68 The Condition of the Western Farmer. [346 



- gaged, two came in among the last of those who took gov- 

 ernment land; two have very small mortgages; moreover, the 

 average debt per acre on the property of these is itself quite 

 j low, being $5.16. Then again we notice that the size of the 

 [ farms among these settlers averages larger than among 

 either of the other classes; the homes of those, especially, 

 who have additional lands which they have mortgaged are 

 much larger than those of any of the others. Not one of 

 these settlers on government land who has a mortgage to 

 take care of can be said to be at all seriously embarrassed 

 by it, and some of them are, despite their mortgages, as 

 well off as any men in the township. 



Take up next the settlers on railroad land and what a 

 diff erence ! There are only three of them without mortgage, 

 as against sixteen holding mortgaged farms, and the aver- 

 age debt per acre on those lands which are mortgaged is 

 $7.80, or half again as much as the average debt borne by 

 those settlers on government land who have their original 

 homes mortgaged. Following the analogy of class "A," 

 we would expect to find the mortgaged farms larger than 

 those which are clear, and we shall find this to be the case 

 in class " C " ; but in class " B," the unmortgaged farms are 

 considerably larger on the average than the mortgaged; 

 this points to something exceptional in these particular 

 cases, and in investigating the cases in detail we find this 

 indication borne out in fact. Of the three purchasers of 

 railroad land who have their lands unmortgaged, two are 

 brothers who had been farmers in Germany, and who, com- 

 ing to America with considerable property, were able not 

 only to buy and pay for comparatively large farms, but to 

 put considerable money in bank certainly a very excep- 

 tional state of affairs with the ordinary settler on a Nebraska 

 farm. The third case is that of a man who bought railroad 

 land at an early date and farmed it for a number of years, 

 but on the death of his wife drifted away into other employ- 

 ments. Having made the final payments on his land, and 

 having inherited more land in the immediate neighborhood, 



