The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1913-11-07
(By Major John B. Jeffery, Press
 Club of Chicago"


 where the winds of winter keep uI
 a losing fight for a few weeks in their season and gradually give over the field to the All-conquering Chinook in this mild northern prairie there was an insignificant and unassuming town that for twenty years had suffered under the unfortunate name of Med 1cine Hat" It is the only Medicine Hat under the sun, but unlike most hats this one is upturned upon the prairie, so that it seems to catch in the broad crown more of the glitter | ign sun rays than any of the con- We entionaI hats of the West.
 But Medicine Hat had bad name; J tn ere is no doubt of it. When east Rra people heard that name they sh uddered, for they had heard of Med icine Hat, the place where the weath- ! i'll ision in their minds that the chill hs pervaded their very systems like an ague. So great was the dread of 4hat frigid place that mothers were in the habit of quieting their babes with the threat of sending them to Medicine Hat to freeze to death.
 The opprobrium of the name must have arisen from the fact that the weather man stopped at the Hat a few years ago and decided to estab- fish a weather station there, and as it was the most .northerly point in | Ine SDnGr6 OI that IyTdunlCdl genius ~Eone of his satellites became imbued with the idea that all of the weather which he made, up in Yukon, in Alas ka. and the Hudson Bay, got their .frigidity from the town with the Queer-sounding name. Like an epi- and before long Medicine Hat was doomed to arctic lone1iness-so far as they were concerned
 But fortunately for Medicine Hat there were some brave spirits who foreswore their allegiance to the weather man, left the homes of their childhood and coming boldly north to the land of dread they were surprised land delighted with the Reception. and delighted with the reception which they receiced; for there were days and days of sunshine, and miles and miles of grassy prairie, with thou sands of cattle grazing upon the thick mats of buffalo grass, or drinking from the streams and resting in the I1ong couIees. They found immense beds of coal on the banks of the riv- CTS, lying in veins seven feet de D. coal that burned long and hot and kept off the chill of winter. But more wonderful still they found that their wells gave up not only water, but also a gas that burned forever and kept their lights blazing night and day All of these things were the lot of the men who would not believe and who dared to think-the men from Ontario, Indiana. Illinois, and those from Missouri. who wanted ''to be shown"
 Years have passed since these p1o- neers came to Medicine Hat and a city is now growing up on the prairies of Alberta, covering the face of the plains with the works of men. Thou sands have come in the last year to this city and thousands more will come in the next year. The secret of their coming is not as might be supposed, the Alberta sunshine, nor the rich prairies; neither is 1t the chinook winds, which make the blast ffrom the north subside into a mur- mur. It Is none of these that has brought the thousands to Medicine Hat, for the kind -chinooks have been blowing since the Orient began send ing her warm breath across the Pacf- ac ages ago, and the sun has been shining as brightly in Southern AL berta, for aught we know, since the world began
 The secret lies deep in Mother Earth, and the unfolding of the Se- cret has awakened the world to an other of the marvels of her great se1n- pire Gas flows from the bosom of the earth in quantities so Vast and with a force so great that it seems that the very earth has become i'm 1oregnated with everlasting power suf- f7cient to solve the problems of heat, light and energy for all the genera tions that are to come.
 Thirty years have passed since gas was discovered in Medicine Hat and for more than twenty years natural gas has been the principal source of energy, heat and light for that city, but the flow continues with exactly the same force which it had when Al -Nf+ !, earth and opened the vast cavern of cease1ess and inexhaustible energy. Never before has the world witnessed such wonderful gift of nature. For years the street lights have been burning constantly night and day in Medicine Hat, like the fires of the Parsees but no attendants are need ed for these fires and no one thinks of turning out the lights, not even when the sun in summer travels three fourths of the way around the hori- zon before passing below the sky line for a few short hours at midnight.
 Winter is but a name in Medicine Hat for although the mercury drops low in the therm ometer during some of the short winter days, yet the soft chinook and the cheerful sun never give way dor more than a. few days of winter at any time. And even in the months of January and February when the midland cities are held fast in the grip of the frost king, Medi- cine Hat and Sunny Alberta lie often for weeks radiant in the mellow sum- light and with the air softened by the warm chinook winds. These are not the dreams of fancy, however fancRul they may seem to one who has never had the pleasant experien- ces of a winter in Medicine Hat.
 The world was slow in awakening to the importance of Medicine Hats I,rr% Ghere has been such remarkable in- dustriaI activity that the city has been transformed within a period of two or three short years into a. maze of fac tories and mills Five hundred men are busy converting the clay, which