Daily inter mountain. [volume] (Butte, Mont.) 1881-1901, 1900-10-06
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! Wage Farmers In the West



Speaking of things artistic and other
wise, the original MAN with the Hoe"
never lived here in the west: we know
from the hopeless expression in both the
painting and the poem, that he never
heard the winds howl and play tag UP
and down the mountain side; never pros
pected for the glittering gold, In the vir-
gin placer or in the fertile sands that had
been picked bare as a bone by earlier,
eager gold-seekrs; never chased the deer
through the forests of the mighty noun
tain ranges or slept IN a pine Dough bed
beneath the stars, drank hot black cot
fee made from snow water, without cream
and ~sugar-and liked it, too-or ate ven
ison and handmade soul dough biscuit
for a whole winter; never swung a pick
day after day or the fiinty gold or copper
ore; and least of all did he ever Jingle
$3.50 a day in his ~overa1ls pocket, as do
the toilers, the common people" here in
Montana. His wants may have been few,
wherever he was found and used as a
type, and his hopeless toll sufficed to fill
them; though even these modest wants
seem to have been ~unsuppIied,. in the
mind of the poet who wrote the fierce,
impassioned lines. But he is a creature
CIuTL IToiH CIiIS SeCllUu u liz WOIlus d
nightmare, a chimera, an impossible be-
ing. to labor on, hopelessly, endlessly,
With nothing to cheer; not even the price
of a cigar, or a glass Of something hot on
a cold day. We know that he never got
a breath of the fresh mountain air, that
would have maed him straighten up the
hump in his back, Jingle the dollars in
his pocket, and have a shine put on his
rnwbiJa p,inipr hnotc 6f ha uyontad II
there; for he would have the money to
pay for it, if he We're a westerner. There
Is here no such hopeless life; no such a
low-browed humility, no everlasting
grind, and the OK has lost forever, in the
Tree western air, the brother that the
painter and poet have represented in the
sodden east. And in the great transform
alton, nothing, save the Deity that gave
the pure air, the shining gold, the bound
ing activity of the west-nothing has
been more potent than the power of
money.
This money power of the west is not a
balefM one. It takes the plodding toll
er of the half-deserted eastern farm, who
may have drifted here by chance, or
through the feeble Impetus of the last
lingering spark of ambition, and makes
him a peer of any a for he is here
no longer an incubus because no one
cares to put him out o fthe way, but a
man able to earn wages enough to make
him independent; to pay his way, not
barter THE scanty products of his farm
for a scanty living. Western high wages
have made him independent II he will be
SO. 1t takes the STRIPPING, the weakling,
and sets him up among the fighting men
Of the race; for he can carr his way, and
the consciousness that one can demand
and earn a reasonable compensa-
ton makes a man of any one. 1t may
not always raise a man upward; with
added strength of body, of mind, of win,
comes always the feeling that one is able
to trffe with what a weaker man would
shun or never know, and with money
comes the Means TO crafty what would
be impossible without it; but they are
strong faults, like the rough, a
mountains themselves as compared with
the modest valleys; and like the W
bains give their pure gold, the rough,
strong western life contains germs of
character of positive worth. Such a
money power is beneficent always; for it
strengthens men, and no weak nation
ever was worth the destroying.
1t lis hard, sometimes, for eastern peo-
pie to realize what a man is really worth
here in the west. Back in the rural dis
tricts where the good old retired farmer
raises almost everything he needs, save
"A jack knife to whittle the boxes at the
old country stores in winter evenings
and for that he trades eggs and butter
that are gathered and cared for by the
overworked wife-there is absolutely no
conception of wages here. Back there
the agriculturfst scarcely knows what it
is to handle money; a we'll to do patri-
arch of the eastern farming districts
might go straight through life and die
of old age without ever seeing as much
cash as a good, live business man or ever
a craftsman would handle in a year. 1t
MAJ be an independent life, to live en-
tirely in the product of ones farm and
never need to depend on others, save to
trade out" for minor articles, but it is
far more SO to have the cash in ones
pocket Ito pay his way, live well, have "a
dollar, or ten dollars, for some extra
pleasure, and still be able Ito save in two
or three years the price of two off the
rock-bound eastern farms. The classic
Old stories of the brave young easterner
who comes west and then returns with
pockets full of gold just aus the villain
liic l5teo Silo N 10 d ~ III lhe gray
haired Old father and the weeping and
despairing sweetheart out of doors al
ways at Thanksgiving or Christmas
time-is, or can be, daily ~re-enacted i'll
the way of moncy-making. The money
is here, and the air and the mere start
of money getting brings the power to
get it.
There is a Missourian here in Butte
not from Pike, however, who had the
misfortune Ito lave a few thousand dol
lars left him in the east a few years ago.
With an industry worthy of better judg-
ment he started in to establish a racing
Stable; SO successfully and RAPIDLY thai
he had a $4,000 mortgage on his origina,
property before he could stop. Like a
stroke of genius came the thought that
the west Offered a way to recover; posi-.
bly, he "a read some of the touching