WINTER MEETING AT LEBANON. 261 



nates of the country will have to answer on the day of judgment for 

 the way they have conducted business here below. In order to sell 

 their lands, much of which is worthless, they have flooded Europe with 

 their agents, who, by false representation, have induced men to leave 

 the fatherland, to brave the perils of the great ocean, and find homes 

 in the treeless, rainless desert of our western frontier, or in the bleak 

 and blizzard-stricken regions of Dakota and other portions of the 

 northwest. The result is now that many of these victims are at the 

 point of starvation and death. 



Lands in Missouri are as cheap if not cheaper than any other State 

 in the Union* Good farms of unsurpassed fertility can be bought a 

 few miles away from the cities and towns from $15 to $50 per acre, ac- 

 cording to improvements. In South Missouri there are yet thousands 

 of acres of government land subject to homestead and entry at $1.25 

 per acre. Millions of acres of good fruit land cau be bought from $2 to 

 $5 per acre. Who would be without a home when one can be pur- 

 chased so cheap ? 



There are many portions of South Missouri that have been com- 

 paratively unknown, until within the last few years, to the outside 

 world. The impression prevailed abroad that this section of the coun- 

 try was nothing but a pile of rocks, and unfit for the habitation of man. 

 But this delusion is fast passing away. Men of experience, capital, 

 brains and pluck have bought lands, planted largely to fruit, struck a 

 bonanza, and demonstrated beyond a doubt the vast possibilities of 

 South Missouri. Immigration is coming in by the thousands annually. 

 Lands are being taken up rapidly, and the time is coming when cheap 

 land in Missouri will be a thing of the past. 



Let us proclaim from the mountain tops, from the hillsides and 

 along the valleys, that grand old Missouri stands to-day as the peer of 

 any State in the Union. That she has more good, ferlile lands, raises 

 more and better fruit, more minerals and has more good-looking women 

 than any other commonwealth in the great republic. 



Missouri is geographically situated almost in the center of the Union ; 

 lying midway between the two great oceans east and west, and the 

 northern lakes and the Gulf of Mexico on the south. The great Father 

 of Waters, the longest river in the world, in its course to mingle its 

 waters with those of the Gulf, flows along the whole eastern border of 

 the State. The Missouri, the second longest river in North America, 

 runs for more than 2,000 miles from its source in the mountains of 

 Montana, strikes our State, flows quite a distance along its western 

 border, then suddenly turning in a southeast course, sweeps through 

 the entire State and empties into the Mississippi near St. Louis. Two 



