THE REVOLUTION ON THE PLAINS 



which now swiftly arose in the life of the Great Plains. 

 The third era of American colonization, noted in a pre- 

 vious chapter, was yet at the stage of flood-tide. New 

 railroads were pushing their iron highways westward 

 across the prairie. Such entrepots as Chicago, St. Paul, 

 Omaha, and Kansas City were crowded with hopeful im- 

 migrants whose appetite for government land had been 

 whetted by the stories of prosperity with which the news- 

 papers teemed. Horace Greeley's famous injunction, 

 " Go west, young man," still rang in the ears of am- 

 bitious youth and homeless middle-age. Land agents 

 urged on the multitudes with a zeal born of the com- 

 missions on which it fed. 



In the enthusiasm of the hour no one gave heed to the 

 few croakers who hinted that there was somewhere a 

 mysterious boundary-line beyond which all efforts at set- 

 tlement must be disastrous. There was a theory that 

 rainfall moved westward with population, and that the 

 cultivation of the land wrought changes in climatic con- 

 ditions. Under these circumstances it was not strange 

 that the home-seeking hosts crossed the unknown boun- 

 dary into the region of scant rainfall, and learned in hard- 

 ship and bitterness the lessons which a more cautious and 

 far-seeing government would have comprehended and 

 taught to its children. 



In the absence of such scientific determination of the 

 conditions of the country, tens of thousands expended all 

 their money and the most precious years of their lives 

 in discovering what could not be done in the semi-arid 

 region. The crushing and pathetic truth that nature 

 had denied sufficient rainfall for the production of crops 

 in a region where a multitude of people had made their 



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