The true Democrat., 1914-02-07
FIRST OF THE FARMERS.
(By Walt Mason in Golfers Weekly

The land-poor farmer is we'll
known institution in the Middle West
He is frequent in all new countries,
and it is impossible to convince him
of the error of his way. He continues
to hunger and thirst for more land,
until at last he has to be content with
six feet of it. There is some reason in
his ambition when he gets his land
cheap, in the certainty that it's value
will rapidly increase; but when man
continues to buy land at high price,
merely to own it, and to be able to say
that he owns everything between him
and the horizon, his wisdom may be
questioned
Thousands of American farmers,
who might be comfortable and happy,
with money in the bank and tobacco
in the old tobacco box, are eternally
striving and straining to make the next
payment on the west eighty of the
south quarter section, and to pay off
mortgages which are as threatening as
funnel-shaped clouds.
These farmers, in everything but
land, are as poor as Jobs distinguish
ed turkey. They conduct their agri-
cultural operations Oh large and ex-
pensive scale. They cover so much
ground that they can't do it properly,
and they haven't time to attend to fer
tilizing or soil analysis, or trifes of
that kind. They cultivate their corn
with four-horse cultivators, and get
fifteen bushels an acre where they
should get thirty; they wear out their
land raising wheat, and the wheat goes
to pay for more land or to lift mort
cages. In the country of big farms
man who has to be satisfied with
eighty acres is looked upon with pity,
and he usually dies young of broken
heart.
Arnold Martin came to this country
from Switzerland to show the folly of
this system. He was unconscious of
his mission at the time. He had no
idea that he was destined to be voice
crying in the wilderness. He came in
the steerage, and his highest ambition
was to get job on an American farm
and draw the princely wages of which
he had heard in his native Alpine vii
lage. 1t is eighteen years since Arnold
first beheld Liberty in her great act
of enlightening the world, and Ellis
Island resounded to the clang of his
) wooden shoes.
) He was so poor that he had to work
his way to the West, and when he
reached Pawnee County, Nebraska, he
looked around him and beheld a fair
and fertile country, and decided to
travel no further. He secured port
) folio as third assistant to a farmer of
the vicinity, and for three years he
labored diligently, and made a reputa-
tion as a first-class farm hand. He was
a quiet young man with little talent as
an elocutionist, but he had good eyes
and an excellent memory, and as he
toiled he observed, and filed away
facts fur future reference.
After three years of arduous toll he
had saved $272, and then he decided
to embark in business for himself. He
bought a tract of twenty acres near
Pawnee County, paying $3.50 an acre
for it. People who took an interest in
the young man declared that no pun
ishment could be too severe for the
man who sold him that tract for it
was notoriously the worst piece of land
in the county. 1t was rocky and rough
and the soil had no substance to it
and even the rattlesnakes side-stepped
it. Kind-hearted folk called upon the
misguided youth to express their sym
pathy and mingle their tears with his
. but, in his fatuous foreign way, he
seemed perfectly satisfied with his bar
gain, and the neighbors heard hin