Evening times-Republican. [volume] (Marshalltown, Iowa) 1890-1923, 1906-09-08
LOOKER.ON IN IOWA

| Garner, Sept S.-All of Iowa seems
to be going somewhere these days
! Hardly had the passenger trains car
ried probably 100000 persons to oui
state fair, than the trains for the Min
nesota state fair, headed towards
Minneapolis and st. Paul, began to be
crowded. In many trains one had tc
ride miles before seat could be OBJ
! tanned. Add to this state fair travel
the land seekers excursions, the hunt
| ing parties, the base ball clubs and tbs
| home .'rooters" that always escort the
home club to the town where the
game is to be played, and last but moi
| least the hundreds of students leaving
! home to attend some college, these
| with the returning crowds from ths
| lakes, and then mix in an unusual
| number of travelling men that start out
| September /, and no wonder peanuts
reap harvest these days, and thu
| conductor has a tired feeling and ex-
preston not one bit assumed or dis
guised. One man today gave as his
conundrum, where do all these people
get the money to spend on these trips?
$50
Once more the time has arrived
again for the newspaper man to Won
der why our farmers do not stack their
grain. Coming down from ST. Paul
last week the writer saw from the Car
windows this curious fact Given, a
farm with big red barn on the place,
and other things to show general pros
perity, and there we invariably saw
the grain stackers. Then the moving
landscape picture showed one of those
rain-shackle sort Of farms, with farm
ing implements left out in the field and
machinery all over the front and back
lots, where the fences needed fixing,
and the barns\vere small sheds, where
the hogs slept under the front porch,
and the hens roasted on the railing of
the back porches, and on such places
the grain was still in shock, cut four
weeks ago, and the owner waiting for
weeks ago and the owner waiting for
the machine to come around" Today
in this town oats were being hauled
in and sold for two cents under the
market price, because of that big rain
last week."
In an Iowa town recently, one of
those small towns remarkably pros
porous eight years ago, the writer
asked the cause of so many empty
stores. good store buildings, too, build
ings representing an investment Of
$500 to $4,000 Asked why it hap
pened all of the small shops and build
ings on the other side of the street
were vacant. Asked why the mer-
chants talked hard times when big
crops have been harvested for the past
two years on the farms adjoining
town. And the banker explained mat
tiers in four words. "Too much Dako-
ia land" He said the money was
drawn out of the bank and many would
like to borrow more to pay for Dakota
farms purchased by these well-to do
formers and town people. That many
well-to-do farmers and others We're
economiizng every way to save money
to meet the payments due on these
Dakota farms this coming fall. That
instead of coming to town and buying
clothes, furniture and winter supplies,
as is customary when the small grain
is being threshed and marketed, every
dollar possible was being saved to pay
for that land investment in Dakota.
Furthermore, twenty eight fami-
lies that he knew of, men
that previously had a bank account
with him, had left there. and their
places filed by much smaller families,
and generally renters, that are trying
to get rich raising thirty five bushels