The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, March 4, 1918, Page 16

y | How Pioneers Sow and Prohteers Reap This is a True Story of the Northwest Written by One of the Women' e . Who Won High Rank in BY A WOMAN PIONEER EAR Mother: You ask us once more to leave this country and come back home. It almost seems as though we should have to. Two crop failures in succes-" sion are mighty hard to weather and if we do not get help in seeding our next crop—well, we may have_to quit, much as we should hate to. - But, mother, after all the years of hard’ work, the hopes, the plans, the sacri- fices we've made to build up this country—we’ve given it the best years of our lives—surely it can not fail us. True, it hasn’t seemed to respond to our efforts as it should. It’'s a hard country to subdue, but we love the broad, free prairies. We know the win- ters are long and cold and the summer season is short, but “there’'s something -'bout Dakota” as our state poet says, that makes you want to stay by it. Yes, I guess we've had our share of staying by it, but it seems just the other day (though it has been years), that we drove over the hills and rocks to our homestead. How proud we both felt when we pitched our tents on the big slope just below the spring and set up our home on that wide, wide prairie! How well I remember the day Paul plowed the fire guards and broke out our garden spot, and started the cellar for our “shack.” There’s a picture I'd love to paint if I were an artist. It is a broad sunny prairie with long, waving grass, the sun shining down so warm and friend- ly, a strong young man, clad in blue overalls and jumper turning up the sod with four horses and a breaking plow. There is a girl in the picture, too, sitting on the hillside, watching him and sewing on a tiny white gar- ment. I'd ecall. this picture “Starting Their Home.” But, mother, where is the artist who could paint the happi- ness of that day? : WHEN HOPE BLOSSOMED ON THE PRAIRIES That man has gray hair now, where the picture would show it black. The girl is a woman with-furrows of care on her face and many hardships that went into the making of that home that was dreamed of that pleasant day. . We had terrible prairie fires that year and every year until the settlers began to come in and plow up the grassy land. One week Paul fought fires for five days in succéssion. Not much farming done that week. Maybe you remember my telling you of the night we awoke and saw a :terrible’ fire coming straight from the west and we had no fire guard on that side, though the distance was short between the plowing on the north and that on the south. Paul jumped from bed and kicked into his overalls and shoes, me after him’ in nightgown and slippers. How we hustled the harness onto those’ horses and got them hitched to the plow, I don’t know, we were so_ fright- ened. And how Paul trotted them back 4 and forth from one strip of plowing to ¢ the. other, while I carried watet and ' "old sacks and a kerosened rag in a mop to backfire with! There was a big coolie about a quar— ter of a mile west of us'and the snow - hadn’t all gone aut of it yet. It was prett) wet around there and when the big.fire got to that it died out of its own accord. You can imagine how glad we .were, for it would have been a pretty stiff fight had’ it got to our hur- riedly made guard. We must have been a funny sight out there, half dressed, our clothes flapping in the wind, but it didn’t strike us as funny at the time. When I read the papers and hear how some of the eastern people are howling about the westerners not be- ing patriotic, etc, I think it is they RECORD BREAKERS Violet and Cora Cassidy, daughters of Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Cassidy of Dun- seith, N. D, who have not missed.a day at school, nor been tardy once in five years. Following the custom of Russell school where they. attend, they have each been given $1 for each such term, and the girls invested their last $1 in Red Cross memberships. Another Prize Letter Chatfield, Minn. DITOR Nonpartisan ~ Leader: - What don't the League mean to us? ‘Just think of us slopping those two-footed hogs for the . last. 30 years with the best of everything we raise and not even getting a grunt for thanks —and razor backs at that! But now, thanks to the Nonpartisan league for letting- the scales drop from our eyes, we are lik¢ old Rip. We woke up. From now on I am going to slop only four-footed hogs. I think there is more money 'in them. Wish- .ing all manner of success to the League, I remain, another “sticker,” MRS. DONALD FERGUSON. * This is one of the 12 letters that got honorable mention in the Leader con- test of December. The question pro- pounded was “What does the Nonpar- tisan league mean to you?” This was the Recent Leader Contest who don’t know the meaning of .the word. What do they know of actually building up their country? How many ‘of them ever got up in the night and rode horseback 10 miles to fight prairie fires and save some poor devil of a homesteader from burning out? Did they ever dig rocks from every square foot of 100 acres, do you suppose, and toil and moil over that ground to make it produce the breadstuffs of the world? No! But they sat back there in - ease and luxury while we lived in pov- erty, and they gambled on our grain and made their fortunes at it, while we, many of us, sold wheat last year for less than it actually cost us to ralse it. Then they tell us how patriotic they are! When 1 look back over the years and see how hard we've worked and how little money compensation we have received, it makes me feel sad. We farmers should have organized Years ago, but you see we were scat- tered far apart. We had no autos, tele- phones or good roads then. We worked s0-hard we were almost too tired to think. When night came we just want- ed 'to fall down some place and sieep and sleep. We paid 12 per cent on all money we borrowed and perfectly out- rageous prices for machinery and everything else we bought. Again and again we put our hard work and money into planting our fields with grain only to see the sun rise day after day like a ball of brass and never a drop of rain until hope died out in our hearts, as the blades of wheat turned yellow. The men we owed would get their money eventually. We’d pay it some time and the interest worked away. night and day, but the farmer never got the crop that died in the field. His money, his time and labor were spent and he had no come-back. Thén when the cold winter came we early settlers burned flax straw to keep warm and used cow chips for kindling. We, in our home, have always had .some coal for our cook stove but.I _have personally known péople who wintered here with nothing but cow chips and flax straw to burn and that in a country where winter lasts from asked of farm women. In order fully to appreciate Mrs. Ferguson’s ironical, humorous letter one has to know that just before the League-started, one of its most notorious enemies, a political boss in the North Dakota legislature, told a delegation of farmers who came to-ask for relief from grain ring rob-. ‘beries that the farmers had no busi- ness at the capital and ought to go home “and slop the 'hogs.” = Mrs. " Ferguson’s clever turning of this phrase is thus’ easily understood. There is more money in raising pork- - ers for the slaughter- house, than in working to support the exploiters who “ make laws and dominate business, - Mrs. Ferguson thinks, Ot course most everyone: knows that- “razor . bac are the meanest. of the hog tribe, and almost utterly worthless——another com- parison she turns to good account.— THE EDITOR v i . PAGE SIXTEEN = five to seven months of the year, and the thermometer often goes down to 40 below. Sometimes we read of the wonderfnl patriotism of society women who give up their jewels for their country, but that isn't to be compared with the mothers who give up their sons. And .80 many mothers I know out here have never had anything but babies. The only jewels, the only beauty that ever came into their lives were those sweet, dimpled babies that they often brought into the world with no attendants but - their husbands and a kind neighbor woman. They've brought them up with- out the aid of nurses or kindergartens and many a woman out here has taught - her children at home before the schools were near them—and now they give them up to their country. PIONEER WOMEN WERE THE ORIGINAL “HOOVERIZERS” You don’t read much about it in the papers, but they’'re going right along. As for the Red Cross—everybody’s do- ing it. I can’t get it through my head, though, why they conscript men -and object to conscription of wealth. If only men could bear children I believe they’d come to realize the value of human life. Perhaps they would feel as we do, that it's far above wealth. ‘What a howl went up when the farm- ers held their big loyalty meeting in St. Paul last fall, although they did not protest against the price the gov- ernment had fixed on their wheat, but - merely asked that it fix prices on what we have to buy. They called us pro- Germans, Socialists, etc., etc., world without end—but have you noticed how they are all rending the air with their talk now that business has beon ° suspended on Mondays? Now, who is pro-German? Who is a patriot? The farmer who sold his wheat at a loss ‘and kept still because it was for his country, or the business man ‘who can’t close his shop on Monday to save coal without howling his head off about it? As for Hooverizing—no women on earth could do more than the farm women here in the Northwest. No one could be better fitted for it by lifelong experience than -these same farm women. Didn’t they learn to make de- licious'jam out of carrots and choke ° cherries long before Hoover was ever thought of? Haven’t they searched the fire guards many a time for weeds enough to make a mess of greens, when - gardens there were none and the prai- rie offered nothing but grass? But, O joy, didn’t the prairie yield weeds— lamb’s quarter and dandelion, and didn’t they make a lovely dish? . We know all .about substitution—wild buf- falo .peas make quite a dish when young and tender, and jack rabbit goes well as Hamburger steak or in mince meat, sausage or most any old way. Necessity is the mother of invention, and many a dish I have created on that - very principle, that would outdo many of the present day suggestlons tor sub- - stitution. We can Hooverize — we’ve always done s0, and Paul says we' must stay right here and raise more grain, more livegtock, garden and poultry - than.: ever. That 48 our part and we are will-. ing to do it, but we must have seed and feed or we can not g0 on. :