Bismarck daily tribune., 1912-06-19
By Walter A, Dyer.

BY Walter A. Dyer.
(The following is an answer to a
representative of the Tribune by the
editor of Country Life in America
when asked what do you see in North
Dakota?" Mr.. Dyer was representing
his magazine on tAe Farmers Institute
Special and gathering material and
getting impressions from first hands
when he wrote this article.)
Once upon a time Traveller came
to the land of the Dakotahs. In the
country whence he had come there
were many fruitful farms and great
cities. He came from land of pine
forests, rolling meadows, wooded hills
ancient and rock-ribbed mountains,
calm, blue lakes and limpld streams.
He came from a land OF homes and
old traditions-a land where men a
hundred years ago had built white
farmiouses of rare beauty of line and
proportion, and surrounded them with
orchards and gardens, trees and
shrubs, and the gay and fragrant COM
pany of nowers-a land where men
and women have learned the perma-
nent satisfaction of beautiful sur
roundings and the refinement of life.
But he came from land, too, which
could be rendered fruitful only with
great labor, and where many men,
grown weary with the task of making
bricks without straw, la given up the
fight and allowed decay to set in, and
the canker of disappointment and pes
simism to corrupt their lives. And in
the great cities which he had left,
with all their wealth and luxury, there
was corruption and disease, moral and
physical, and tae fostering ills and
bitterness Of race that has already
lived too fast and too long, and shows
signs of death in youth. There in
place of brotherhood had sprung up
hatred, and men were wearing them
selves out in a fight for that which
would never satisfy them.
And so, when he came to this great,
new land, he pondered in his heart the
problems of this new people. How
could they be taught to care for the
good, the true, and the beautiful that
the older land lad to offer, and warn
ed against their elder brothers mis-
takes?
For he had come to a land in the
first flush of youth, a land whose men
and women were strong with abound
ing health land of infinite possibil-
tiles for good or evil.
From the land of Czar and Kaiser,
these men had come, and from the
rocky fjords of Norseland-men OF
and courage and patience,
who had grown too lusty for the op-
pressions and restrictions OF Egypt,
and had bought a new home in the
Land Of Promise. Crude an uncouth.
most of them, with but little idea OF
the finer joys Of life, but also with no
as yet of the more highly
refined sins Of their brothers to the
east. Children, they were who had
been placed in the care of a great ma
ton to make men or beasts Of, as the
,utsome might decide.
he Traveller looked about him, and
saw not the shady orchards, rolling
and little corn fields Of back
home. but miles and miles of wheat
and rye and flax and barley, already
fairly covering the rich, black soil.
The pioneers of the east, long, long
ago, had to hew a farm out of the
primiaeval forest, and vita their un-
aided hands cleared of stones the first
poor acres for their corn. Here. with
the help of modern machinery the
farmer has but to scratch the soil and
drop in the seed, and 10! boundless
ocean of waving wheat. Truly, a
Land of Promise!
Then the Traveller had vision. It
was the vision of waste and desolate
land. 1t was a land from when all the
youth and Joy and promise had fled.
Because they knew no better, or be-
cause they were stubborn, or because
no one took the trouble to teach them
they misused the precious heritage OF
their fertile soil. Year after year they
robed it Of it's richness until where
once twenty bushels o. wheat had
been raised, now paltry seven grew.
The short-lived poplars with which
they had surrounded their dwellings
died, and there was no bit of beauty
tc break the bleat and monotonOus
te soluation of the prairie. Sons and
who had come to learn of
better things elsewhere, became dis
with their unlovely and sor-
did urroundings, and gradually drifted
away, leaving the country old before
it's time Because Of long-continued
neglect of sanitary conditions, disease
cat it whitening blight upon the erst-
while sturdy people, and the hope OF
the Land of Promise was dead.
But it was a false vision. The Trav.
eller lifted up his eyes and beaeld in
every town and village a brick school
house, and everywhere evidences Of
the care which the State was taking