Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 39, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 January 1907 — BURN BARNS FOR FUEL. [ARTICLE]

BURN BARNS FOR FUEL.

Many Dakota Farmers Have Nothing Left but Their Homes. All the world now knows of the distressing privations on the great western prairie just passed through' by the ambitious settlers owing to the coal and fuel famine, blit few realize the utter destitution caused by the need for fuel. There have been many times in history when people were forced to burn treasures to keep warm, but never before on the prairie,-has fuel been so scarce. One hundred and fifty miles southwest of Fargo. N. I)., is a settlement of Russian farmers who have recently come to the State. When the coal-question came up and the railroads could not supply fuel there was nothing for them to do but to chop up their outbuildings for fuel to cook with. The question of keeping a steady fire for heating purposes was at an end. One family named Roustoff, which came to the State in the spring, had no fuel in the house nor oil for lamps. The stable was used for cooking purposes and the other outbuildings followed. The horses and the cattle were turned loose to seek shelter on the prairie and to be victims to any blizzard that might overtake them. Then the platform around the pump was made into fuel, then the wagon boxes' and later the wheels. Everything about the farm except what was needed about the house to keep out the cold was sacrificed to keep -the kitchen stove burning long'enough to cook the beef and ipMk’e'the coffee. The family are well after the awful ordeal. They say it is worse than in Russia, for there they have plenty of fuel. At Grantham, a small town, the fuel shortage was as bad. Two families moved into one house and chopped up the other house for fuel. One day a train went through and forty men attacked the crew, but found extra locks on the coal cars and the coal of poor quality, so let the train proceed. A man named Walldran traded a load of wood for three horses. At Renning several families burned bushel after bushel of oats and said that it held fire like coal. The farmers had plenty of money and went to the stores and purchased sufficient supplies of canned and dried fish and fruit, so that with what the housewives had in store the question of food was not a serious one. The cold weather was the most difficult to endure. Many settlers and old farmers hauled out the old hay burners which were in vogue many years ago and used the long wild grass in their barn yard stacks for fuel. This did good service. One of the luckiest things connected with the coal famine was the fine weather. While it was very cold through South and North Dakota, there were no storms. Had a blizzard swept over the country while the scarcity of fuel was at its height there would have been a great loss of human life and of live stock. Real estate men fear a fall in land prices owing to the fuel situation this winter. They claim that inasmuch as the railroads have been unable to haul coal to them and the grain from them there will be a much greater shortage of cars in the year to come unless something is done to relieve the congestion. No one can devise a plan. In South Dakota the great elevators are overflowing with wheat and corn and other grains are being stored away on the farm in the best way possible. The stock is the only thing the farmers and ranchmen are able to move. This provides them with plenty of money, but money cannot buy coal. In the western part of North Dakota are many hundreds of people who went there last summer to secure cheap lands. They went with small amounts of money and spent it in getting as much land as they could. They built insufficient houses to the cold, and thus when the cold "Rap came and the coal and wood ran out the suffering was intense.