THE
Southern States.
DECEMBER, 1894.
TEXAS AS COMPARED WITH THE NORTHWEST.
By S. P. Panton.
To one who has for years confined
Ids attention to the development of the
Northwestern States, and then turned it
to the South, the latter is a revelation
that dissipates many erroneous ideas.
During the last thirteen years the
writer took an active part in advertising
the attractions, resources and advantages
of the Northern tier of States from
Minnesota to the Pacilic. That country
was effectively advertised bv all possible
means, and emigration agents were kept
at work in several of the European
countries, as well as in the Eastern States
and the Canadian provinces.
It seemed quite natural that people
of Northern latitudes should seek homes
in a new country on similar latitudes,
and the agents were quite conscientious
in advising them to settle in Minnesota,
Dakota, Montana, Oregon, and Wash¬
ington. There was a stretch of 2000
miles of new country, offering millions
of acres of free lands that would produce
the heaviest crops of the finest wheat ;
there were fortunes to be made in growing
live stock and wool, and bonanzas to be
found in the mineral ranges of Montana,
Idaho and Washington. All this was
true; the people flocked in by tens of
thousands and found it so ; the appar¬
ently desirable lands were located and
men who came from countries where the
possession of land conferred distinction,
were happy and proud in the ownership
of their quarter and half section estates.
For some time the agricultural and pas¬
toral industries were profitable, and
many bonanzas were discovered in the
mountains, though the discoverers rarely
benefited thereby. But there were
drawbacks. A few years of great crops
and good prices in the blizzard belt of
Minnesota and Dakota were followed
by several seasons of early frosts that
caught the wheat iu the milk; other
years the rains set in at harvest time
and poured so continuously that ihe
wheat couldn't be thrashed, and sprouted
in the shock. The settlers were housed
up by blizzards all winter in their little
box cabins ; their children were mowed
down by the scourge of diptheria : their
lives were a dead, colorless monotony,
varied by salt bacon three times a day
when they had it, and the dreary aspect of
treeless, blizzard-swept prairie proved
the possession of land there to be any¬
thing but an unmixed blessing. When
there were good crops the elevator
charges and the freight charges for the
long haul to tidewater left but little com¬
pensation for the hardships, the arduous
toil and the generally depressed lives
of the settlers in the blizzard belt.
There was but one crop — wheat, there¬
fore but one pay-day in the year, and
that uncertain. The climatic eccentrici¬
ties kept the crop in constant danger
and the farmer in constant anxiety,
and when bad seasons succeeded each
other, the farm, the crops in the ground
and even the implements were loaded
with mortgages at such rates of interest
that from that time forth the farmer was
a slave to his creditors and the sooner
he was sold out the better for him. A
few yeirs in that climate made almost
5' 7
