The Leon reporter. (Leon, Iowa) 1887-1930, 1916-02-24
Only the Unusual Shocks Us.

They say people can get used to
most anything except being hanged
and if they could only survive the
first two or three experiences they
could get used to that. How often do
we see people working cheerfully at
their daily tasks suffering pain that
would have been unbearable but for
the fact that it had come on gradual
ly and they had gotten used to it. AS
with physical pain so with everything
else that effects our lives unfavorably.
We get so we can bear all kinds OF
trouble with equanimity If we can
survive long enough under 1t to get
the habit.
If severe drouth should strike
this county, destroying everything
right down to the grass roots and
killing half of them, there would go
up cry of distress that would echo
and re-echo all over the country.
The, newspapers would be full of
it and schemes would be put on foot
to help the sufferers.
1t would be considered terrible
calamity, simply because we have
never had one and are not used to It..
But out in western Kansas and in
Oklahoma they have just such
,drouths quite frequently and the peo-
pie there say very little about it..
They have the drouth habit. Some
of them go broke and get away it
they can. Those who are forehanded
enough start the next year poorer
than they were the year before, put
in another crop and if the season is
favorable they make enough to carry
them through another crop failure
or two They manage to exist some
way, but they are not prosperous.
land and it will always be cheap be-
cause it cannot be relied upon to pro-
duce a crop.
It is the net productiveness Of land
for series of years that fixes it's
value.
Yes, the people here would be ter
ribly stricken by western drouth
but many of them can witness the de-
struction of their crops year after
year by floods and still keep an up
per lip. Over here on Weldon we
have had so many floods that we
have gotten used to them and have
the flood habit. They say habits are
easily formed and hard to break, but
here is one habit we have got to
break or it will break us.
Everybody who farmed this bot
tom land last year is poorer than he
was year ago so far as any profit
from it is concerned.
Shall we get our credit extended
and go ahead and plant another crop
with the probability that it will be
destroyed also?
Shall we continue to live on hope
and what we can borrow on increas-
ing land values?
Shall we make an effort to fix our
farms so we can prosper, or shall we
go on simply existing?
No country can prosper that has
frequent crop failures, and the land
will be cheap. 1t is the steady stream
that counts no matter if it is not so
large.
Mr.. Ford has made millions manu-
featuring automobiles. But if every
third auto he made had been struck
by lightning before he got it sold he
would have been dead broke long
ago.
We are used to floods but there is
a limit to human endurance. If one
half the houses along Weldon had
burned down without insurance it
would have seemed terrible, but the
monetary loss would have been less
than the damage done by high water.
Is the loss of a $500 house any
worse than the loss of a $4,000 crop?
The only difference we can see is we
get little sympathy when the house
burns, but none when we lose the
crop. And we do not deserve any.
There is remedy easily within
our reach. If we do not apply it
there is nobody to blame but our
selves, and the beauty of the remedy
is it will be no burden to us at all.
We shall not have to practice self
denial or work bit harder than we
40 now to meet the obligation. We
will just raise more than we do now,
that the surplus will pay it off In