Millions in Tassel 143 



cities with dreams of irrigation farming in the dry west. 

 Greeley, always the editor, sent for him to come on to New 

 York to discuss the paper's policy. In the plush sanctity of 

 Delmonico's, the plan for the Tribune's promotion of an agri- 

 cultural colony on the Cache la Poudre, midway between 

 Denver and Cheyenne, was formulated. 



The first article on this project was published on February 

 14, 1869. Immediately the paper was showered with letters. 

 More than three thousand eager readers demanded to know 

 how to join the colony. The offices in Cooper Union were 

 besieged. Ultimately seventy thousand acres were bought and 

 subscriptions at $155 were sold to members. Each subscriber 

 could also select a town lot for $25 or $50, and could take up 

 eighty acres of government land for $75. The town of Greeley 

 was laid out with streets, sites for churches, schools and a ten- 

 acre park. 



In April 1870, four hundred colonists set out for Colorado. 

 They came from Massachusetts and New York, from Ohio and 

 Indiana where Meeker' s name was known. He was the Moses, 

 who was to lead these eager farmers westward, as Rufus 

 Putnam had led the colonists to the Ohio country. 



Greeley was a town of "several stern-wheel shanties and a 

 few one-horse tents," "a prairie-dog village, bounded by prickly 

 pears." The first wheat crop "withered like a forlorn hope/' 

 The irrigation ditches which had been dug with great labor 

 and expense were too shallow to carry sufficient water to 

 alleviate the arid soil. Then came the grasshoppers. They came 

 over the horizon in a dark cloud. They settled on the gardens 

 and spindly orchards and ate every green leaf and shoot. 

 Greeley was a shambles. A place of death inhabited by mad- 

 men. You couldn't shoot grasshoppers. Frantically, the town 

 merchant offered a new suit of clothes for one million grass- 

 hoppers. A man brought in a sackful and dumped them, dead, 

 on the floor of the store and demanded the suit. 



"Not dead grasshoppers; live ones," the merchant insisted. 



