The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1891-10-31

transition state, and until new and profit
able home avenues are opened for the
energies of her people We are likely TO see
increasing poverty and its consequent dis
content. There has long been steady
stream of deserters from the farms OF New
England, and the exodus Is not over.
The farming towns, except in few
spots specially favored by location, are
likely TO be more silent, stagnant and
moribund in appearance five years from
today than now. The farmer young
enough 10 succeed in q new country, has
nothing to hope for in the East, unless he
owns, free from encumbrance, a good farm
of fertile intervale or meadow in the
Champlain or Connecticut valley.
These farm lands Of the East are not
exhausted of fertility. but steadily sink in
value before the competition of the practi-
cally free arabic lands of the West. If the
young Eastern farmer is obliged to hoe his
own row without help and cut his own
fodder he must go West rather than toll
East only TO be undersold by the West,
farm at his feet for less money than he
can afford to sell his crops in the near
est market. With this prospect before
agriculture at the East the growing gener-
alton of farmers is sure to continue to
flock TO the far West Few emigrants
from the East will go South, even to
states of fine soil. scenery and climate,
10 I l.
The Eastern farmer does not seek these
states for the same reason that he does
not seek Ceylon; the prospect pleases, but
the typical man of certain sections of the
South represents a barbarian, slouchy
civilization that is vile. There are other
reasons for the depression of farm in
dustry at the East that are not felt at the
West. Capital seeks city real estate for
investment in preference to country or
farming real estate. Unless the capt.
talist is a rich practical farmer he
will not touch farm property, since
he must cultivate it if he ever becomes
its owner. The Eastern farmer gets no
better crop out of his land than he did
fifty years ago; some Of his products he
sCtS OSLlSI PRICES DuI Ne has IOSI HIS
grip on some of his old-time local indus
tries; he pays less for his necessaries of
life, but his scale of living is vastly more
expensive. What he and his family once
regarded as luXuries have come TO be
rated as necessities. Fifty years ago the
whole family worked early and late on
the farm. The farm furnished all the food
i l.. -
ly home spun. The Eastern mechanic
and manufacturing workman is compare
lively content; but the Eastern farmer
sees the price of farm real estate slowly
sinking.
The Eastern farmer and his family do
not work as hard, feed as frugally or dress
as cheaply as they did fifty years ago.
The consequence is that in New England
the farming people of Yankee stock are
obliged either to go back to the old scale
of living fifty years ago, or sell out to
somebody that will. The Yankee farmer
and his children will not go back fifty
years. and the consequence is the farms
are gradually falling into the hands of
Canadian French, Irish, German and
Scandinavian immigrants, who are willing
and able 10 live and save money out of
what the Eastern farmer and his family
feel they must spend, or sink in the social
scale. The native Yankee stock that is
poor and yet too indolent and spiritless to
let go their grip on New England and take
a new start at the West is small in num-
bers, and is so degenerate in mind and
body that they look like the pictures of
the degenerate poor white" native stock,
called Crackers" in Georgia. These de-
generate Yankees in the small rural towns
of New England along the Green noun
tains and Berkshire hills are in every way
inferior to the Irish farmers who have
taken farms in that section.
The Irish immigrant who is compare
lively worthless when he herds with his
countrymen in the low quarters of large
cities and towns makes an excellent citi-
zen when he turns his back on the city
tenement and becomes a farmer. The
Western farmer has n right to expect that
his farm will continue to yield larger re-
turns than Eastern farms, and to increase
in value, while the Eastern farms will not
hold their own; Western lands will in
crease in value with the decrease of good
government lands, and the discovery that
treeless Dakota, Western Kansas and
Nebraska are subject to severe winter
storms, to drouth in summer. will ulti-
mately help timbered Washington, with its
fertile soil and mild winter, TO large por-
ton of the large Northwest emigration
that is sure to roll West rapidly to the
Rockies, and rising over the crest fertilize
with its overflow the Pacific slope.