The Bad River news. [volume] (Philip, Stanley County, S.D.) 19??-1912, 1908-10-22

WOfCn 1Or SLOck purposes ten or
twelve dollars per year and if the
argument is sound that it is better
adapted to stock raising than farm
ing, then the income from the av-
erage mans holdings won't make
him rich very fast. Now it seems
plain to me, that the argument
that this county is better adapted
to stock raising than farming is
based on the supposition that each
resident owns or controls large
tracts OF land so stock may have a
large area to range over as they
did when this was Government
land. But that day is passed, and
today we face conditions of the
county being divided up among
the settlers in one-hundred and
sixty acre tracts, and on that
amount of land stock growing as
a business will not do. This
county must be either used for
agriculture, or the man with only
one-hundred and sixty acres must
run out his neighbor or be run out
himself. | think the first and
most reasonable thing to do is to
test this county for agricultural
uses. AS we have settlers now on
most of the quarters too
many Tor it to be used as a stock
growing country, and for our up
building we wish them all to stay;
so let US do all we can to make it
so they may, and one of the most
essential things for them now is
protection from being over-run
and their crops destroyed by stock
running at large. We need and
must have a herd law now and all
should help to enforce it who have
the best interest of the county at
heart. If it should be my fortune
or misfortune perhaps, to be elec-
ted to the legislature | shall favor
all measures that tend toward as
sisting in advancing and upbuild-
ing the agricultural interest of the
county, as l feel that in that
way alone lies our hopes for
a county of happy homes and
prosperous people,
There is another question of
paramount interest in the settling
up and stability of the growth of
our county agriculturaly and that
is the water problem. There is
no question but that shallow wells
can be had here as readily as in
other parts of our state, and it is
not so much along the line of
water for the house and stock
purposes that l make the water
problem a paramount issue, but
the retaining the water by the use
of dams for the sake of the mois-
ture it conserves during the sea-
son is a matter of vast Importance
to the county. One of the men
of this state whose friendship |
priced highly, and one in whom I
think the state has never had q
truer or more loyal supporter,
was the late lamented John H.
King of Huron. Mr.. King al
ways asserted that the Govern
ment was not doing the wisest and
best thing for the general inter-
est and upbuilding of the state by
expending millions on the dam at
Belle Fourche. He contended
that hundreds of smaller dams
distributed over the more arid
portions of the state wonld ma
terially aid in conserving moisture
and add more wealth to the state
in general than the one large ex-
penditure 1T Belle Fourche could
; possibly..do, large and great as the
benefits from that project might
be. That Mr.. King was right in
his contention l have every reason
to believe. OF course on the east
side of the river the project of dam
building was overcome to q large
extent by the artesian wells which
have done much to conserve mois-
ture in those counties. But I for
one believe that if the money ex-
pended in sinking those wells had