The McCook tribune. (McCook, Neb.) 1886-1936, 1907-05-10
INDIANA PEOPLE IN WESTERN
CANADA.
What Shall We po?-i've Got to Build
Granaries.

erumenJ agent from Upton, 1uulduh'
Is but one of many similar that are in
the hands of the Canadian government
agents whose privilege 1t is to o1er
one hundred and sixty acres of land
free, and low railway fares. But here
is a copy of the letter:
Upton, Ind, Nov. %, 1906.
"At your earnest solicitation a party
Of us from Upton left May Is for
Western Canada. Our interviews with
you and a careful study of your liter
AZURE led us to expect great things or
your country when we should arrive
! there, and we were rot disappointed.
We went prepared to make a careful
examination of the country and its re-
sources, and we did so. At early dawn
the second morning out OF Upton we
awoke in a new world. AS far as the
eye could reach was an apparently
limitIess expanse of new sown wheat
and prairie grasses. The vivid green
of the wheat just beginning to stool
out, and the inky blackness of h
soil c~ontrasted in a way beautiful to
see. An hour or two later we steamed
| lnIO NluElDGS- I1GIO VIC iOullu q hbAi
Der of surprises. A hundred thousand
souls well housed, with every con-
v~enience that goes to make a modern
up-to-date city-banks, hotels, news
papers, stores, electric light, street
railways, sewerage, w~aterworks, as
phalt payements, everything. With
eyes and ears open we travelled for
I-,z 1lo,,,o-1 vnfIno fhrnIUh MlnjtOh1
Saskatchewan and Alberta, going out
over the Canadian Pacific railway, via
Calgary to Edmonton, and returning
to Winnipeg oVer the Canadian North
ern railway. In the meantime We
made several side trips and stopped
off at a number of points where we
made drives into the surrounding
country. On every hand were evil
dences of prosperity. The growing
wheat, oats, rye, flax, barley, not lit
tie patches, but great fields, many Of
them a square mile in extent, the
three, five and sometimes seven-horse
teams laying over an inky black rib
bon of yellow stubble, generally in fur
rows straight as gun barrels and at
right angles from the roads stretching
into the distance, cOntrasted strangely
with our little fields at home. The
towns both large and small were dou-
bly, conspicuous, made SO, first by
their neWness and second by the tow
ering elevators necessary to hold the
immense crops of wheat grown in the
immediate n~eighborhood.
The the thrift, the hustle,
the sound of saw and hammer, the
tents housing owners of buildings IN
various stages of completion, the piles
of household effects and agricultural
implements at the railway stations
waiting to be hauled out to the
Claims" the occasional steam ploW
turning it's twenty or thirty acres a
day, the sod house, the Imprinted
house of wood, the ~up-to-date modern
residence with large red barn by, all
these were seen everywhere we went,
an earnest of prosperity and wealth to
be. We talked with men and visited
their places that four years ago was
unbroken prairie. Their houses,
barns, implements and live stock were
the equal OF anything in Upton Coun-
ty, and why not, when they were rails
ing five, ten and twenty, yes, in one
instance, forty thousand bushels OF
wheat a year. The fact that such
large yields Of wheat are raised so
q, easily and so surely impressed us
t very favorably. And when we saw
j men who four or five years ago com
l. menced there with two or three thou
e sand dollars, and were now as well
g fixed and making money much easier
and many times faster than lots OF
our a~cquaintances on Indiana farms
fifty years cleared and valued at four
r times as much, we decided to invest
So we bought in partnership a little
T over two thousand acres, some OF il
t improved and in wheat.
Before leaving Indiana we agreed
e that if the opportunities were as great
as they were represented to be, thai
We would buy, and own in partner
ship a body of land, and leave nj Of
s our number to look after and operate
t it. This we accordingly did.
Just before time to thresh 1 re
ceived a letter from him. What shall
9 We do?" said he; I've got to build
granaries. There's so much wheat
/ that the railways are just swamped
We can't get cars and the elevator:
are all full. I never saw anything
like it." In reply we wrote, Good fol
you. Go ahead and build; your storI
;: sounds better than the letters we useC
to get from our friends in Kansa:
when they bewailed the fact that the
hard wheat had been destroyed by the
c chinch bugs and the corn by ho
winds, and that they must sell th'
c stock for means to live on. Yes, builc
by all means" And he did, and on
n wheat put in by a renter made TWEEN
r ty-seven bushels per acre.
u Very truly yours,
y (Sd) A. G. BURKHART.
II (Sd) ]. NEUTRALITY-SUSPICIOUS..
g (Sd) WALTER W. MOUNT.