The Dallas Weekly Herald

IMMIGRANTS TO TEXAS.

To the Editor of the Dallas Herald:

The people of Texas, almost as a unit, desire immigration, and thousands of new comers are entering the state during every fall and winter. Different towns, counties and sections combine in inviting immigrants to their respective sections. Thousands of people come to Texas poor, scantily supplied with the necessaries of life, and with little or no money. A popular idea, and a very old one, is that immigrants should come to Texas in the fall or winter, so as to avoid any acclimating sickness. The idea is based on a mistaken notion. Omitting certain localities near the coast, the immigrant from elsewhere has no acclimating sickness to encounter in Texas.

For thirty-five years my observation has been that immigrants arriving in March, April, May and June are more apt to be healthy than those coming from October to February. If such is the fact, it should be recognized and made known.

Look at the actual suffering undergone by emigrants of small means, or no means at all, who arrive here in the winter. No one will deny that it is often great. In Dallas this winter many poor but meritorious emigrants, with their families, have suffered greatly. The kind heart of our mayor and others has been moved to do everything within their power to relieve them; yet actual suffering has been frequent.

On the other hand, suppose families arrive in the early spring. Look at their advantages. From April first to October first, six months they can live in great comfort in tents or camps; they can get work on farms or have a delightful period of six months in which to establish new homes; they can always get without charge as many milch cows as they want and thereby have plenty of milk and butter and by the same means rear poultry and pigs; they can pick cotton on the shares or for wages in September, October and November, even little children earning something; and by winter they can be prepared for comfortable existence.

The other view is dark. Suppose a poor man, wife and five children to arrive in December or January. At once arises the necessity for a warm house, food and some employment. With no employment, hunger at once confronts him. With no comfortable cabin, his children shiver in our bleak winds, and are subjected to diseases from which camp life in summer is wholly exempt. Milk and butter are then luxuries beyond his reach—in spring and summer they are so abundant as to use butter for lard, and feed milk to pigs.

The subject is important. My impressions are not from the moment, but from thirty-five years observation, and if I had ten thousand relatives—farmers of little or no means—in Pennsylvania, Illinois and Kentucky, I would advise them all to migrate to Texas early in the spring, rather than in the fall or winter.

B.