The L'Anse sentinel. (L'Anse, L.S., Mich.) 18??-current, 1902-03-08
POSSIBILITIES AND
OPPORTUNITIES OF U. r.

Vegetables As Related TO Its In
dustrial Development-By
Leo M. Geismar.
am aware OF the difficulty in
convincing great many farmers as
to the opportunities which are af-
forded to them by farming in the up
per peninsula. These farmers are
mostly those who, more or less oc-
cupied with numbering aud perhaps
mining. became farmers by acct
dent after having watched the sue
cess Of professional farmers and see
ing everywhere the exceptionally
good markets aud cheap lands. In
very few sections have these farmers
even yet been able to satisfy them
selves that IL they would devote to
farming alone their whole energy OF
brain as well as muscle they would
succeed as well as those by whom
they allowed themselves to be dis
tanced.
BY farming little and numbering
little they have managed to make
both ends meet; but paying insult
Ecient attention to correct farming
methods. and numbering decreasing
in their neighborhood they find it,
easier to complain than to reform.
Though their crops diminish from
year to year, they still refuse TO be-
lieve that this is the inevitable pen
atty for considering a farm as mine
rather than a factory.
Finding their labors unrewarded
they will soon arrive at a point
where they will become easy vic
tins of land boomers. Evidently ]
am not the one who realizes that the
upper peninsula is liable to become
a profitable field from which good
crop OF Disconnected farmers may be
induced to remove to distant farm
ing regions whose chief wealth con
sists in embellished maps, illustrated
pamphlets and seductive advertis-
ments.
Everywhere | find the cast iron
literature of the average newspaper
teeming with alluring offers of lands
to be had for song Tor still cheaper)
in regions including all the way from
the balmy swamps of Florida to the
SO called temperate zones within
gunshot of the arctic circle. Every
now and then l ind evidence that a
strong effort is being made to hasten
the time when this human harvest
and believing that it will succeed
partly at least, | can heartily sym
pathize with and pity the upper pen
insula victims as much as the many
dozens of dupes whom saw leaving
Michigan in former years.
This strong effort is of recent orr
gin and began little more than a
year ago. Land boomers evidently
recognize that as the work of the
Experiment Station progresses,
their harvest is being endangered.
Aside from this, they have been
made to realize, within less than two
years, that through the rapid devel-
opment of the beet sugar industry,
the lower peninsula has ceased tor re-
main profitable field for them.
am aware also that the argu-
ments which will be advanced and
insinuations which will be made to
the farmers whom | have described,
will be that the reason for their in
creasing failure is not of their own
creation, but is due to the frost and
heat, and rain and snow, and drouth
and insects and.what not.
Unfortunately the land boomers
will be materially assisted by the
few shiftless farmers whom i des-
cribed last week. These pseudo farm
ers will be only too glad to welcome
any argument which may excuse
their laziness and ignorance. They
will spend their best time in dis
couraging their more enterprising
neighbors and they will try to con-
vince them that the proper cure-all
consists in moving, although unfort-
unately, for the good of the COM
munity, they have not enough en-
ergy to set the example by moving
themselves.
Let the undecided farmer stop
and consider, and especially let him
remember that this is simply history
repeating itself. Every community