The Hope Pioneer

The Serfs of Dakota.
Changing the Wilderness Into a Garden, for the Benefit of the Railroads and Banks.
[Correspondence Chicago Express.]
In reading your paper one can discover, without being a very close reader, that you are both uprightly and downrightly opposed to monopolies, and I am with you heart and hand. The whole country is fairly groaning under the oppression of those giant corporations that extort their millions from the hard earned savings of the useful citizens of the country. While it is right for every man to do the best he can for himself and his family, his rights cease where another's rights begin, and any encroachment upon the rights of another is in direct violation of the spirit of our free institutions. Now such principles or doctrines as that sound well, and would, if put in practice, make our country what it professes to be: the freest country in the world. But what are the facts in the case? Nine-tenths of the people are owned body and—I like to have said soul, by the other tenth. True, they cannot buy and sell them as chattels, but they can and do buy and sell them out of house and home, and if they earn $1 more than just barely enough to keep body and soul together these merciful (?) masters take it. To illustrate my meaning more fully, I will take Beadle county, Dakota, for an example. The village of Huron (for it is nothing but a village, though it has a charter big enough for Chicago), with 2,500 inhabitants, has seven banks, and nearly, if not quite, twice seven firms outside of the banks who are loaning money upon real estate for outside monopolies some of which are located even in Europe. It is safe to say that nine out of ten quarter sections in Beadle county that have been proved up on are under mortgage for from $300 to $600 to some of those blood-suckers. Added to this incubus upon the people is a record of over 1,800 chattel mortgages filed in the recorder's office since the county was organized three years ago. But these vampires must live and so the traffic goes on. And more than this, these useless members of society are not satisfied with a fair equivalent for the use of their ill-gotten money (for the most, if not all of them, get their money by some other means than labor), but must have 15 per cent. to 16 per cent. interest on real estate loans and 2 per cent. to 3 per cent. per month interest on chattel loans. These heavy burdens are, however, private ones and are borne with as little complaint as may be, but added to this comes in the tax for the year 1883 of .05 per cent. which must be paid, as well as all other claims or the serf must move on. If this is not a bad state of affairs for a county barely three years old, then I am no judge. This county has been advertised in nearly every newspaper in the country, east and west, and thousands are rushing in to secure the valuable farms that are here offered as a free gift to the ones who will take them. But is it of any value when the settler has secured the farm? Look at the prices paid for wheat, our principal crop. It has been as high as 64 cents per bushel, but is now but 60 cents, while in Chicago the price has not been below 90 cents, and is now nearly $1 per bushel. Who gets the difference? The lion's share goes to that very accommodating railroad monopoly that kindly consented to furnish the emigrant car out here from Chicago for $40, while it taxes him $80 for the same car the other way. I am away out on the prairie, where two years ago there was not a house in sight or a furrow broke, yet here in the wilds of a new country the griping hand of monopolists is pressing the life out of the pioneers. The cases mentioned are but a fair sample of what is being done all over the country, and yet we must have banks, national banks with a big N, to loan their own debts. We must have railroads in this new country, or how could the country become settled? and if not settled and cultivated, how could the railroads exist? The roads were built to transport serfs to these grand prairies to farm there for the banks and railroads, and they do farm there for the banks and railroads or the banks and railroads will drive them off the land and place others there who will do so. You say, 'Oh, the farmers are kickers!' They do 'kick' and have been 'kicking' for years, but it is not kicking that is needed, it is a little—just a l-i-t-t-l-e—common sense. The farmer needs to think for himself more and to act for himself, and not let the drones and dead-beats that hang around every town think for him and hold the offices for him and levy and collect taxes for him, and spend them for him. That may be what you meant by 'kicking.' If so, welcome the time when every farmer and every laboring man and every useful citizen shall kick with the concentrated power of 10,000,000 mules.
Huron, Dakota.
A Kicker.