Walkerton Independent, Volume 34, Number 12, Walkerton, St. Joseph County, 4 September 1908 — Page 7

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IMERICAN towns and cities, A especially in the west, spring x up in a night and generally ~ ; they flourish and develop 99 9 with each year. Evarts, sit—uated on the Missouri river in the north-central part of South Dakota, was no exception to the rule in its early life, but to-day if you should happen to paddle up the Missouri past where the waters of the Moreau enter, the first thought that would enter your mind when you struck the former site of Evarts, would be that a cyclone had wiped out the place. However, such is not the case. Evarts is now only a western plain and this by its own volition. Only a few weeks ago Evarts was the biggest cattle-shipping center of the United States. To-day there is no Evarts. There is not even a railroad track; the big shipping depot has been torn down, here and there a splinter left when the buildings were taken away, tells tala of a onceflourishing city. 'nd the-whole reason for the people of Evarts getting out of their chosen town was because the railroad wanted to find a suitable spot on the Missouri river to build a bridge. The railway officials were extending their line to the coast and the worst obstacle in the path of the gigantic enterprise was to find a place to hang the bridge. Eventually the engineers settled upon a site several miles north of Evarts and at that point a flourishing town, known as Mobridge sprang up Evarts people were offered any site for their town chat they might select along the extension. Then the exodus began. Husky cattlemen hitched horses and oxen to their houses and barns, some tore the edifices down, and they were hauled across the prairie, much like the schooners of ’49 fame. Glenham and Mobridge, the latter’s name being a contraction of the words Missouri

OXYGEN USED TO CUT STt L

Little or No Finishing Required After the Operation. A stream of oxygen is the knife that cuts metals. The operation is performed by means of a blowpipe with two nozzles, of which the first delivers an Ignited jet of mixed oxygen and hydrogen, and the second is a stream of pure oxygen. The pressure is regulated by a gauge attached to the oxy-

. bridge, received most of the Evarts ; people. When everybody had left, the ’ railroad tore down its depot, great ) gangs of men jerked the tracks from • their cedar ties and the short line ’ from Aberdeen was a thing of the ■ past. 1 Across the barren plains between ' Aberdeen and Evarts millions upon millions of cattle of every description had been carted in great long freight cars to be eventually disposed of in Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Louis, New 1 York, Buffalo and in fact all of the big eastern marts of trade. On August 1, 1908, came the official ending of the town. All its books were closed on that date; its employes were officially dismissed then and their salaries to ! that time were paid them, although i most of the public officials and their families had left Evarts several weeks, ; some of them months before. The casual observer, perhaps in a ! launch may go up to the landing at the center of the town and there tie li.L cudt. fyi a tour, of inspection, but his efforts to unearth the mysteriousabout what was once Evarts will be fruitless, for everything of any value whatsoever has been carried away and scarcely a stick of wood was left । by the economical natives, who now . call themselves citizens of other South Dakota villages. Scores of towns have suffered the same experience which befell Evarts, but the latter’s passage to oblivion was perhaps more sudden, more spec- • tacular and more regretted than any ' which have got into the public prints ! in a decade or more. If you had “happened” into Evarts two years ago and then dropped a few days ago you would pinch yourself twice to see if you were awake. This by reason of the contrast. Two years ago you would have seen roughly clad cattlemen hurrying hither and thither, engines puffing along the sidetracks, trainloads of some of the best cattle

, I : gen tank. The oxygen hydrogen flame and the stream of oxygen strike the ; same part of the metal, which, after t being heated by the fame, is rapidly cut. or rather burned through by the : i oxygen, the temperature being raised i > to 1,300 or 1,400 degrees Fahrenheit < I by the combustion of the metal. The ; i cut is as smooth as a sheared cut and < requires little or no finishing. Armor < plates can be cut in one-twentieth the i

r~ <9^ I ! “ 'J ? | ya I % ? w I “ * . W E \\ L 1 ! 5 \\ which the west produces moving east in the direction of Aberdeen, you would have seen a blue-coated minion of the law stalking along the passenger depot spurting tobacco juice at the station agent's dog, but to-day even the dog is missing from the scenery thereabouts. Moving day started several months ago and the freight train conductor, leaving with the last load of live cattle which was to pass out of this typical American city, was almost moved to tears as he stood on the rear platform of his caboose when the train reached a rise in the plain and looked back upon the town which had been his “hang-out” since he entered the employment of the road. The writer, making a quick trip from Evarts to Aberdeen, was lounging in the caboose. The sight became unbearable to the railroad man and he re-entered the trainman's apartments. “I’ve seen that there burg grow up from the time when ole Jess Atkins lived in a shanty down by the river just south o’ town and owned six head o’ cattle. There warn’t no spur from Aberdeen then,” he soliloquized, “but Jess used to drive his cows across the prairie to where the river jines the Moreau and there they'd ferry the hull outfit across for a couple o’ dollars. Then he’d have a nice long ride to Aberdeen. “Once when Jess’ wife and darters came down to live with him, the ole man was ketched by some rustlers from up ucrLU and they stole.,Jiis pony, cows and money. Jess had tohoof it back to his shack. Well, sence thet time y’d be s’prised how the place has growed. I was on a river sidewheeler then. I was the pilot. Well, pretty soon Evarts was boomed and all us young cubs got the fever to stake off a bit o’ land and set up in some kind o’ bizness, we didn’t care much what and we didn’t know what it’d turn out to be when we staked. “Well, finally I accepted a loocrative job as brakie on this line and five years ago I got permoted to conductor. I ain't goin’ to suffer, whomsoever, as they’ve give me a job doin’ th’ same thing from Oakes to Aberdeen when I get through with this trip.” And the conductor is not a romancer, but his feelings were echoed through the western air and in every home in Evarts when it became

time required for mechanical cutting; and the sharply localized heating probably causes less strain than punching and shearing develop. If oxygen costs two cents and hydrogen two-thirds of a cent per cubic foot, the cost of cutting an iron plate four-fifths of an inch thick is about seven cents per running foot, or about half the cost of mechanical cutting. Special machines are constructed for cutting various objects. Finally there is a universal machine, which can be arranged to make curved and polygonal cuts of any pattern in addition to the simpler cuts

known that the railway was to build a bridge which would take the business away from this town and allow the building of a new city where the river was spanned. Appropriately the new town became known as Mobridge and it is to-day what Evarts was several years ago. a flourishing, hustling little burg with everything ahead of its inhabitants, and whatever their past may have been, is forgotten. While Glenham received many of the Evarts people with open arms, the greater majority went to Mobridge, for they declared they saw greater possibilities there because business could be more easily transferred from Evarts to Mobridge. So if you should happen to be in the vicinity of Mobridge, ask the postmaster. the man at the wharf, the sta- ’ tion agent at the depot or almost anybody the road to where Evarts once was and take a jaunt down that way. It's only a few miles south and when you imagine what the little city once was and what it is to-day, perhaps you will be repaid for the stroll. Mobridge is to-day a typical little western town where some one or other is continually erecting a shack which he and his family call home. Homes spring up in the night and when their owners grow tired of them they are either sold for fire-wood or some one. perhaps poorer, accepts them for a small sum. Western hospitality, a tradition, which is told in fiction works and which actually exists, is one of the first themes of Mobridge and the stranger, poor or wealthy, is just as sure of welcome under Mobridge roofs as he would be under his own. Os course there are cattle rustlers in | that part of South Dakota, but thanks to real western cow tactics, they are few. Vigilance committees have made stealing cattle such a hazardous method of ekeing out a living that few care to risk their health in that manner. Money in Apple Orchards. Tasmania has long been known as the apple land of the south, but few at home have any real idea of the money i that can be made, and is being made, j out of apple growing in that island. Last year, for instance, many small orchards which returned as much J^^.2oo bush- : the acre, and one owner of four acres, who' picked ove’i LMO bushels of marketable fruiA ** J ch he sold at four shillings a bushel, eaped a gross return of £BOO. As bis expenses at the outside would not be more than £IOO, his profit an acre worked out | at something like £175. Os course, this was an extreme case, but orchards of 20 acres and upward averaged full 500 bushels an acre, and yielded a clear net profit of quite £1,500 in each case. The area actually planted at the present time in domestic and commercial orchards is about 20,000 acres, and upward of half a million cases of apples were exported to this country last year.—Britannia. Hong-Kong’s Fine Harbor. The Hong-Kong harbor has a water area of ten miles, and is regarded as one of the finest in the world.

effected lv the other machines. A special form of this universal machine | is exceedingly useful in taking apart machinery and steel buildings. It operates by cutting off the heads of the rivets, which are then easily driven out. People Eating Less Meat. Sanitarianism, or half vegetarianism, has gained many converts since Minister Wu coined the new word. The theory of the stomach’s being the seat of all diseases is banishing meat from the bill of fare of ar^any holies,

VISITS WITH ^VNeLKBY Reversed. came home tired and hot from the office to find her husband fretting because the milkman had ' e ft creani when he ordered buttermilk. He was hypochondriacal and didn’t see what there was in life, anyhow. The baby had swallowed a tack and the maid had given notice she was going to get married in September. He growled that he hadn't been anywhere this summer and was making a domestic slave of himself. Then she got mad and told him there was the bank account —and why didn the go somewhere! She wasn’t holding him! She said if he had to stay down in the torrid city all day and wrestle with things almost too big for him, he would appreciate his home and be happy in it instead of finding fault all the time. She sassed him good and hard and suggested that he didn’t know when he was well off! Then she slammed her hat onto a peg of the halltree and went in to eat a silent dinner. After the meat course, the husband arose with a sob in his throat, choked down a gulp and went off to have his cry alone. She sat around all evening and scowled as she smoked four strong cigars and wondered what in thunder she was working for anyhow! And thus they made home happy! OGO Peth Balls. This is thee time to git Pethballs fer fun! we got sum yisterday up in thee Run. we took them intew thee schoolroom, you That wuz thee reSon it happened 2 ME! Stubbie and Fatty and Bill hid them there leving a very big one in Her chair! when she sat down it wuz Quite a good joke—there wuz a POP! and a lot of brown smoke! she wuz quite mad when she got up, i guess. there was an Awful black spot on her then she grabbed me by the eer and she sed: "Come to thee hall!" and her face was all red I i tried to tell her i wuzn't thee one she woodn’t list* n until it wuz done! when i wuz licked there wuz no use to squealStub and thee Fellers ast. "How did it feel?” i s<d. "o shaw! it wnz almost like play! i wood like 1 for a change every day!” wait till Stub’s licked! O, i bet he will sing! honest, it hurt like the very old jing! i shall knot tell them a tall, though, by Let them get licked fer their own self and see! I did not think that a teacher so gay Ever would lay on thee Stingers that way! o o o Lyre Strums. When a man gets so good that his wife suspects him, it is time for a reform. ☆ ☆ ☆ Now that the Standard doesn’t have to pay that 129,000,000. the people may look for the price of oil to go downmay be. The people suffer from stage fright quite as much as the actress when she becomes frightened in the upper tremeloes—whatever that is. The small Pittsburg boy who slapped a fly with a barrel stave is doing as well as could be expected. The fly was on his father’s nose. Those seven-day clocks that are advertised to run seven days without winding, ought to run at least twice that long when they are wound. ☆ ☆ ☆ A Chicago woman wants a divorce from her husband “because he kissed her good-by June 10, 1903, and has not been seen since.” Maybe he forgot something at the office and had to go back downtown on Chicago’s streetcar line. GOG The Price. The man who takes a little dip And goes out on a "ripper,” Is apt to feel he’s paid too much In headache for the dipper! GOG A Lesson to Lige. _Lige Green set out to take his ushual .scrub lusi wc.-k T.lrro nllmc scrubs: nisself thoroughly twiet a year, once in the spring and once in the fall and has did so for many years. Lige says he can’t recolleckt that he ever mist. He has been so tarnashion bizzy this spring that he never got around to it until last week. Lige and his wife het up a whole warsh boiler full of water which lie turned into a warsh tub, then he got the scrubbin' brush and went to work on hisself. The next day after Lige took his warsh he begin to git hoarse and his head was all stopped up and now he has sich a turrible bad cold that he can't talk above a whsiper and blamed near sneezes his head offen his shoulders. Lige says he would of never took a warsh if he had of knowd he would ketch sich a cold as that and he calkilates he never will again.—Bingville Bugle. GOG Same Old Coal Man. Summer brings the leaves of absence Winter brings no leaves at all, And the coal man leaves us nothing But an I O U in Fall! Bad Climate for Furniture. China is a bad place for furniture. In the summer months it is so damp that furniture put together with glue falls apart and drawers stick, while in the dry months furniture goes to the other extreme and often exhibits cracks half an inch or more in width. Pined for His Freedom. Applying for a divorce, an old Georgia negro said to the judge: “Hit only cost me a string er fish ter git married, jedge, but, please God, I’d give a whale ter git rid er her.”

THE LAND OF GRAIN -BYJAMES OLIVER CURWOOD Author of “American Farmers Building a New Nation in the North”— “Canada—The Land of Greater Hope”—“The Invasion of Canada by > American Farmers”—“A Thousand Miles on Horseback Across the Dominion Provinces,” Etc., Etc. Not so very many years ago the majority of people in the United States laughed at the prediction that the day was coming when Western Canada would far outstrip this country in the raising of grain—when, in other words, it would become the great bread-basket of the world. During the past three or four years the enormous production of grain in the Dominion West has thinned the ranks of those who doubted the destiny of Canada’s Vast grain growing regions; the crops of this yearwill dispel the doubts of the remaining few. From Winnipeg westward to the foothills of Alberta, over a country nearly a thousand miles in width, the grain production this year will be something to almost stagger the belief of those hundreds iof thousands of American farmers whose average yield is not more than from ten to fifteen bushels of wheat to the acre, and who are finding that their product is also outclassed in quality by that of their northern neighbors. The enormous grain crop of this year in the Canadian West may truth- : fully be said to be the production of “a few pioneers.” Only a small percentage of the unnumbered millions of acres of grain land are under cultivation, notwithstanding the fact that tens of thousands of homesteads were taken up last year. And yet, when all the figures are in, it will be found that the settlers of the western prairies have raised this year more than 125.000.000 bushels of wheat, 100.000,000 bushels of oats and 25,000.000 bushels of barley. It has been a “fortune making year” for thousarls of I American farmers who two or three i yea^s ago owned hardly more than the clothes upon their back., and whose bumper crops from their homesteads will yield them this season anywhere I from J 1.500 to $2,500 each, more money than many of them have seen at one time in all their lives. Very recently I passed through the | western provinces from Winnipeg to Calgary, and in the words of a fellow ! passenger, who was astonished by what he saw from the car windows in ■ Manitoba, we were, metaphorically ' speaking, in a “land of milk and | honey.” The country was one great 1 sweep of ripening grain. In fact, so j enormous was the crop, that at the ; • time there were grave doubts as to the possibility of GETTING ENOUGH BINDER TWINE TO SUPPLY THE DEMAND. A situation like this has I 1 never before been known in the agri- j • cultural history of any country. Before I made my first trip through ! the Dominion west I doubted very ■ much the stories that I had heard of ■ this so-called “grain wonderland” - across the border. I believed, as un- | numbered thousands of others believed, that the stories were circulated ; mostly to induce immigration. I quick- , y found that I was wrong. As one Alberta farmer said to me a few , weeks ago, “If the whole truth were told about this country I don’t sup- i j pose you could find one American in j ten who would believe it.” [ This year the prospects of the I wheat crop of Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Alberta are an average of over TWENTY-FIVE BUSHELS TO THE ACRE, and that this grain is ! far superior to that raised in the states is proved by our own government statistics, which show that । American millers are importing mil- . lions of bushels of B “Canadian hard” ’ to mix with the home product in order that THIS HOME PRODUCT MAY BE RAISED TO THE REQUIRED STANDARD. It is a peculiar fact that while the Dominion Government is anxious for its western provinces to i fill up with the very best of immigrants, there has been no blatant or sensational advertising of those lands. For this reason it is probable that not ' one American farmer out of fifty ■ knows that Canada wheat now holds : the world’s record of value —that, in ’ other words, it is the best wheat on ' earth, and that more of it is grown to the acre than anywhere else in the world. A brief study of climatic conditions, and those things which go to make a climate, will show that the farther ’ one travels northward from the Mon- ; tana border the milder the climate bej comes—up to a certain point. In other words, the climate at Edmonton, 1 Alberta, is far better than that nf J Denver, 1,500 miles south: and while , ; thousands of cattle and sheep are dy- i ! ■ ing because of the severity of the ' winters in Wyoming, Montana and • : other western states, the cattle, sheep * and horses of Alberta GRAZE ON ’ THE RANGES ALL WINTER WITH ‘ ABSOLUTELY NO SHELTER. This : : is all largely because sea-currents and i ! air-currents have to do with the ma- " 1 king of the climate of temperate re- ! gions. For instance, why is it that : California possesses such a beautiful climate, with no winter at all, while ' the New England states on a parallel with it have practically six months j of winter out of twelve? It is because of that great sweep I of warm water known as the “Japan ■ current.” and this same current not ! only affects the wests nmost of the Dominion provinces, but added to its influence are what are known as the ; “chinook winds" —steady and undeviating air-currents which sweep over the great wheat regions of Western | Canada. There are good scientific reasons why these regions are capable of producing better crops than our 1 own western and central state?, but best of all are the proofs of it in actual results. This year, for instance, ' as high as one hundred bushels of oats to the acre will be gathered in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Albeit a, and some wheat will g^AS HIGH AS FIFTY BUSHELS TO THE ACRE, though of course this is an unusual yield. Last spring it was widely advertised in American papers that Alberta's win ter wheat crop was a failure. Ln fact, ]

this is Alberta's banner year in grain production, as it is Saskatchewan’s and Manitoba’s, and from figures already in it is estimated that Alberta’s wheat will yield on an average of THIR-TY-FIVE BUSHELS TO THE ACRE. In many parts of the province returns will show a yield of as high as FIFTY bushels to the acre and it is freely predicted by many that when the official figures are in a yield of at least forty-five instead of thirty-five bushels to the acre will be shown. At the time of my last journey through the Canadian West, when my purpose was largely to secure statistical matter for book use, I solicited letters from American settlers in all parts of the three provinces, and most of these make most interesting reading. The letter was written by A. Kaltenbrunner, whose postoffice address is Regina, Saskatchewan. “A few years ago,” he says, “I took up a homestead for myself and alsc one for my son. The half section which we own is between Rouleau and Drinkwater, adjoining the Moosejaw creek, and is a low, level and heavy land. Last year we put in 100 acres ol wheat which went 25 bushels to the acre. Every bushel of it was ‘No. l. ! That means the best wheat that can be raised on earth—worth 90 cents a bushel at the nearest elevators. We also threshed 9,000 bushels of first class oats out of 160 acres. Eighty acres was fall plowing AND YIELDEE NINETY BUSHELS TO THE ACRE We got 53 cents a bushel clear. Ah our grain was cut in the last week oi tho month of August. We will make more money out of our crops this yeai than last. For myself, I feel com polled to say that Western Canada crops cannot be checked, even by un usual conditions.” An itemized account shows a singk year’s earnings of this settler and his son to be as follows: 2,500 bushels of wheat at 90 cents a bushel $2,25C 9,000 bushels of oats at 53 cents a bushel 4.77 C Total $7,02C It will be seen by the above that this man’s oat crop was worth twice as much as his wheat crop. While I the provinces of western Canada will । for all time to come be the world’s I greatest wheat growing regions, oats are running the former grain a close race for supremacy. The soil and climatic conditions in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta are particularly favorable to the production of oats, and this grain, like the wheat, runs a far greater crop to the acre than in । even the best grain producing states iof the union. Ninety bushels to the : acre is not an unusual yield, whole I homesteads frequently running this i average. And this is not the only adI vantage Western Canada oats have i over those of the United States, for in weight they run between forty’ and fifty’ pounds to the bushel, while No. j 1 wheat goes to sixty-two pounds tc I the bushel. In fact, so heavy is Canadian grain of all kinds, and espej cially the wheat, that throughout the ■ west one will see cars with great placards upon them, which read: “This car is not to be filled to ca pacity with Alberta wheat.” When I made my first trip through the Canadian West a few years ago 1 found thousands of settlers living in rude shacks, tent shelters and homes of logs and clay. Today one will find these old “homes” scattered from Manitoba to the Rockies, but they are no longer used by’ human tenants. Modern homes have taken their place —for it has come to be a common saying in these great grain regions that. “The first year a settler is in the land he earns a living; the second he has money enough to build himself a modern home and barns; the third he is independent.” And as extreme as this statement may seem to those hundreds of thousands of American farmers who strive for a meager existence, it is absolutely true. I am an American. as patriotic. I belie e, as most of our people—but even at that I cannot but wish that these people', whose lives are such an endless and unhappy grind, might know of the new life that is awaiting them in this last great west —this “land of greater hope,’ where the farmer is king, and where the wealth all rests in his hands. As ' one American farmer said to me, “It is bard to pull up stakes and move a couple of thousand miles.” And so it is—or at least it appears to be. But in a month it can be done. And j the first year, when the new settler reaps a greater harvest than he has ! ever possessed before, he will rise with 200,000 others of his people in Western Canada and thank the government that has given him, free of cost, a new life, a new home, and new hopes—which has made of him, in j fact, “A man among men, a possessor of wealth among his -rep’ ” The people of Paris, 2,714,000, could stand on 0.29 of a square mile, and the ’ population of Chicago on about 0.22 of a square mile. Lewis’ Single Binder costs more than other 5c cigars. Smokers know why. j Your dealer or Lewis’ Factory, Peoria, 111. I It takes a woman with sound judgment to generate silence. Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Sjrnp. For children teething. F oftens the gurcs. reduces tn- , fiamiuatlon, allays pain, cures wind colic. 45c a boiUs. Pride and prejudice make an unsatisfactory pair to draw to. Feet Ache—Fse Allen’s Foot-Kase Over3o.(XX> testimonials. K> fuse imitations. Send for free trial package. A. S. Olmsted. Le Ko?, N. Y. A woman is known by the acquaintances she cuts.

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