Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 21, Number 14, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 November 1899 — INDIANA IS GOOD ENOUGH. [ARTICLE]

INDIANA IS GOOD ENOUGH.

Many Emigrants to the Northwest Are ick of Their Bargains. In a private letter a former Indianian, now a resident of North Dakota, speaks with much feeling of the mistake made by Indiana farmers who are persuaded by real estate and railroad agents from the Northwest to sell ont their holdings here and go up there and bay land in the expectation of bettering themselves. The representations made by the agents are, be declares, very misleading. The temperature, which they admit gists pretty low in the winter, but which they assert is never uncomfortable, because “you do not feel the cokl where the atmosphere is so dry,” this correspondent says is quite as uncomfortable as cold weather anywhere else. The mercury during the last week in January ran the scale from 20 to 35 degrees below aero. Such weather is common there and not the exceptional thing of yeaiC Further, be says, these agents conceal material facts, such as local market prices, cost of fuel, lumber, tax rates, rate of interest on loans, etc., and the new settlers are greatly disappointed and discouraged when they learn the truth. If they write back to theiT old home newspapers warning others not to be beguiled as they were the letter is copied into the papers of their new homes and they are attacked and vilified. Their prudent course is to make the beat of a bad bargain in silence. This story is not a new one. It has been repeated, with variations, hundreds of times by men to whom the region that is a little farther on always seems more highly favored than the place where they now are. They could by proper inquiry satisfy themselves that the new country toward which they look bears the enchantment of distance and that it has few, if any, advantages over £be place where they now are; bat they do not take these precautions. The glamour of the distant and untried and the desire for the new and strange overcome them and they go to the far-off regions only to regret their venture afterward. It is doubtful if any farmer ever improved his prospects in an agricultural sense by a removal from Indiana. He will hardly find better or more easily tilled land in any other region, his markets are neaT at hand, and the transportation and the fuel questions do not bother him. Farmers everywhere have their problems and their difficulties, as all business men have, but those of Indiana have as few aa any of their brethren, and in man;, respects have advantages those of Btatm farther West do not enjoy. Those who “move on” learn to value these blessings after they have taken their flight.