, 1902-05-09
COMING
FROM THE EASTERN AND MIDDLE
STATES TO SETTLE IN
THE NEW WEST.
Overwhelming Tide Of Homeseekers
Bound for the Dakotas, Montana,
Wyoming, Washington and Ore
gon-They Find Conditions Chang

The telegraphic dispatches announc'
ed recently that seven thousand home
seekers. travelling on c%olonist tickets,
passed through Minneapolis in one
day. says the Denver Field and Farm.
They were bound for the Dakotas,
Montana, Wyoming. Washington and
Oregon. The passenger departments
Of the Santa Fe and Southern Pacific
railroads recently estimated the num-
Der of people who went into California
this season on %colonists' tickets at 49,
900, an increase of 20 per cent over
the number last year. Traffic man.
ayers of the western and southwestern
railroad lines have evidence to con
vince them that during the past win
ter over a million Americans came
westward from the eastern and middle
states. Every state and territory west
of the Missouri river has received some
portion of this horde.
Theer is every erason to believe that
the tide of homeseekers is not ebbing
and that it will continue to inundate
the west for at least a decade, rising
year by year in it's strength. This
twentieth century hegira differs from
any other movement of American pop
ulation in MANY interesting and i'm
portant ways worthy of the schoolgirls
consideration. In the first place these
h~omeseekers are not foreigners. They
are men and women of good, whole.
some middle states American blood
and tradition-farmers, mechanics,
merchants, small capitalists and young
men. coming west to grow up with
the country. They are not always
poor. They :iave sold out their farms
and busin; sses and some Of them have
LETT good jobs in the east to take pot.
luck in the west. II is a hard-times
movement in the hopes of finding some
thing better from the conditions which
are over-shadowing the prosperity of
the east.
The oId-time mover came by wagon
and was Is happy as a bird. The
er today comes in a tourist sleeper,
takes his meals at the lunch counter
and buys peanuts from the train butch
err. The old settler came to his prom
Used land with four dollars in his peck
ct and pair of mules and a cow hitched
to his wagon. The new settler comes
with a pink draft for $50 and a letter
to the banker at his new home. Here
in lies the difference between the old
colonist and the new; the new colo
mist is not a pioneer. He has no wild
lands. wild animals nor wild men to
fight. He is going into a settled com
munity. The land has passed from the
homesteader to the mortgage com
pany and back to the farmer; the u
ty seats have all been located and the
court houses paid for with a mortgage
bond; the railroads have been built
and everything on earth for which
bands may possibly be voted has been
put in and retained or discarded. The
scalawags who always rise when a
new country settles have been comb
ed out before this years settler ONE
to his new home, and the boomer and
breeder of wildcat schemes have been
carefully shut up in Jail or driven fur
Their west.
The million colonists who move from
east to west this year will find social
conditions somewhat similar in their
new homes to those they left. Land
is a little cheaper in the west; work
for the unskilled a little better paid;
jobs for superintendent and general
managers a little more numerous and
economic conditions a little more set
on the eastern theory. These are the
only differences now between the far
s and the far west and the ~colonist
who comes west to grow up with the
country will find it already half grown.
His discovery may, however, be to his
disadvantage. II he gets along in this
country he will have to pull off his
coat and do some work. We already
have an Oyer.sunnly Of has-beens.