Orleans County Monitor

LETTER FROM CALIFORNIA.

Mr. Editor:-Occasionally a copy of your paper is sent me by friends, and in a recent number my eye fell upon a clipping from the Clipper that had so much truth and sense in it, I am led to take up the pen and coincide with it. "The Boom West," I refer to. Since leaving Vermont in 1879 the opportunity to see something of the great west, south-west and old Mexico has been mine, and I am thoroughly familiar with the way by which discontent is stirred up in the east, and men led to leave good homes and pleasant surroundings. Exaggeration and misrepresentation have peopled the west, and among all the states and territories, there isn't one but what continues to invite immigration by those means; and each tries to rival the other in setting forth its beauties, wonders and facilities for gaining wealth. While "distance lends enchantment to the view." and that which lies beyond our reach seems more attractive than what we possess, many will place implicit confidence in what western sharks say and hasten to sacrifice a certainty for an uncertainty. But from knowledge and observation, I hesitate not to say that the Vermonter who sells his home and goes into the west, without first paying it a visit, will meet with disappointment, for his ideas and facts will conflict. In making a change of residence, one of two things, or both, usually influence man-a desire to better his financial condition or his health. In the great west hard times are always more keenly felt among the farmers especially, and being a country of "magnificent distances" markets are remote and hard to reach. What matters it if wheat, corn and grain of all kinds can be raised with ease and abundance, if the same cannot be sold at a living profit? Look at the record of the great state of Kansas for 1884. Kansas next to California is the greatest wheat producing state in the Union, and the crop of last year was estimated at 40,000,000 (forty million) bushels. "But" says a writer, "instead of proving a source of prosperity, it seems to have plunged the state into general bankruptcy. The great bulk of wheat farms in Kansas were bought on time from the railroads and mortgaged for the bulk of the purchase money, and the price of wheat is so low the farmers are unable to pay their interest money." Wheat sold last year for 40, 37, 29. and even 19 cents per bushel, and as the Kansas estimate of raising wheat is 40 cents per bushel, the profit, like the north pole, is hard to find. In the interior towns corn sold for 15 and 18 cents per bushel, and if 10 cents is allowed for raising it, there is little left to pay for hauling it from farm to town. Farm hands get $12 per month, and there is about as much enjoyment living on a prairie remote from neighbors, with corn, cobs and "Buffalo chips" for fuel, scarcity of water etc., as one would find in a penitentiary. How much better are times up in Dakota, where 1000 Vermonters think of going this spring? Little if any, and the Northern Pacific R. R. is patiently waiting to absorb their hard earnings in freight charges. Railroad monopolies get the cream, so to speak, of every western state, and here in California we are completely at the mercy of the great trans-continental lines. California with its fine climate and great resources, which are largely overrated, all the same, is one of the hardest places for a poor man to get a living in, that can be named, and without plenty of means I would advise no one to come here. Once here you are a good ways from nowhere, and to get back east if dissatisfied, is a hard thing to do, unless you bring legal tender enough to return with. Chinese competition makes it hard for the day laborer, and negroes are being imported from the south because they will work for $12 per month in the vineyards, whereas white men get $35, and $30, or $1.50 per day, without board. Money is very scarce, rate of interest 10 and 12 per cent, and mortgages on every thing: but we have the finest climate in South California in the United States, and if a person with money is looking for that, I would say come this way. Another thing about the west is this; there is more restlessness and discontent than can be found anywhere else. So many people have been disappointed, such hardships encountered and deprivations endured, that a change of any kind is viewed with joy, and they change and keep changing, but satisfaction manages to elude them. When railroading in New Mexico. I had many chats with emigrants going to California, Oregon and Washington Territory, and they were western people too. Illinois, Missouri, Kansas and Colorado were all represented, and their stories were about the same, "no place for a poor man where they came from;" still lots of people think their fortunes would be made if they get into any of these states. I know of a family from Texas that moved to Oregon in a "prairie schooner," being months on the road, went to Washington Territory, back to California and then took government land in a remote region among the mountains of San Diego County, 15 miles from a post office and 65 from a town of any importance. There they exist to-day-you can't call it living-and kick themselves every time they think of the home they left in Texas. Many people who leave Vermont are too proud to return after having blowed and belittled that state on leaving and others are too poor. I have talked with both kinds of such people and know whereof I affirm. Impressions formed in early life are lasting, and the customs of New England are hard to give up or outgrow, and like Mr. Gillis from the "Land of the Dakotas" many hope sometime to return to the old scenes. The great, rolling prairies are grand to look upon and ride over in a railroad train, but to live on them is quite another thing. Monotony in scene or action is tiresome, and the hills and valleys of old Vermont, with its lakes and rivers, creeks and forests, are a thousand times preferable to the bare bosom of mother earth, as seen on the prairies. "Who wants eternal sunshine or shadow? Who would fix forever the cloud-work of an autumn sunset, or hang over him an everlasting moonlight?" But I am extending this too much. In closing I will say, there is no place that doesn't have its drawbacks, and what Vermont lacks in some things she makes up in others. Her timber, fuel, and unrivalled water in creeks and springs, will be sadly missed by the men who "goes west," and if money is made, it will be by a sacrifice of the comforts of life and many of the pleasures which New England affords.

CHANNING SEVERANCE.
Orange, Cal., May 3d, 1885.