New-York tribune., 1907-09-01
MONEY IN FARMING.
True Stories of Quick Profits on
WeStern Lands.
BY John Foster Carr.

Marching to the North and rejoicing in battle with
Nature at her sternest, till our is hardened by
the struggle to morning vigor and fitness.
crowdngSover the frozen waste places of earth.
On the barren plains and uplands of the temperate
world science has wrought one of the greatest
miracles through the new agriculture. and grain
is waving over the ancient desert We are rewriting
stereOtyped territorial descriptions. and unin
habitable' is passing into the dictionary of fools
Year by year civilization has been valorously
creeping northward. and at each advance it has
discovered undreamed wealth OF land waiting
for the plough.
Necessity in our day has become sharp goad
to agricultural invention. and the machinery of
settlement moves swiftly. generation ago the
pioneers progress like that of his prairie schooner,
always slow and halting 1t the rising
price of land that finally forced the farmer to come
far as the Red River of the North. The reputed
steriIity of the Dakota prairies made this for a
time effective barrier against settlement, and
the leap the stream not made until
about 1886 tale Of border brawl at Moorhead,
Mimi, gives a guess at the date. One August
evening in 1881 a soldier from Fort Abercrombie.
and up the river. tramped into the crowded
tavern. From gunnySack he rolled out upon the
floor a half bushel of beets and potatoes with the
boast that they had been grown at the fort. He
promptly given the lie, and the desperate hght
that he led impressed the year and the fact the
minds of several of Moorhead's old pioneers. Who
may have been the first fortunate expert
menter. one successful trial of the soil Immediately
followed another Old soldiers with land warrants
led the van of the crowding settlers. and by 1888 1t
that all the prairie east of the Missouri
could proftably be soWn TO gram All west OF lhat
river thought to he fit for grazing alone
With its fnconceivable wealth great North
west is now rehearsing for common scenes or
the days of 40 The settler has less feverish hope
Of sudden riches. il is true, but their lust stli
possesses him to the forgetfulness of every KIND
o discomfort and privation. And he comes
in such thrOnging numbers, filing like ants, swarm
ing like bees, that estimating totals Is Verlest
guesswork. though every day you hear some detail
of growth: within the year twelre thousahu
Americans have migrated TO the northwest prov
inces of Canada from the district Of st. Paul
alone" Or you read: In single county inside
of a week. Iowa farmers have sold more than
100000 worth of land to purchasers from ONO
Indiana and Illinois. Most of this money VIII De
invested North Dakota and Montana farms.
YOU have quoted you from bankers report:
The Great Northern Railway carried INTO North
Dakota last year four thousand families of settlers
people from Missouri. Nebraska, Iowa, Wisconsin,
Indiana, Ohio Pennsylvania and Virginia
There is an interest more human and vital than
this statistical groupingthe men themselves their
lives and their rewarded work. Socially, never be-
fore were there such settlers. You will find men
of every trade in life, from backsmiths and
dentists clerks and clergymcn. Numbers OF
them. up a shifting majority, are single and
alone. Hermitlike they live their austere bachelor
lives for A season The sluggard spectators smoke
and sit around. largely exercising their leisure in
the invention Of necessities out of the empty boxes
and tins of canned vegetables. The labels they
Will soak off and plaster haphazard Tor ornament
upon the rough board walls of the shack The
wooden case they make serve for stool table,
closet trunk The empty can / have seen cur
and hammered into plates. ladies. cups and candle
sticks Unaltered. what could be better for dipper,
paint pot stew PAM
And there are lone women. married and single,
with school teachers d-many. among the home
steaders and they are worthy to be descendants
of the women who dared their lives in the first
westward movement of the frontier century ago
They are strong and seif-reiant, able men for
the common work. and fearless. II you ask about
the gun you see standing behind the door. they
will laugh and say that il might be useful upon
occasion to show to a wolf or an Indian All seem
expert the and management Of horses, and
this dexterty is carried to such an astonishing
point that have young mother with babe
her arm swing lightly and without aid into the
saddle.
The cold winters hearty living, with n sea-
sOnabie merrymakinS OF their own. and the strange
truth is learned that January in North Dakota,
where the mercury drops 10 twenty and thirty ana
even forty degrees below zero brings no such suf-
fering from the cold it does in New England
Prosperity seems everywhere The free public
lands. nearly every acre of them. have now been
taken up. The conquest of the desert has already
gone very far, and you half accept. as you lsleA
10 the argument, the enthusiasts faith that some
day every rod of arid land Will be probably used
The barren hills they tell you. be terraced.
in France and Italy: and whore little falls
that dry farming is impossible, they can be planted
with drought-resisting trees. and everybody knows
that forests mighty rainmakers. In the face Of
what has already been done, and Is beyond dispute
il would rash to say of the stonest desert
that Il cannot be made TO blossom like the rose
For the desert conquered producers crops in such
marvel that records of fact incredible until
the evidence piles up every hand. you conclude
that you In a land of long stories that are all
true Take an excursion through the Yatima Val
lev In Washington. where II they have the best
land a man and his wife can live well on the
a
Kennewick and North Yakima You gather from
reputable men wonderful stories of fertility OF
these deep beds of lava ash. At kennewick itself
last summer-and the instance is proved-the
peaches grown two acres of land were sold for
s2IY All Zillah IS the orchard Of young apple
trees that was bought a bargain for $3.50
acre and than paid for itself the first year
the orchard famous at the Lewis and Clark fair
for the great apple that weighed more than two
mounds and a half. And these tales go: six
Thousand boxes OF apples from five acres" "Thir-
teen thousand dollars profit in n single year from
a farm If forty acres Bare sagebrush land sell
ing at $500 acre.
And these stories true. Two OF them are
vouched for by affidavit; confirmed by
distinguished lawyer; another had from the chief
Of the United States Reclamation Service; in
other case l the books And there were other
tales wholly incredible. yet defended against my
protest by a keen and persuasive land agent with
the exultant paradox: THE truth is wonderful
that It takes a whopper OF lie to express it,
Some would starve in a bakeshop as the
saving goes and 1t takes industry and intelligence
to wrest rich profits even from these miraculous
acres But certainly there few other places
works Sunshine is eternal; winter Is mild; water
is no longer the capricous gift of the clouds and
comes when il is needed The reward except for
the small changes of the fruit market depends on
nothing but mans effOrts-its limits seem
actually to lie within the impossible land of
dreams. And TO think drawled a lank tender
foot that that there land has been lynn outdoors
and unteched since Adam was yearln."-
The Outlook.
EtNnJNG nE TIE HOi GRAIL