Proceedings of the Farmers' Club. 339 



any extent. The season is generally too short for good corn; 

 when it is favorable, corn grows as well here as in any country in the 

 world. It is now worth one dollar; potatoes, one dollar and fifty 

 cents. Staple dry goods and groceries are as cheap as in the East, 

 freight added. Best Rio coffee, thirty-three and one-third cents; 

 sugar, fifteen to twenty cents; tea, one dollar and twenty-five cents to 

 two dollars and fifty cents; calico, fourteen cents. Cottonwood lum- 

 ber, twenty to twenty-five dollars per thousand; pine, fifty to one 

 hundred dollars; Avood, four to six dollars per cord; shingles, four 

 dollars per thousand; brick, eight dollars per thousand. 



Sioux City is 600 miles by land, and 1,000 miles by water, from 

 St. Louis, 2,200 from Fort Benton, 500 from Chicago. There are 

 three railroads on the way, terminating here — one from St. Paul, 

 one from Dubuque, and the Sioux City branch of the Union Pacific. 

 The latter is nearly completed — will be done this winter, or in 

 early spring; the others in a couple of years. Population of the 

 city, 1,500; comity, 3,000. We have five chm-ches, supplied with 

 mmisters, and one more being built. Schools are good; daily 

 attendance about 350. Common laborers get one dollar and seventy- 

 five cents per day; mechanics, three dollars and fifty cents to five 

 dollars. 



Two ■ and a half miles above town, the Big Sioux river empties 

 into the Missouri. This is a beautiful, clear stream, 100 to 200 

 yards wide for 100 miles, well timbered on each bank with hard 

 wood. This is the boundary between Dakota and Iowa. Plenty 

 of good claims are to be had along this stream, twenty to fifty- 

 miles up. Considerable of the land in Northwestern Iowa is held 

 by railroads, which advances the price of the remainder to two 

 dollars and fifty cents. 



Stock raising is very profitable. Cattle, horses and sheep do 

 well. Prairie hay can be put up for three dollars a ton. We 

 have an excellent market for stock at the military posts and reser- 

 vations on the Upper Missouri. We want active, enterprising men 

 to settle the coimtry and develop it- Those who are very poor, 

 better not come with a view of taking homesteads, for it is an 

 up-hill business unless a man has at least capital enough to last 

 him a year. The climate is healthy — very little fever and ague or 

 lung diseases. To get here, take the Chicago and Northwestern 

 railroad to St. Johns, thence by rail and stage. 



Mr. N. C. Meeker. — ^There can be no doubt but this is a good 

 country, and that the figures are correct. But in a new country wheat 



