.
have seen the small, overcrowded homes,
away upon some back street, with no con-
yenence in the world to render life de-
sirable and pleasant. No good water, or
good air; no pleasant Surroundings; no
flower garden or play ground for children,
or neighbors with whom we wish to asso-
ciate. Or 1t may be in tenement house,
with two or three small rooms, two. three
or four stories towards heaven, without a
foot of earth on which to tread, except in
common with the multitudes in the streets
Such are the homes of thousands of the
working men in all the cities of this
boasted land of the free. And such will
forever be the homes of thousands of
laboring men until they emancipate them
selves from the slavery of city life.
But how. say some of my readers, can
this emancipation be achieved? The an
swer is, it cannot be done at once, but
something may be done to prevent this
accumulation of misery, by persuading
young men and women to stay away from
the already crowded cities and towns
Persuade the young men of Maine. who
wish to remove somewhere, to come to
Aroostook. We have already 5,7S7 far
mers in Aroostook There is not a more
prosperous class of men in New England
than are they. The taxable valuation of
their farms and farm buildings IS 50 .49S,-
CPL. They have 3,671 horses, 697 colts,
l ,676 oxen, 1904 cows, 5,316 young cat
tie, 11.54l sheep having taxable valua-
ton of s. 950,S4S. This is to be sure but
| about $3.50 apiece on an average tor all
the farmers of Aroostook But it must be
| remembered this is a tax valuation, ana
that in reality the property they possess
Is worth on an average more than $1,000
| apiece. 1t should also be known that
| these farmers, or their fathers, came here
poor, many OF them in debt, and very few
with any property whatever.
| Now will inquire, can you find in Low
ell, Manchester, Providence, Fall River,
Biddeford Lewiston or any other manu-
featuring centre an equal number, 5,7S7
laboring men and factory operatives taken
| Al
property or any kind, worth $1,000 apiece
on am average? Everybody knows that it
cannot be done. They do not own taxa
BILE property worth 800 apiece on an
average. The boys and giils who leave
the farms and 60 away to factories to
work, are continually writing of the good
wages they get. but when the hard times
come, the strikes and the ''shut downs
| happen. home they come wearing rich and
fine clothes to be sure, ostrich feathers in
their bonnets, silk dresses. and fine broad
cloth suits, dangling gold watch chains,
and wearing gold rings set with diamonds.
sometimes genuine but more often spuri-
Gus; but inquire about the money they
have saved, and their savings bank book
| and both are generally non est-thev have
none, or only enough to get back when
the good times again come.
The 5,7S7 farmers of Aroostook own
and occupy not over 100000 acres of land
leaving $4,000 acres of unoccuped
land. There are probably $4,000 people
already here, who are in enjoyment of
every thing necessary to render life pleas
ant and happy Hundreds of them do not
realize how well off they are but this does
not alter the case that they, as a rule have
enough and to spare. Go where YOU will
upon the long roads that stretch through
and checker the settled portion of the
county of Aroostook and you see every
where broad and beautiful farms. which
| produce annually abundant crops of grass,
grain of every kind. potatoes. fruit, and
all other TODD needed for man or beast.
Immense barns filled to overlooking with
the products of the fields. Choice stock
occupy the barns, and near by are the
houses, many ofthem two stories in height,
finished and painted outside, and inside
carpeted and furnished with furniture
equal in beauty to that of the cities and
better than all, are the intelligent and ac-
complished sons and daughters of the far
mers, fitted to grace even a Presidential
mansion There is room in Aroostook
for sc, 900 more of just such farmers as
we now have, and for a quarter of mil
lion of the same quality of sons and
daughters as We have now. Let the flood
of immigration be turned from the factory
to the field, from the city which man made,