FIFTY YEARS IX NEBRASKA 43 



In those early days graft for government lands was invented on a 

 small scale compared with that of recent date. The pre-emption was al- 

 lowed each head of famly one quarter section, but by surveying and stak- 

 ing out a town site 320 acres additional could be entered. One could 

 ride for miles being in towns all the time with a farm now and then 

 between the coming paper cities. 



In those days our people were all on an equality, no millionaires hav- 

 ing come west. Our menu was corn bread,, hog and sorghum with the 

 hog left out part of the time. But I am glad to say that Sunday mornings 

 we had biscuits for breakfast which made it a day of feasting as well as 

 of rest. It's astonishing the number of biscuits an average person could 

 eat when the menu was changed. I can almost taste them yet. 



Fifty years ago we raised corn, wheat, oats and potatoes, which we 

 marketed on the ^Mssouri river in summer and in St. Joseph, eighty miles 

 away in the winter. 



About this time horticulture was being talked about to change the 

 menu on our table. The first trees came from Ohio by steamboat and 

 stages, more dead than alive, but our fine climate and rich soil caused a 

 few to grow and we started in our career as fruit growers about this 

 time. Hon. J. H. blasters started a nursery at Nebraska City and we 

 began to get trees that were alive. Governor Furnace, Hon. J. Sterling 

 Morton and Dr. George L. :\Iiller were then editing newspapers and kept 

 pounding it into our people that we could raise enough fruit for home 

 consumption. 



But it was slew sledding for those poineers to get the people started 

 to raising fruit. Where there was one apple tree in the early sixties, 'now 

 there are hundreds, and barring late frosts in the spring we can com- 

 pete with any country on earth. 



Then came the war with all its hellishness, and for a few years it 

 was all we could do to keep soul and body together, having the Indians 

 on the west, .layhawkers on the south and east. It's a wonder our terri- 

 tory wasn't depopulated, as our young men were in the war. How the 

 women and children kept alive is a mystery. Some women were chopping 

 and hauling wood five and six miles to keep the fires going. I have often 

 heard of times being so hard as to try men's souls, but T can't imagine 

 how the women's souls felt at running the house and farm. But all things 

 have an end, and the wa^r finally ended. The boys in the east, weaned 

 from home by service in the war, came flocking to Nebraska. Homesteads 

 were cheap at $14 a quarter and we began to encroach on the great 

 American desert by leaps and bounds, until today, 1 believe we have the 

 best housed, best clothed, best fed, prettiest women, braniest men and 

 least illiteracy of any country. Why, sirs, even one of our citizens has 

 designs on the white house. For all these blessings we surely ought to be 

 thankful to the Giver of all good things. 



In the last fifty years some wonderful changes have taken place. We 

 have seen king corn dethroned and king alfalfa riding in triumph as the 



