Willmar tribune., 1908-04-29
(copyright, by Joseph B. Bowles.)

see whatever you want to at the the
aters, etc.
So what is the use of keeping your
nose to the grindstone Just to keep
up bluff" of living in a certain way?
OF course, If you like that sort of
thing, you ought not to be deprived of
it. The item of ice in the country
means having little dumb-waiter ar
rangement run down in the we'll where
you Keep, your stuff cold all summer
with no expense, and little trouble.
The item of ice in the city means be-
ing under the thumbs of a lot of
pirates who treat you like a parcel Of
beggars. Everything in the city costs
right up to the limit. In the country
you raise almost everything you need.
A good-sized family can make five
acres OF land near any large city sup
port them all. BY near city, I mean
within 40 to 20 miles from town, and
that is near enough.
The farmers in our vicinity cared
very little whether school kept or
not. They worked or they let it
alone, just as the mood happened to
possess them. They all of them had
good horses and buggies, and in the
winter time they got out their sleighs
and cutters and so they got about in
all seasons very comfortably. If they
owned their own farms they were, of
course. even more Independent than
the renters" but the renters them
selves were just as we'll off as to the
luxuries and the necessities in the
country. as the landed proprietors.
They always had at least two crops
out ever3 year, and if one crop failed,
which WAS almost never, the other
crop was 4 success, and they always
made some money, at least. They all
had fruit on the farms, and raised
good gardens. They had chickens and
sold their extra eggs and chickens
and so paid their grocery bills, and
more, too. They had hogs fattening
for winter meat, and they butchered a
heifer or steer once in awhile for
fresh beef. They had never known
III their lives what it was to worry
about a bare living. AS for 'indus-
trial. troubles, that is outside of agri-
culture, at present. There was no
union to fight with. When harvest
time came around, each man helped
his neighbor, and the improved ma
chinery of to-day made the work COM
paratively easy. When the farmers
worked, they were not cooped up in a
smoky, choky atmosphere in the midst
of smoke and SCOT, the whirr of ma
chinery, their lungs filled with grit
and iron filings.
They were out in the oren, breath
ing the purest air, and with all the
four winds of heaven blowing about
them. If it was storming, they did
not 60 out to work; they did not have
to. Mostly on rainy days the boys
and men in my neighborhood went
hunting. Or they sat around the
kitchen stove and cracked pecans,
hickory nuts and walnuts, ate apples,
drank cider and played the fiddle.
They were hustling lot, a good many
of them, and they raised crops all
right, but they did not kill themselves
working. They had a little enjoy.
ment while they went along; and if q
circus or county fair happened along
they could all quit and go to see it,
for every man was an independent
sovereign. They waited for no mans
beck or call, and spoke of no man as
"the boss," and never had to gallop
back after dinner to pull string or
give their name to "lookout." so as
not to get fined for being q couple OF
seconds late.
When they felt like it, they laid of
and browsed around the farms and
fixed up the fences. If happened to
run across neighbor he could always
stop and have a little chat with me-
Nobody around to "give him the eye''
and make him feel like a cheap Grim.
inal. And If it was exceedingly hot
some scorching July day, you could
go into some of the farmhouses and
find active, healthy and first-class
farmers reading paper and reckon.
ing they wouldn't 60 out that after.
noon.
They worked hard when they did
work, of course; and some of the
work was disagreeable. But they
could clay off" whenever they felt
like it, and there was no one to say
them nay. The proprietor of a farm
had absolutely nothing to say as to
when or how his renter" worked the
farm. The "renter" gave his time to
raising a crop, and divided the crop
with the landlord. Sometimes the
landlord got half, and sometimes a
third. If there were light crops, there
was very little actual cash divided, but
the man on the farm, and his family,
had always had a good living out of
it.
When man owned a place of say
80 to hundred or a hundred and
sixty acres, he could farm some of it
and rent out the rest, and take it
easy. Or he could, like the man I rent
ed from, rent out his house to one
party and his land to the adjoining
farmers, and trade in cattle and hogs,
feeding them and shipping them into
the cities.
After the boys were 21 they were
out for themselves, and were perfectly
able not only to take care of them
selves, but they had learned their
trade" and could support a family.
Mostly, the farmer boys marry early,
and race suicide is something they
know nothing whatever about. Big
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