Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 208, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 September 1915 — The Farmer Slicker Slicks a City Pair [ARTICLE]

The Farmer Slicker Slicks a City Pair

Poxy Jowa Agriculturist la Arraatad hi Chicago for Trimming Two Would-Ba 801 l THlera Down on the farm at Cherokee, lowa, Alexander Erlick read the city papers and found out all about the “foxy slickers” who lie in wait for the innocent farmer. Suddenly the Big Idea struck Aleck, and all during that nUfct he even smiled in his sleep. Next morning Aleck robbed a little hayseed In hi* hair, put on his best pair of rawhide top boots, packed the old carpet-bag and went to Chicago to meet some affable stranger who would take him down to the lake front to see the German submarines come op for air. He met Thomas Pleske and Nicholas Klrchgesner in a saleon near the stockyards. He waited patiently, but they did not offer to sell him the Logan monument or the Masonic Temple, so he offered them Jobs down on the farm. Hard work? Early rising? Oh, no, Indeed. That was in the olden days, but not now. All the modem farm hand has to do is drive the automobile down to the general store for fifth eggs fosvbreakfast, count the money left by the commission merchant on his daily visit and then dress up and take the neighbors’ girls out riding. Aleck explained to the two city men. Pleske and Klrchgesner decided that “down with the cows and chickens" was the life for them, and each handed Aleck $lO for railroad fare to Cherokee and then went home to have their suits pressed and their shoes shined. When next they met Aleck he gave them the cold shoulder. "Don’t you fellers from a pair of Masasawgy Indians,” he is reported to have told them. They had him arrested as a "bunco man.” “You ought to be ashamed of yourself," Police Captain Gorman told Erlick. “When farmers come to town they are expected to let the 'city fellers’ get their pocketbooks, but see what you have done. All the comic papers will have to go out of business right away.” Score one for the farmer —also two for the city slickers. John Severson worked as a farm hand in North Dakota for twenty years and succeeded in saving enough money to buy a ticket back to his old home in Sweden. He arrivff in Chicago on his way to New steamer. Two men stopped him ip the Dearborn street depot and confided that they had a carload of horses which they were shipping to the German army. They needed some money' to pay the freight to New York. John lent thmn S9O for an hour or two. At nightfall he started back for North Dakota to work for another twenty years. Rudolph Kruger of Cleveland stood in the Grand Central depot holding a handkerchief. A policeman approached him with a broad smile on his face. "Two men told me I looked like a well-to-do,” explained Rudolph, “and said they wanted me to hold their money. Then —” "Enough,” interrupted the policeman. "How much did you contribute?” "I placed SBO in the handkerchief here, if that is what you mean,” replied Kruger. “See,” he continued, opening the handkerchief, “they each put in S2OO and —” Brown paper. •