St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1888-05-12
FARMING IN The HILLS.
1t Is a Success But Carried on Only on
Small Scale.
FAMOUS POTATOES GROWN.
More to Be Grown This Year Than Ever
Beforehand Small Dish of
Politics.
Special to the Globe.

special 10 the Globe.
RAPID City, OAK, May 1.-THE
Eastern markets are agitated over the
prospective failure of the wheat crop,
and are publishing agonizing statements
OF how in California the crop will fall
Off 30 per cent, and in the middle states
1t will drop off 100000 bushels, and
all are worried over the visible supply,
and the market is feverish and unset
tied. What the object or the result may
be cannot now be accurately told, but
one thing is certain. Out here in the
BLACK Hills the farmer is IN nowise agi-
tated by these decidedly gruesome re-
ports sent out from the older sections of
the country, but encouraged by past ex-
perience, he has gone to work with
will this spring, and with his stubborn
glebe has turned the furrow in many an
acre of virgin soil, and the coming sum-
mer will see the yellow oats and
bearded wheat wave over hundreds of
acres that last year grew only wire
grass. Agriculture out here has gone
BEYOND EXPERIMENT.
Last season. and several preceding
seasons. demonstrated beyond the posi-
bility of doubt. that nowhere was ma
ture more lavish in returning a bOunti-
full yield to reward the huSbandman's
toll. Toll he must, surely; but where
else does the soil yield sixty to seventy
five bushels of oats to the acre, or fiji
teen to twenty-five bushels of wheat?
In the valleys of the Black Hills those
hgureS are the average, and many crops
have been harvested that go far beyond
that. A sample may be seen in the eX-
perience OF one man, whose ranch is but
a mile north of Rapid City. He
raised 700 bushels of potatoes on three
acres. These potatoes fully equal the
FAMOUS SALT LAKE
valley variety. Hundreds of car loads
OF these tubers have been shipped to
Eastern markets this spring, and the
profit to the farmer has been consider
able. To return to grain. There has
never been sufficient grain harvested
here in a single season to supply the
home market. This is not because of
crop failures, but because the acreage
has been too small. Last year it was
the largest ever known, and even then
it was insignificant, only about 10 per
cent of the land taken up being under
cultivation, or sixteen acres out of
every quarter-section claimed. This,
of course, seems ridiculous to an
Eastern farmer, and to the credit of the
local grangerS, be it said. it begins to
look ridiculous out here. But the market
is steady, and prices are always good. 1t
is fact that prices no longer reach that
fancy figure that prevailed few years
ago. when at one time oats brought $3.50
per hundred weight in Rapid City, and
hay was $500 per ton in DeadwOod. Now
oats sell readily at from 81 to S1.40 per
hundred weight, while wheat brings the
ruling price in Chicago. The main
trouble here has always been to secure
wheat enough. When oats run short
plenty can be had in Nebraska; when
wheat runs short the mills have to shut
down. This makes business for Mime
apolis and other milling points, but if
the
WHEAT WAS RAISED
here, the money that now goes abroad
for flour would be kept at home. The
farmer sees this, and he also sees that
he gets just as much for his wheat in
Rapid City or Deadwood as the Eastern
Dakota farmer does in Chicago. and he
has the additional profit of high freight
and commission saved. And so, this
year there will be three acres of wheat
harvested in the Black Hills where last
year there was barely one. The outside
world may wall over the failure of the
wheat crop; the flour supply of this sec
ton will be produced at home here
after.
The delegates to Watertown have
come home. And it is a noticeable fact
that the Day men from Pennington
county have little to say, save to
DAMN THE REPORTERS,
whom they accuse of being subsidized
by the opposition. Well, it was very.
very cruel in the Watertown correspond
ents to state that aside from Bangs and
Walsh, Day did not have a representa-
tive Democrat in his convention, when
GoutZ and G. w. Barrows, life-sized
and undaunted opponents of what they
claim to be the SimOn-pure nOne-gen-
Notwithstanding Democracy
of the Black Hills. And Barrows made
a speech, too, in the convention. And
then he runs the only truly Democratic
sheet in the Black Hills. This is evil
dence of the haseSt ingratitude on the
part of the scribes who were assigned
to do the WatertOwn affair. and certain
ly shows some foundation for the
charges made of their corruption by the
governors miniOns.
There is general satisfaction out here
over the choice of Col. w. r. Steele, of
DeadwOOd. to represent the Dakota
Democracy at st. Louis. There is also
a general belief that if any one is adj
mitted at the st. Louis gathering, it will
be Col. Steele. He is certainly repre-
sentative man. strong and able, with an
experience in law and politics that fits
him to represent so great an empire as
the Black Hills of Dakota in any body
whatever.