376 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences,, Arts, and Letters. 
the honest settler who took op a. farm or bought the claim to one 
from a speculator, but also a large proportion of those who set¬ 
tled the different cities and villages of the territory and built 
up a business or a professional practice. Most of the would-be 
farmers who came with the first rush were poor men with 
scarcely enough laid by to tide them over to the first harvests, 
but later, when the success of Oklahoma as an agricultural 
country had been proven, a great many conservative and com¬ 
paratively well-to-do settlers were attracted by a desire to es¬ 
cape the extreme temperatures of the North or of the far South, 
or to be with their more adventurous friends who had gone 
before. 1 
The speculators were a prominent feature in all of the 
Oklahoma openings, and a continual source of trouble for the 
officials unless hey were in alliance with each other, as at 
Guthrie and Oklahoma City. They first made their appear¬ 
ance as gamblers in the crowds collected on the borders before 
the rush and plied their various games with considerable success 
among the waiting thousands who had nothing else to occupy 
their time and were imbued with the spirit of adventure by the 
element of chance in the opening itself. 2 Then there were many 
who took part in the rush who were not qualified to make entry 
under the homestead laws, but believed that here was an oppor¬ 
tunity to “turn an honest penny’ 1 by seizing a quarter-section 
or a town lot and then selling the claim to the real settler. The 
presence of such speculators was especially noticeable in the 
various town site settlements, 3 and here, too, the gamblers, not 
content with fleecing their victims on the border, followed them 
in and continued to work their games without restraint among 
the successful and unfortunate alike. 
The third division, those who came without settled purpose, 
were members of a class which is quite common throughout the 
Southwest and is generally known as the “movers.” 4 They are 
1 Int. Dept., Misc. Repts., 1899, pt. 2, p. 726. 
2 C. M. Harger, Outlook, Aug. 17, 1901; Tribune Extras , vol. 1, no. 7, 
p. 24. 
s Sec. Int. Rept., 1891, vol. 3, p. 452. 
4 C. M. Harger, Outlook, Feb. 2 and Aug. 17, 1901; H. C. Candee, 
Forum, June 1898. 
