money" "picked up," Mr. Moser offered to re- 

 bate Mr. Weedman $250 of our commission if 

 he would let us sell him the farm. We did 

 not sell it to him, but he bought it through 

 another local firm of agents and we were in- 

 formed that he only paid a net price of $72 

 per acre for it, so you see he saved about $600 

 by being on the ground and acquainted and 1 

 learned further that he only had to pay the 

 intei-est on deferred payments and taxes and 

 did not have to make a payment on the prin- 

 cipal until the payment due in 1913. which gave 

 him the use of the farm for two years by only 

 paying interest and ta.xes. Now to thoroughly 

 impress this upon you the advantage it would 

 be to live here a season before buying, if you 

 would only do as well as Mr. Weedman,~ I will 

 here set out what his farYn cost him and what 

 mine cost me and you can figure it out for 

 yourself: 



I bought 215.04 acres at $73 per acre, a total, 

 of $16,128. 



He bought 207 acres at $72 per acre, a total 

 of $14,<i04. 



He saved $3 per acre on 207 acres, a total 

 of $621 dollars, besides he did not have to meet 

 any payments on the principal for two years. 

 Then there is various other reasons why it is 

 better to have lived here for a season at least 

 before getting tied up — you can study the dif- 

 ferent locations and see for yourself where 

 people are raising enough to have a hope of 

 paying out some day — you can better select a 

 good neighborhood and that is easily worth $10 

 per acre on a piece of land as to who you are 

 located up against. In some localities people 

 take advantage of the stock law and let their 

 mules, hogs, cattle, farm implements, in fact, 

 everything run out on the road and down oui' 

 lane." If you wanted to drive after night it 

 was necessary for one to go ahead and carry 

 a lantern to keep from running over a piece 

 of farm machinery or a mule or a bunch oJ 

 cattle or hogs. Worse than just letting them 

 run out, some of them don't feed their stock, 

 expecting them to get their living off the range, 

 which in settled communities like ours, means 

 the highways or "lanes," as they say. Now, 

 you know and so do I that when you do not 

 feed a hog or cow brute that it is not hard 

 work for them to become breechy and I expect 

 we would, most any of us, climb through the 

 fifth wire in a barb wire fence if we thought 

 we could get something to eat. on the other 

 side. 



I hardly know how to make it strong enough 

 to thoroughly impress it upon you the AD- 

 VANTAGE to be gained, by you, in either 

 farming here a season on a rental proposition 

 or of working for some one before investing 

 your money in land, but as we branched out 

 in the neighborhood and met other people and 

 listened to their experiences "in these here 

 swamps," as they would say, it began to dawn 

 more and more on us that we were either up 

 against a hard proposition or else there was 

 some of the awfulest liars down here that ever 

 lived, and now looking back upon OUR expe- 

 rience of near four years, my sympathies are 

 entirely with those that are tied here and 

 can't get away and it is for that reason I am 

 trying to make this statement to you so that 

 you will Stop, Look and Listen before it is 

 too late. On the evening of December 23d, 

 1909, Mrs. Studabal<er went with me to a neigh- 

 bors — Mr. Dubois — to see about getting a corn 

 Bheller. to shell our corn and only natural that 

 we would stop and visit awhile, and Mr. Du- 

 bois began to tell of now he had been farming 

 in this section of the country for a number 

 of years and how Mr. C. D. Matthews had been 

 at "him to buy the farm that we had bought 

 and how that he was afraid to do it because 

 <'rops were not sure in these swamps — might 

 look ever so nice today and within ten days 

 would be drowned out and then Mr. Matthews 

 would have your little roll, whatever you had 

 paid down and there you was. Told me of 

 liow Mr. Dover, the renter that I had bought 

 out, had never made the rent off of any of the 

 black land that I had bought — had drowned out 

 every year. Well, my wife and I had plent5 



of food for thought on our way home. Mrs, 

 Dubois had told her of how when she came 

 down into these swamps she was a well woman 

 and had rosy cheeks just like our daughters, 

 but look at me now, this malaria and chills 

 has about killed me, and sure enough she 

 looked the part. But we were in for it, as 

 they say down here, "we'd done bought" and 

 all we could do was to fi.x up the land, try 

 to make it pay and trust to the real estate 

 men to .get as big if not a bigger sucker than 

 we were — as to how well they succeeded, read 

 on. 



As you go into a new country or a location 

 v.'here the custonis are much different from 

 where you were living, they seem very odd to 

 you and what impressed us as one of the 

 strangest things was the shooting of fireworks 

 at Christimas time. The merchants lay in 

 their stock of fireworks for Christmas just as 

 our northern merchants would Ijuy for the 4th 

 of .luly. 



Taxes in this country, as I suppose it is all 

 over Missouri, are paid but once a year and 

 any time up till the first of the new year, so 

 on the 31st of December, 1909, I went to New 

 .Madrid to pay the taxes as it was agreed when 

 I bought the land as I received the rental for 

 the year I was to pay the 1909 ta.xes. When 1 

 asked the tax collector, Mr. Henry E. Brough- 

 ton, who is serving, as I am told, his twenty- 

 second year as ta.x collector, what my taxes 

 were, he told me $159. I was surprised at the 

 amount and asked him what made them so 

 much as I was told that the ditch tax on my 

 land would only be 50 cents an acre and at 

 that amount it would be over 70 cents. He 

 asked me who told me they would not be over 

 50 cents and when I told him the real estate 

 agents through whom I had purchased the 

 land, he smiled and replied, "Oh, they are liable 

 to tell you anything." Now taxes do not seem 

 to me to l3e distributed rightfully in this coun- 

 try. I will give you the idea I have gained of 

 them and it might help you to decide, should 

 ^•ou come to this country to make your home 

 or purchase a piece of property as an invest- 

 ment. Property on the Sikeston Ridge, as I 

 understand it, ijays no ditch tax, but the water 

 that falls on this land either runs off direetly 

 into the swamp lands on either side of the 

 ridge, where tlie owners of these swamp lands 

 have to care for it. or it sinks down into the 

 earth and seeps out in these swamp land^ 

 where the owners of the swamp lands must ditch 

 it off. With me at this time to pay taxes, De- 

 cember 31st, 1909, was a Mr. Tuxhorn, of near 

 Springfield, 111., who owns something like 440 

 acres of Sikeston Ridge land lying in Sec. 29. 

 Twp. 25, R. 14, I believe, and he paid his taxes 

 at the same time I did mine and his entire 

 tax on something like 440 acres was about $72, 

 while my tax on 215 acres — less than half the 

 amount of his land — was $159, which as you 

 see was more than twice the amount of his 

 taxes, making my total taxes at the rate of 

 $4 as to his one. Now it is a fact that this 

 land in these swamps would not be worth any- 

 thing, you could not even try to farm it were 

 it not ditched. Notice I say try to farm it, 

 but where the man owning the low lands has 

 to care for all the water that falls or. the just 

 or unjust, it does not seem right. I always 

 thought that the tax proposition was one rea- 

 son that the large land holders on the Sikeston 

 Ridge did not care to sell their farms. 



Through the months of .Tanuary and Febru- 

 ary of 1910, was busy with Mr. Moser, show- 

 ing lands in our immediate vicinity and made 

 some near deals, but did not sell any and 

 although it hurt at that time, yet now I am 

 twice glad that none of our prospectiv^e cus- 

 tomers bought. One party, a Mr. Glenn Gourley. 

 would have purchased but he was told that you 

 could not raise potatoes in this country and 

 that if you did raise any you could not keep 

 them, so he backed out. Two young men, 

 Messrs. Roy Wilborn and William Crosbie, con- 

 tracted for 80 acres but when tliey learned 

 they would have to give a TRUST deed to 

 secure the deferred payments they would not 

 take the land and here I wish to explain the 



10 



