All things come to an end, so does the farmer's supper; and as we sit
with him on the porch outside we say,
"You have a splendid place here."
"It will do," he answers quite carelessly; but he can't fool us. We know
that he is proud of his success.
"I had to work hard for it," he continues, "but God has been very good
to us."
We are not romancing. We have drawn a picture from the original, which
can be duplicated a thousand fold in this State.
It is not individual success alone we can point to, but likewise the
success of whole farming communities, where the people commenced
poor--many of them, perhaps the majority, with scarcely any means at
all--under disadvantages that would now appear to us, with railroads and
markets on every side, almost insurmountable, and where to-day we cannot
find one exceptional case of failure without an exceptional cause for
it.
Thoroughly acquainted with the Catholic settlements in Minnesota, we
cannot call to mind a case where a hard-working, industrious, sober man
failed to make a comfortable home for his family. We know of many cases
where such a man met with reverses, lost his crop, his cattle, his
horses; but never a case where a man met his reverses with a brave heart
and trust in God, that he did not overcome them, and come out of the
battle a better and prouder man.
Let a poor man in the city find his all swept away from him, and what
does he do? He slinks into its alleys and lanes, his pleasant, decent
rooms are changed for one foul room in a tenement house, from whence,
after a little, charity carries him to a pauper's grave.
We have spoken of the general prosperity of our Catholic settlements in
Minnesota, and we have not to travel far from its capital to find some
of them--only into the adjoining county, Dakota, one of the very finest
in the State.
Fully two-thirds of the lands of the county are owned (mind, _owned_.)
by Catholic settlers, Irish and German.
Some twenty-five years ago, a few poor Irishmen settled in the timber in
this county. It was very generally supposed, at that time, that people
could not live on a prairie in Minnesota; but by and by, those who had
settled in Dakota county found out their mistake, and commenced making
claims on the adjoining prairie, Rosemount prairie, to-day the garden of
Minnesota.
But not before Hugh Derham, of the County Meath, Ireland, now the
Honorable Hugh Derham, came along and put up his shanty on the prairie.
"I had seven hundred dollars," he said to us some time ago, "when I came
on here; oxen were dear then, and when I had a yoke bought, together
with a cow, and my shanty up, I had little or none of the money left.
But I went to work, broke up all the land I could, got seed, put in my
first crop, and lost every kernel of it."
To-day this man owns four hundred acres of improved land, in a circle
round his house. Fifty dollars an acre would be a low value to put on
his land. Some four years ago his neighbor, a man of the name of Ennis,
bought one hundred and twenty acres of land adjoining, for something
like ten thousand dollars.
When Hugh Derham settled here there was not a railroad nearer than two
hundred miles of him, now passengers on the Milwaukee and St. Paul
Railroad, passing within half a mile in front of his house, point from
the windows of the cars to his place, as a model home of a thrifty
farmer.
His handsome, two-story frame house stands embowered in the orchard and
shade trees, sturdy Hugh Derham planted with his own hands; his barn
alone cost three thousand dollars; he has flocks of sheep, herds of
cattle, and horses as he requires them; and he has a good wife, who
assisted him in his early struggles, healthy, fresh and handsome still.
He has had his eldest daughter at a convent school, and bought for her
last year a five hundred dollar piano. It is said that he has some ten
thousand dollars loaned out at interest.
Now, is Hugh Derham's an exceptional case?
If you came along, and we were inclined to brag, and show you a specimen
of our Catholic farmers in Minnesota, we would bring you direct to Hugh
Derham, not for his herds, and stock, and well filled granary--he is
surpassed by many of our farmers in all these--but for the look of
respectable thriftiness all around him. There is his next neighbor, Wm.
Murphy, another well-to-do, respectable farmer, not perhaps as well off
as Derham, but still able to bear some time ago a loss of five thousand
dollars by fire, and to make no poor mouth about it. Another neighbor,
Mich. Johnson, a prosperous man, better still, a high spirited, fine
fellow, and an earnest worker in the cause of temperance. Another
neighbor, Tom Hiland, as rich a man as Derham. In the next township, the
Bennetts--three or four brothers that a poor but good, intelligent,
widowed mother, with much struggling, managed to bring West, and locate
on government land. These brothers now farm five times as much land as
Derham, and raise five times as much wheat.
And as we have been led into giving individual cases of success,--not at
first intended, for such cases must be always in certain features more
or less exceptional--we will give one more, that of Mich. Whalen of
Whalen township, Fillmore county.
His history is a remarkable one, as told by himself to us; remarkable in
his brave struggle for independence, his sagacity, and final success. We
give some points:
About thirty years ago Mich. Whalen landed from Ireland in New York. He
was then forty years of age, and had a wife and eight children--all his
wealth.
Yes, his wealth, he thought, if he could but reach with them the broad
acres of the West.
So he sawed wood for seventy-five cents a cord in the city of New York:
the more he sawed the less he liked the work, and making a brave effort
he found himself, with wife and children, squatted on one hundred and
sixty acres of government land in Fillmore county, Minnesota.
When the land came into market he was not able to pay the government
price, one dollar and twenty-five cents an acre, but Capt. McKenney, the
then receiver of the U. S. Land Office, managed to give him time, and
the next year's crop enabled him to pay up. At this time John, his
eldest of six sons, was sixteen years of age, and able to help his
father.
To-day Mich. Whalen is the owner of thirteen hundred acres of land in
Fillmore county. The village of Whalen with mills and a fine water
power, is on his land: or rather, on the land of his son John, for as
the boys get married the old man gives them title to portions of the
land, on which they build. There is another mill within a few rods of
the old homestead, and there is not less than from six thousand to ten
thousand bushels of wheat raised on the farm each year.
"Why, Mr. Whalen," said a friend some time ago, "you got on splendidly;
with such a large and almost helpless family at the beginning, I don't
see how you could have managed it."
"We put our trust in God, _avourneen_!" replied the old man, "and we
stuck together."
Where were the special advantages in this man's case; which enabled the
poor wood-sawyer of New York to become one of the solid men of a rich
county?
They are to be found in the fact that he was blessed with good children,
who, as they grew up and became able to help him, remained at home and
did help--and amply are they rewarded for it to day--
"THEY STUCK TOGETHER."
But it is of the general prosperity of our Catholic settlements in
Minnesota that we wish more particularly to speak, for as a general rule
there is no business which has not its representative successful men.
Dakota County being close to the capital of the State, (St. Paul,) and
possessing the advantage of having, on the Mississippi River, a market
for its produce, at a time when there was not a mile of railroad in the
State, was settled up at an early day. Among its settlers were Irish and
German Catholics. From that period out these settlers have not alone
held their own, but, year after year receiving fresh additions to their
numbers, they have advanced from township to township, buying improved
farms and wild land, until, as we have stated before, two-thirds of the
lands of the county belong to them.
Travel which side you will, and you shall find evidence that one "can
read as he runs" of their prosperity, intelligence and respectability;
handsome houses, good offices, young orchards, ornamental planting, and
the grand big wheat fields around, which have supplied the means to
build up those pleasant homes.
Traveling along down the Mississippi to the eastern boundary of the
State and taking a wide range of country on the Minnesota side of the
river, we find many prosperous settlements of our people. Again
southwest, up the beautiful valley of the Minnesota River, in Scott,
Sibley, Le Sueur, Nicollet and Blue Earth counties, there are numerous
Catholic settlements, both in the woods and on the prairie. So, too, in
the midland counties of Rice, Steele, Waseca, Olmsted, Dodge and Mower
counties, our people are settled, prosperous and happy, their valuable
farms giving ample and cheerful evidence, how bountifully the soil
rewards honest labor. Nor, in their prosperity, have they forgotten Him
from whom all blessings flow.
Where a few years ago the Catholic settlers, few and poor, waited
anxiously for the visit of the priest, and where the holy sacrifice of
the mass was offered up in the settler's cabin, we now find the resident
priest, the handsome church, and in many instances, the Sisters' school.
In those settlements the whole atmosphere is Catholic; here, with no bad
influences around them, the young people grow up pure and virtuous, with
the love of their religion warm in their hearts. An ample reward to
their parents, those brave men, the early settlers, who displayed such
indomitable perseverance in their battle for