Evening times-Republican. [volume] (Marshalltown, Iowa) 1890-1923, 1909-11-10

81 900 people registered in person, at
the six places of registration, for a
chance to draw. AT Aberdeen, S. D., no
less than $4,000 registered. They cams
from all over the country, but mainly
from Iowa, South Dakota, Minnesota.
Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana
and Ohio. Everybody in all that great
valley is wild TO get land; more land
They know that the supply of cheap
land will soon be gone forever, and the
eagerness with which every opportun-
ity is grasped is almost unbelievable
"A very few more years, and there will
be no more cheap land, say nothing Of
homesteads.
1.-THE wonder to me, in all Theses
drawings I have been conducting, is
the number of people who come from
the cities. They want to get land in or.
der to be able to leave the cities. You
could talk day with the people who
came for that drawing, and convinca
yourself that the cities were about to
be turned inside out, to distribute theiN
millions over the face of the new west
There We're two railroad engineers from
ST. Paul who wanted farms so they
could leave the road and settle down
and ''get something together for their
families" Neither drew. An old lady
from Sandusky, Ohio, waited day by
day turnout the drawing, in the hope
that her name would be called. At last
on the afternoon of the closing day, as
the last numbers were coming out, she
turned away in tears, to leave the
gathering. Hesitating to give UP, She
went to the bulletin where the names
of the lucky ones were posted, and
stood, hopelessly scanning over the
names. What was her surprise to find
her own name among the earliest
called on the first day. She had drawn
one of the best claims in the entire
list, but had not heard her name when
| it was called.
"These people have been raising some
wonderful crops in the region we used
| to call the Bad Lands: I saw corn fields
turning out fifty bushels per acre from
new sod, out near Lennon, S. D., In the
section that even five or six years ago
was referred to as the last relic Of the
once Great American Desert Even
then it was still supposed to be desert.
Must Prepare For Bad Years.
"The trouble will come when the ex-
cess of rainfall which all that country
has enjoyed in recent years. is followed
Dy lSlleF IAN. Iueli, IL IAS peopi0
are not prepared for some bad years.
; or if they have not found way to raise
crops with the lighter rainfall, there
will be, am afraid, disaster among a
good many of them. OF course, expert
ence and scientific methods are max
Ing conditions better all the time. Back
, in 1885 there was a great movement
into eastern South Dakota These peo-
) pie would boot at you if you tried to
tell them something about farming that
you had learned from a book. Well
the dry years came and they were
! largely starved out. The new migra-
7 ton to that section has been of people
r willing and anxious to learn and apply
/, all the books can tell them; and they
9 are making that same section one OF
g the richest farm countries in the world
S hope it will be the same in the newer
: regions to which immigration is now
Y being directed. Certainly, the move.
e ment is such as we have never known
before The people are going with
a plenty of money; they build goot
:. homes right at the outset; they intro.
), duce fine stock and plenty of it; ant
e they are going to succeed as thei
: predecessors could not do. The day o
e pioneering is past. Two years after i
e is opened, that country will look jus
It like sections settled generation. Their
: is no frontier, and there are almost n
y, poor homesteaders such as we knew il
IL the OK train and ptalrie echoone
Is