The Leon reporter. (Leon, Iowa) 1887-1930, 1907-08-01
TWO poor MOVES.

When farmer of middle age and in
good health finds that he has ''got the
place paid for and begins to consider
the advisability of renting the 100 and
moving to town." he contemplates
bad move, says the Marshalltown Times
Republican. There is no more pitiful
sight than that of an active man still
full of days works and energy who has
moved from the busy activity of tie
farm to retirement without labor in tie
city. He does not know what to do
with himself. His income and oppor-
tunities are both abridged. When he
bitches up and drives out to the farm
the renter is not doing things as they
should be done. He sees broken
board here and there, the lawn is grown
up to grass and the pigs are roofing up
grass plot that had always been taboed
to pigs. An air of carelessness per-
vades. The man who is running the
place is going to leave next year and is
preparing to leave as little and take as
much as his contract permits when he
goes. He comes away worrying. When
he goes down town everyone is busy
and he is more lonesome in the crowd
than he ever was alone in the back
forty on the farm. Perhaps in two or
three years he learns to live in town.
Perhaps he gets back on the farm as
soon as the renters term is out. In
either case he is sorry he moved. If he
goes to the farm he falls back into the
happy fashion of previous years and
reads his paper, answers the phone, and
sees that the hired man keeps up to the
mark. His content with the farm is
beautiful to see and he usually stays
there until he takes his last ride to the
cemetery.
Another bad move the Iowa farmer
makes is when he leaves the corn
country, charmed by the pictured prof
its and delights Of "dry farming" in the
arid belt, rice farming in the everglades
or any country where the soil and the
crops are strange and other system of
agriculture obtain. What business has
the man who knows how to raise corn
and feed cattle, trying to get rich on a
half section of cactus country?
| Hundreds of Iowa men are taking
their families into the dry lands who
will bitterly regret the ''move." Said
a hardened old land Spectator to an
editor the other day: 81 can sell a
man $4,000 farm for $1,000 if he will
buy it and keep pretty clear con-
science, but if l were to induce men to
buy some of those arid lands and move
their families upon it couldn't sleep
nights" Writing to his brother, a rail
road man at point in the arid lands
says: Hundreds of settlers are com
ing in here and others are going
away. They generally stay until they
have one team and wagon and enough
rag carpet to make wagon cover and
then they hike out on the long trail
for "home." It's so dry here that none
are permitted to picket out animals
because the driving of a picket pin
sometimes cracks county in two
Doubtless he exaggerated somewhat
but what is man who has learned to
farm in Iowa to do in the dry country?
Better stay in Iowa. If anywhere OF
earth roast pigs ran around with knives
and forks sticking in their backs il
would be in Iowa. Between the Miss
issippi and Missouri lies the modern
successor of the garden by the Euph.
rates. Better stay in Iowa. 1t is {
poor move to leave Iowa.