Southern standard. (McMinnville, Tenn.) 1879-current, 1891-12-26
The Farmers Of the Northwest.
BY ALBERT SHAW.


inquire who the Western farmer is.
In the old States the representative
farmer is man of long training in
the difficult and honorable art of di-
versitied agriculture. He knows
much of soils, of crops and their wise
rotation, of domestic animals and
their breeding, and of a hundred dis
tinct phases of the production, the
life, and the household economies
that belong to the traditions and
methods of Anglo-SaXon farming.
If he is a wise man, owning his land
and avoiding extravaganza, he can
defy any condition of the markets,
and can survive any known success
sion of adverse seasons. There are
also some such farmers in the West.
But the average Wheat-raiser or
corn-gr0wer, who has followed in the
wake of the railway and taken up
government or railroad land. is not
a farmer. He is an unskilled laborer
who has become a speculator. He
obtains his land for nothing, or for a
price ranging from $3.50 to So per
acre. He borrows on mortgage the
money to build small house and to
buy horses and implements and seed
grain. He then proceeds to put as
large an acreage as he can manage
into single crop-wheat in the Da>
kotas, wheat or corn in Nebraska
and Kansas. He speculates upon
the chances of a favorable season and
a good crop safely harvested and he
speculates upon the chances of a
profitable market. He hopes that
the first two crops may render him
the possessOr Of an unincumbered es>
tate, supplied with modest buildings,
and with a reasonable quantity OF
machinery and live stock. Some
times he succeeds beyond his antici'
pations. In many instances the
chances 60 against him. He lives
on land, the title to is vested in
him but he is using it unskillfully,
meets an adverse season or two, loses
through foreclosure that which has
cost him nothing except a year OF
two of energy spent in what is more
nearly akin to gambling than &c
farming and finally helps to swe
the great chorus that calls the world
to witness the distress of western ag'
riculture. 1t cannot be said too en-
phatically that real agriculture in the
West is safe and prosperous, and thai
the unfortunate are the inexperi'
enced persons usually without CAPT
tai, who attempt to raisea single croI
on new land. For many of them il
would be about as wise to to take
borrowed money and speculate il
wheat in the Chicago bucket-shops
The great majority, however, o
these inexperienced and capital-les'
wheat and corn producers gradually
become farmers. 1t is inevitable, a
first, that a country opened by
the railroads for the express PURPOSE
of obtaining the largest possibl,
freightage of cereals should for a few
seasons be "single-crop country
Often the seed grain is supplied OF
loan by the roads themselves. The,
charge "What the traffic will bear
The grain is all, or nearly all, mar
keted through long series of eleva
tors following the tracks, at interval
of a few miles, and owned by SOM
central company that bears a clos
relation to the railroad. Thus tn
corporations which control the trans
portation and handling of the grail
in effect maintain for their own ad
vantage an exploitation Of the entir
regions that they traverse, through
the first years of settlement. Yea
by year the margin of cultivation eX
tends further west, and the "single
crop" sort of farming tends to recede
The wheat-growers produce NOR
barley and oats and flax, try cor
successfully, introduce live stock an,
dairying and thus begin TO emerge a
real farmers.
Unless this method OF Western set
Element is comprehended, it is nc
possible to understand the old Gran
ger movement and the more recen
legislative conflicts between the far
mers of Iowa, Nebraska, Kansa:
Minnesota, and the Dakotas, on tn
one hand, and great transportatio
and grain-handling corporation 0
the other. 1t was fundamentally
question of profits. The railroad
had "made' the country: were the