PREFACE. 15 



"West, so he comes ; and he will almost anywhere soon 

 find himself better off than if he had remained East. 



When I visit the Eastern States, it is a matter of 

 astonishment to me to learn how little is known of 

 the advantages, resources, and interests of the West. 

 The masses do not seem to understand what is west 

 of them, and cling to the hilly, stony, and unproduc- 

 tive lands where they were raised rather than move 

 to an unknown country. Often I hear city young 

 men in the East say, " If I had only come here twenty 

 years ago, I might now be a rich man. Land then 

 sold for a few dollars a foot, while now it is worth as 

 many hundreds or even thousands." So, too, the 

 young farmer exclaims, "Land is so high, I can never 

 afford to buy a farm. When my father settled here 

 and bought, it was worth only $10, $20, or $30 per 

 acre, and now it is held at $100, and were I to buy a 

 farm, and pay the purchase-money down, I could not 

 more than raise the interest on the balance ; therefore, 

 I can never hope to own a farm of my own." Every 

 one East seems to think the days for speculation are 

 over, and they regret a hundred times a year they had 

 not been born fifty years sooner. To the discouraged 

 let me say, be of good heart and come West, for what 

 has been occurring in the East during the last two 

 hundred years is now occurring in the West, only with 

 tenfold more rapidity. Young men, when your fathers 

 bought the homes and land which they now own, and 

 on which you were raised, there were no railroads, and 

 emigration was necessarily slow. Their property has 

 been thirty, forty, or even fifty years in reaching its 



