Essex County herald. [volume] (Guildhall, Vt.) 1873-1964, 1915-09-03
A Letter.
Milwaukee, Wis, Aug. IS, 1915.
Essex County Herald,
Island Pond, VT.

Essex County Herald,
Island Pond, Vt.
Being now past active labor and
having divided my time during the
active period of my life near evenly
between the East and the West, and
while recently putting in a little
time in Island Pond village, met the
man in charge of the Essex County
Herald, who asked me to prepare an
article for his paper, along the line
Of comparing the East with the
West. This is not easy, as the ad-
vantages of the two sections do not
run in parallel lines.
AS the lands with their native
products and their uses to support
the upbuilding of a community has
been of the first Importance in the
development of this country, and,
taken with labor, is the foundation
of all wealth, it seems a fair material
for comparison.
Take the Connecticut river farms
and many other river bottom farms
dry enough for cultivation, and there
are no lands in any western state of
greater value or more productive; but
they are in to limited quantities for
a fair comparison with almost un-
limited quantities of lands of similar
productiveness in the West. The
question here arises as to the expense
of bringing such lands under a crop
condition. First, as to the prairie
lands, or, lands without stone or
timber, like the lands now being
broken and put in crops in the far
northwest in Canada as there are 40
more similar lands for sale in any of
our western states or territories. A
new settler with a few hundred dol
lars, say $500, "a thousand would be
better and four good horses, can
put IN cheap buildings and put a
hundred of his hundred and sixty
acres into crop inside of two years,
so he would have an income to make
him quite independent after his
second year, and could break the
balance Of his land the next year;
and by getting on his land early the
first year, enough land could be
broken and put into flax or other
early maturing crop, to go far toward
paying expenses of living the first
year.
We now come down to the timber
lands, which for farming purposes
are much the same East as West, eX-
cept that the wooded lands east are
quite generally full of rocks, which,
if large, the lands are nearly worth
less except to remain wild and raise
timber, and if covered with rocks
that can be handled, they must be
removed to farm the land. The
stump proposition is expensive to
handle and about the same east as
west, unless we grow old in waiting
for them to rot out, as has been the
custom in the East. Fifteen to
twenty-five dollars an acre is being
extensively used in the West to fit
cut over lands for the plow and a
full crop for at least twenty years,
before nature woull get away with
the stump proposition.
To follow New England, as | kno v
no man who has ever removed an
acre Of live stumps, makes slow farm
ing and the life of an entire genera
tion is used up to put hundred and
sixty acres of heavy, wooded land
into a good, tillable farm.
In this connection there is one con-
dition of interest. In the West, cut
over lands, as we call them, are never
known to grow timber again unless
it be lean, poor land without drainage,
at times grow scrub tamarack. 1t