The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1914-04-22
@ET6aHTY-N1NERS''
 CELEBRATE. STATES BIRTHDAY

# E A- time, but the Oklahoma seigh miners 'a1 are celebrating the twenty fifth anniversary Of that inspiring, spectacular and in some ways terrible arun' which marked the opening of the country to settlements cen look back upon a period which reproduced, in swift-moyine Panorama, the history of the human race and it's long ascent from savagery to comparative civilization. A s ss ss SSz sa s asg SS sss ssz zs
 There was downs figh ht prime val sav agery in That first wild scramble of 50,00O people for homes, when the race was to the swift and the battle to the strong, and men made mad by the Inst for land eyed each other with deadly fero- city when their interests clashed A gtlnshot sent the raging, roaring torrent of humanity tnmbling over the front was not inc last gunshot fired that da v There are eighty miners who will take no part in the jubilation today, for the annixprsaty recalls to their re- pentant and tortured minds things that they would Like to forget and dark deedsIt that refuse to be wiped from the slate of memory
 And if there was sayagery in the first wild rush. there was barbarisrn in the succeeding days, when men, women and children lived iTl. tents, tepees, temporary shacks and prairie seho0ners. Then came the era Of real pioneer work the upturning of virgin field the long labor with blow and reaper, the building Of cit ies, the rearing of permanent homes.
 Rival towns clamored loudly of their as sured future greatness, and the era of frenzied speculation set in. Some of the most proIni sirisg of those towns are now dead or dying while others havewaxed great and made fortunes for early investors. Tn those days, too gambling and other vices nourished openly, and millions of dollars won by hard toll or in successful speculation went to enrich the gambling frater- nity. Today. on its qnarfer-centena Okla h0ma is as civilized and moral and stable and law abiding as any other part of the continent
 Where twenty-five years ago today there was only yacant country a big city has risen ascityof sky-scrapers and factories and schools and churches and colleges and magnificent homes and tenements and sIums. smallerAc cit. ieskdQt the State &cities made prosperous by. wheat fields and rich coal mines and produc- tive oil fields and mutitudinous industries, and connected with each other by the network of steel that covers the State.
 And all of this has come to pass in a coun-s try where but few decades ago the Indian and the buffalo reigned supreme The buffalo has been banished to a reserve and the Indians while still numerous, have become civilized and no longer go on the warpath or yearn for pale face scalps, nor take their squaws and papooses out for an airing in a second hand hearse.
 Other western States and Canadian Pro- vinces have duplicated the magic growth Of Oklahoma cities and the rapid development Of natural resources, but no other civilized com munity of the globe, ever had so spectacular . beginning as that of Oklahoma on the twenty. second day of April, 1889.
 The federal government drew a gordon of troops around that part of the Beautiful Land'' the meaning of She Indian word Oklahonla- that was to be opened to settlement, and at 6 signal at the army of men and women were permitted to rush across the line and take possession of whatever land they found un- occupied.
 Despite the vigilance of the authorities a few men managed to get into the country ahead df the rush, and settle on the most desirable land Many of these @sooners" were exposed and punished, but others contrived to retain their iII-got property.
 
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