The pioneer press. (Miller, Hand County, S.D.) 1893-190?, 1895-05-23
Keep Still and Prosper.
From Dakota Farmer.

Fish do well in water and seldom
come ashore. Gophers have long met
with encouraging results trying to
make living in the ground, and birds
and squirrels have done equally well in
the air and tree tops. The eskimo
and polar bear find the jolly side of life
among the icebergs of the north, and
monkeys and crocodiles see much to
enjoy in the swamps and jungles Of the
equator. All these cling to Their re-
spective places of business with COM
mendable tenacity, and seldom if ever,
find cause to complain, or call upon
others for assistance. Man alone is
forever fetching up homeless, without
bread or butter and he alone is ever
lastingly changing his business or the
place where he conducts it. When all
goes well, he still hopes by changing
to do better and when trouble over
takes him he is bound to move More
than one-third of the savings of the
human race are spent, entirely lost to
the one who produced it. through this
consuming desire to pull up stakes
With the East thickly settled and the
West just discovered, this instinct to
follow the sun doubtless resulted in
good, but now that the whole country
is fairly well peopled and the discour-
aged still dissatisfied. tramp the very
shores of the Pacific. a new state
of things is upon us. While a few push
on to Alaska, or the Islands of the sea-
a large majority who now go far West
and scatter to all points of the COM
pass, urged, apparently, by an irresist-
| able something, till today the western
states resemble nothing so much as a
| disturbed ant hill. AS many go North
| as go South. as many East as West and
only when the heat of summer sways
the tide slightly to the northward. or
| the cold of winter veers the blind rush
to more southern climes, is there any
perceptible difference in the tide.
Railroads, land agents and specu-
lators alive to their own interests, see
in this their opportunity, and when the
heat of summer with it's flies and
malaria make life of the south unen-
durable, they flood the country with
glowing circulars. showing up the
great advantage of the healthy north
| west, with its fertile fields and endless
stock and money making opportunities
| But no sooner does the long northern
| winter shut down, than they picture
| us as a stunted half eskimo race,
eking out a miserable existence trying
| to keep warm, while our mails groan
under loads of maps and circulars
picturing the sunny southland with its
orange groves and fruits and flowers of
endless summer. Thousands bite these
| tempting bats, and often find them
selves landed high and dry among
people and surroundings which they
do not understand, and after sinking
the savings of years, they almost in,
variably become disguised and home
sick and long to return. Observation
teaches this. People who have more
money than they know what to do
with and can afford it, seldom change
their business or location. They make
their money and keep it by utilizing
all the advantages of their surround
ings. The poor and middle class who
can least afford to contribute of their
small means to the support of railroads
and spectators and real estate boom
ers, are the very ones who often deny
their families every comfort, and some
times drain their pockets of their last
dollar, that these Institutions may
flourish.
One thing is certain, if in good times
the stiller ones keeps the more money
he makes, then in hard times the less
one moves and changes the less he will
loose. The man who is making a living
in the West today, cannot do better
than to keep still do the best he can
with what he has and wait.
M T. g.