Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 101, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 April 1915 — HUNGARIANS ARE BUSY ON SPRINGER RANCH [ARTICLE]

HUNGARIANS ARE BUSY ON SPRINGER RANCH

Shacks Being Built and Kg Tractors Prepare Soil for Planting— Station is Planned. Seventeen shacks are completed or in course of construtcion on the Springer ranch in'* Walker township and lumber is on the way for several others. By the middle of June, according to N. Piklor, the hustling Hungarian agent who has located these people'in Jasper county, there will be from 60 to 90 houses and shacks dotting the land and large crops of onions, pickles and cabbage will be well under way. The writer visite dthe scene of the activities this Thursday forenoon, making the trip with Mr. Piklor and Harve Moore. It whs the first trip there since last summer and the change is quite noticeable. Four Rensselaer young men are busy running a big tractor engine and gang plows for Mr. Piklor. Scott Chesnut and Don Warren are working days and John Robinson and Harry Hickman are working on the night shifts. Freeman Gifford is working a “bull” tractor, pulling two plows and Dr. Turfler’s tractor has plowed a number of acres. Mr. Piklor has ordered another tractor, a 40-horse power machine that will pull a gang of six plows. •«. Busy Hungarians are building their shacks, while their wives and children are working in the ground, preparing the soil for planting. Some are cultivating onions and others are planting. No frontier country of the west ever presented more an appearance of complete newness, if one does not look beyond the tract that these foreigners are inhabiting. Fields that were overgrown with willows have been cleaned up and the big tractors have made them level and ready for seeding. Wednesday a large touring car from Chicago brought representatives of forty Hungarian families to meet Mr. Piklor at the ranch. Bhey bought 120 acres of land and contracted for about 400 more. All is to be sold to members of the Hungarian Reformed church and Mr. Piklor gave a 2-acre tract for a church and schoolhouse, which are to be buitl at the location of the new station to be provided by the Gifford branch of the Monon. All of the forty families will locate on the land, part of which was Gifford land, within the next few weeks. Most, of the foreigners are German-Hun-garians and they recall the history of their people in Hungary. Germans located in Hungary in 1771 and the country they accupied was called Banath. They decided to call this country and the station Banath. Near the station will be erected pickle vats and a new side track is to be built. The cabbage is to be marketed at DeMotte and Mr. Piklor has arranged to have it transported to that place over the Gifford branch to Kersey and thence over the C., I. & S. Onions, cabbage and pdckles will be the principal crops. The onions are largely in the ground now, but the pickles and cabbage will be put out between May 15th and June 20th. The McNeil & Libby company will buy the cabbage. Good returns can be made from cabbage and pickles, according to statements made. The canbage plants are furnished by the company that will buy the cabbage. Mr. Piklor was asked if the tenants were the class who would stay year after year and he replied that they were “stickers” and would stay there permanently. Many of them are worth considerable money. He pointed out five or six who had brought from $4,000 to SB,OOO with them. Two men from Welch, W. Va., namely, Mike Szilagyi and Steve Lukacs, bought 40 acres. They are worth SBO,OOO, according to Mr. Piklor. They were formerly in the saloon business in West Virginia, but that part of the country went “dry” and they are trying farming. They own a Hungarian newspaper at Welch and hire a man to run it. The yhave built a substantial little shack and will later build a better house. A small store building is being erected on -the wagon road leading to the station but a half mile away. The proprietor will put in a stock of goods, the kind the Hungarians will buy. The trip proved very interesting to the editor and to all appearances the Springer ranch is to be transformed into a prosperous trucking section in the hands of men who know how to raise trufck successfully.