287] The Condition of the Western Farmer. 9 



The following reasons may be instanced among those 

 which have led to the selection of Harrison township for 

 study, and which give weight to the claim that it is truly 

 typical of large portions of our western agricultural states. 

 The township was settled during the time when the immi- 

 gration to Nebraska was at its height. It does not lie in the 

 older settled regions along the Missouri river, nor is it in the 

 dry and very recently settled lands in the western part of the 

 state. Its lands are of an average fertility, certainly not better 

 than the average of good Nebraska uplands. The district 

 has never been subject to any serious detrimental influences 

 not common to, or paralleled in, large stretches of territory. 

 Another point which makes it a fair choice for study is that it ( . 

 is entirely agricultural. There are no towns within its limits 

 to disturb in any way the market price of its farms, by giving 

 them a value for other than agricultural purposes. Never- 

 theless the market facilities of the township are good, inas~* 

 much as a railway station can be found within from one to 

 four miles of each of its corners, so that no portion of the 

 town is more than six or seven miles distant from a ship- 

 ping point. No railroads pass through the town or nearer 

 it than the stations referred to. Again, it will be found that 

 the figures obtained agree, if rightly interpreted, with such 

 analogous figures for the whole state as the census of 1890 

 has as yet made known. 1 Another confirmatory circum- 

 stance is the marked way in which the yearly changes in the 

 number of resident owners, as shown in Table I, can be ex- 

 plained by references to the agricultural conditions prevail- 

 ing in the various years. 



In comparison with a statistical investigation on a large 

 scale, this form of study has advantage in that we get from 

 it a better knowledge of the real life of the farmer. Where 

 the figures are on a very large scale, all sense of the actual 

 economic life of the individual is lost, and that sense, it may 

 well seem, is the true object of inquiry and the one from 



1 See Appendix B. 



