The times. (Owosso, Mich.) 1882-1897, 1891-07-03

Editorial Correspondence.

Editorial Correspondence.
Fargo is the gateway to enter North
Dakota and when you have once entered
you are In the land of wheat. Wheat,
wheat, dark green wheat, luxuriant green
wheat, waving green wheat for miles and
miles makes one of the most beautiful sights
that man with an agricultural eye ever
looked upon. The Rhine with its castles
and the Hudson with its mansions lining
the banks may surpass in beauty
and may have legends that have not yet
settled down upon the Red River of the
North, yet In point of utility the Red River
really must rank first. 1t may be tame
scene for the rising sun to cause the drops
of dew pendant from the green blades of
wheat to sparkle like diamonds on the
boundless acres of emerald hued grain, but
the promise of the harvest lends to Its
beauty. Why may not some genius do
Justice i'm song and poem TO this fruitful
valley, that is the storehouse for grain?
Year in and year out the Red River valley
crops have failed not, when other districts
have short crops. The land is level, black
and sticky and 1t requires proper manage
ment TO pillow without the pillow becoming
clOgged from failure to clean. 1t is in this
valley and along the Northern Pacific rail-
road that the great Dalrymple farm Is
located and where the wheat this year, not
withstanding that crops have followed crops,
is apparently as good as when first titled. To
show its value, some sections of school land
were recently sold, unbroken prairie that
averaged $500 per acre. 1t Is from these
fields that the capacious elevators that are
everywhere, are filled and from whence
comes the grain that day and night is
being ground by the water power of the
Mississippi at Minneapolis. The Washburn
mill and the Pillsbury mills with their
countless sets of rollers would not be run
ming if it were not for the No. hard grain
harvested in the northwest and particularly
in the Red River valley. West of the Red
River valley the soil changes. The sticky
black gives way to more of loan, the
prairie becomes more rolling and an Oc-
caSiOnal stone is seen on the swells of
ground. Here the land is not sOlidly Guilt
waited; the unbroken prairie predominates
with here and there mile or a half mile of
wheat. The cuts made i'm building the rail-
road shows that the prairie soil is deep and
rests upon a substratum of calcareOus clay,
which makes excellent wheat land. At
Valley City, in Barnes county, stop is
made, pretty town in the valley of the
Cheyenne River it is. 1t is the ambition of
all town sites TO be county seats. and then,
in any event, fine school building and
churches follow. Valley City has all these
and would be happy if crops were good
every year. This has been year of plenti-
full rain. Every acre of wheat is promising
and the barometer which measures the
height of human anticipation is forced up
in reaction from previous depressions.
What strikes one as particularly unthrifty
is the way machinery is allowed to stand
out in the weather from the close of one
season to the beginning of next years har
vest, and then it is usually supplanted by
new machine and the profits of a crop go
into new machinery which soon becomes
old and the experience of last year is re-
peated next. A new binder of the stand
ard makes cost in North Dakota one hun
dred and sixty dollars, thirty-five or forty
dollars more than in Michigan. If the
government, instead of loaning money as
per the proposed Alliance plan, would pro-
vide binder covers, it would be about as
servicable an act as could be done, was
remarked. YES" said machine man,
land when you are obliged to take back
machine sold and mOrtgaged back i'm pay
ment, 1t would be of some value; that is the
reason why an extra price must be added to
SOouo W CONCi tnC tOooCo tnldiltu ny bIt
shiftless ones" One man came in to buy
new mower and was taking on terribly be-
cause somebody had stolen the one he had
bought last year, saying it was strange a
man couldn't leave his machinery out with
out someone stealing it. Later in the sea-
son he discovered his lost mower i'm the
field, the tall grass having grown up around
it, and there it was, concealed, rather than
stolen. The corner lots of boom days and
fictitious prices are made the grave yards of
uncared for machinery and new binders and
mowers take their places at high prices and
big interest. Any country that can pay for
so many machines must be fertile but would
be more prosperous if not so drained of its
wealth by utter carelessness. Two miles
north of Valley City is the Nestor farm of
FIVE thousand acres and this year there are
several thousand acres of wheat. Two
thousand sheep are wintered in sheds OH
the place and pastured during the summer
on the prairie some distance from the farm.
The estimated yield of wheat this year is
90 bushels per acre. The two dangers that
intervene between now and harvest are hot
winds and hail. Last year hot winds came
like the blasts from an oven when the.wheat
was in milk and the crop was diminished
nearly one-half. AT Valley City the writer
climbed into the Wagon i'm front of two
mules with August Prebald, German who
ownes $50 acres of land and who this year
has in crop 200 acres. Prebald is an intel
ligent man who knows the ups and downs
of Dakota life, but with him the course had
more ups than downs. As day laborer in
Minneapolis he had realized that life would
flow on in just about that steady way.
When the whistle blew, Prebald worked.
and when the whistle blew again Prebald
stopped. When the mill shut down the
wages ceased, and when other workmen
offered to work for less wages Prebald was
obliged to take less wages. The stories of
billiards., of dry weather, of crop failures.
of long, lonesome days were weighed against
the Minneapolis life, and in the toss up be-
tween Minneapolis and Dakota the latter
won. 1.-THE result of the decision was that
/ can now pillow burrows mile long on my
own farm, L have good buildings, horses,
cows and all the stock and tools of well
regulated farm. Some of the men 1 worked
with i'm Minneapolis would think it strange
to see eggs lying about my barn that are
never hunted because they are so cheap and
plenty. They never knew what it was to
have all the eggs they wanted" This is
the feeling that many of the Dakota settlers
have, even though they may be in debt.
Their Indebtedness is evidence of certain
prosperity, for they began with nothing and