Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 36, Number 88, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 June 1904 — Don’t Leave Your Uncle Sam. [ARTICLE]

Don’t Leave Your Uncle Sam.

Don’t go to Cuba to engage in agricultural pursuits if you can 4get possession of a few acres of any sort of land in the United States. A correspondent of the island is by no means the garden spot it is represented to be by real estate dealers. In some regions its soil is the richest in the world but about one-third of its area is worthless for farming purposes. Vegetables can not be grown with any profit on the rich land, it is said, at least by men unaccustomed to the climate; there is either too, much rain or too little, and the newly-arrived American finds it >hard to adapt himself to the conditions. Pineapples may be raised, but shipping facilities to Havana are poor and rates of duty and transportation are prohibitive. The same is true of oranges, with , the added difficulty that Cuban oranges have poor carring qualities. The tobaoco lands are practically all taken up—and there you are. . It is natural for farmers, as well as all other classes of men, to seek their fortunes in regions that

seem to offer most promise. Cuba • has long been represented as one of the garden spots of the world, but favored as it is, it has drawbacks. The world offers few better places for the farmer than the United States ; to be more specific, the west, and to be still more exact, Indiana. The hoosier farmer who wanders afar is pretty sure to turn a wishful face homeward and to agree with Riley that the little ' town o’ Tailholt, to say nothing of , the country round about, is quite good enough for him.