Bismarck daily tribune. [volume] (Bismarck, Dakota [N.D.]) 1881-1916, 1906-02-08
GREAT Interest SHOWN

tate men and the railroad corporations.
/ know that it is true, from my own
Eexperience and observation, that it
takes lot OF hard work and the pa
tient presentation of facts and figures
to get the people generally to realize
! the actual truth as to a new country.
And | have also learned that the most
of us in the first twenty-five years OF
our lives accept as facts whole lot of
things and get good many impressions
| that it takes the next twenty-five years
to unlearn; and among such impress
sions and among those which / have
learned to regard with great deal of
suspicion is the recollections of the old
settler and the ordinary table of sta
tistics 1t is true, perhaps, as you have
often heard, that figures do not lie, but
it is just as true that they are frequent
ly awfully misleading, and that is be-
cause, I assume, that they are COM
piled by human beings who are sub
|ject to all the inhrraities of humanity.
| One of the first things I learned in
mathematics was that two and two
make four. That is many times true,
but, nevertheless, two and two dc not
always equal four. 1t depends upon the
relation of the figures to each other
and upon their alignment. Two and
two placed under each other, do equal
four, but two and two placed side by
side make twenty-two-quite a differ
ence
Now the ordinary recollections of an
old settler, in my judgment, depend
upon the same things. They depend up
on the relations which the particular
Iold settler bears to the country in
which he has lived. And especially is
this true in new country His recol-
lections depend upon the manner in
(which he has adapted himself to the
conditions of that country.
1t has been my fortune never to have
lived in an old-settIed country, and yet
never to have been pioneer. In 1880,
when a mere boy, | came to Ioxa, to
Chickasaw county. At that time Ca1icka-
saw county, at least most of it, was as
bare prairie as the. county of BurIeigh
lis today. 1t had been, as learned on
coming there, wheat producing coun-
try, and at about that time the cfinof,
bugs had come and the people. were
1 abandoning their homes and their
| farms and many Of them went from
Iowa into the territory of Dakota which
was then having its early boom And
remember well that the old settlers
there in Chickasaw county declared that
the country was no good, that it would
not raise. anything but wheat and thai
wheat was played out, and they made
a practice of telling new corners there
that the country WAS worthless an,
that it was depopulating, as in fact i
was. But I lived there long enough Il
see that Same country settled up a.
it had not been before, and that lallt
:, which was by the old timers considere,
no good, prosperous, and saw it sci
e for from fifty to sixty dollars an acre
e saw it used for diversified farming an,
e becoming the home of thousands an.
= / fba,.conIc sc ea4t1a-e
r At that time | had reached my earl
i. manhood and went to the counties o
5 Winnebago and Kossuth, Iowa, an.
Il found the same conditions existin
/ there. It was a wild prairie covere
/ with frog ponds and mosquito slougfls
i The old settlers there said that tn
eel country was no good, that they ha
W lived there for twenty years and kne,
i, st was no good, that it was outside til
d corn belt and you could not raise wdlea
rei That it was too cold for corn and woul
l. have to be drained before it would b
good for anything and would cost NOR
I | to drain than the land was worth The
!. said that when you got it drained
= would cost YOU more than it could DO:
!, sibly return TO YOU. AT that time / coul
= have got that land then for great de;
: less money than can buy land in Blu
81 leigh county today, but was told
was no good. But lived there lor
s. enough to see that country drained an
M settled up and until there was far
3 house on every quarter section and ii
country filed with well-to-do settler
lived there until that land sold for
= high as sixty-hve and seventy-hye dc
= lars an acre. . s
3 From there / looked into southel
- Minnesota. I can remember The tim,
Iu young as I now am, when you col
6 go into southern Minnesota and bi
q those farms there for some times lie
than the value Of the Improvement
], The old settlers of the country said til
tfley were outside of .tle corn 3,e1f =.