Wayside Notes.
BY A MAN OF THE PRAIRIE.
A neighbor of mine who has been intending to purchase store cattle and sheep at the Chicago Stock Yards soon, asked me last night what I thought about his doing so. I asked him if he had read what The Prairie Farmer and other papers had contained of late regarding foot-and-mouth disease in Maine, Kansas, Illinois, and Iowa. He had not; did not take the papers, and had not heard anything about the disease here or in England. Then I explained to him, as best I could, its nature, contagious character, etc., and having a Prairie Farmer in my pocket, read him your brief history of the ailment in Great Britain. Well, that man was astonished. Finally, said he, What has that got to do with my question about buying cattle and sheep at the stock yards? Just this, I replied: every day there are arrivals at the stock yards of many thousands of cattle from these infected States. Perhaps some of them come from the very counties where this disease is known to exist. The disease may break out any day in scores of places in all these States. It may appear—indeed is quite likely to do so at the stock yards. For aught I know it may be there now. The cattle brokers will not be very likely to make known such an unwelcome fact a minute sooner than they are obliged to. In fact, from what they have lately been saying about the absurdity of new and stringent enactments concerning animal diseases, I conclude they will labor to conceal cases that may really exist. Now you go there to pick up cattle to consume your pasturage this spring and summer, and don't you see you run the risk of taking to your home and neighborhood a disease that may cost you and your neighbors many thousands of dollars? If I were you I would pick up the stock I want in my own neighborhood and county, even though not exactly the kind I would like to have, and though it would cost me a great deal more time and trouble. You see to a Man of the Prairie things look a little squally in this cattle business. We have all got to be careful about this thing. We have a terrible enemy at our stable doors and pasture gates, and we must guard them well. I am not an alarmist, but I would run any time, almost, rather than get licked, and I have always tried to keep a lock on the stable door before the horse is stolen. I am in favor of in-trenchment. Perhaps my advice to my neighbor was not sound, but according to the light I have, I have no desire to recall it till I hear more from the infected districts.
To show the difference between the winter in Colorado and the States this way and further west, the Farmer, of Denver, mentions the fact that it knows a farmer who has had about two hundred acres of new land broken between the middle of November and the first of March. Still, these Eastern States have advantages which render them rather pleasant to live in. Our farmers find plenty of time in fall and spring in which to do their plowing and sowing, and our severe winters don't seem to hurt the ground a bit. In fact, I suppose it has got used to them, sort of acclimated, as it were. We have pretty good markets, low railway fares, good schools and plenty of them, and we manage to enjoy ourselves just as well as though we could hitch up to the plow and do our breaking in December and January. We can't all go to Colorado, Dakota, Montana, or Washington Territory, nor to those other Edens at the South and Southwest where a man, so far as winter is concerned, may work about every day in the year; but don't do so any more than we here at the North where we have the excuse of severe weather for our laziness between November and April. I like Colorado and Wyoming, Arkansas and Texas, Alabama and Florida—for other people who like to make their homes there, but my home is here and I like it. "I don't have to" plow in winter, and I don't need to. I am going to try to do my duty and be happy where I am, believing Heaven to be just as near Illinois as any other State or any Territory.
I read in the dispatches this morning that the barns on a ranch near Omaha burned the other night. With the barns were consumed twenty-six cows, eighteen horses, 1,000 bushels of corn and a large lot of hay and oats. In all the loss amounted to above $10,000 and there was no insurance. From all over the country and at all times of the year I read almost daily of similar losses varying from $100 up into the thousands, and the closing sentence of about nine out of ten of these announcements is "no insurance." Now I am neither an insurance agent nor a lightning rod peddler, but there are two luxuries that I indulge in all the time, and these are an insurance policy to fairly cover my farm buildings and their contents, and what I believe to be well constructed lightning rods in sufficient number to protect the property from electric eccentricities. True, my buildings have never suffered from fire or lightning and these luxuries have cost me no inconsiderable amount of cash, but this money has brought me relief from a heap of anxiety, for I know in case my property is swept away I am not left stripped and powerless to provide for my family, and I know that it will not be necessary to mortgage the farm to furnish them a shelter. I don't take cheap insurance either, but invest my money in the policy of a company which I believe has abundant capital and is cautiously managed. A wealthy man can take his fire risks in his own hands if he chooses, but for a man of small or moderate means it seems to me the height of folly to do so. I would rather go without tobacco or "biled shirts" than insurance and lightning rods.
I don't know that an American farmer ever had the gout. Certainly I never heard of such a case. If one does get the ailment, however, if he keeps bees he always has a sure remedy at hand. A German has discovered that if a bee is allowed to sting the affected part, a cure is instantaneous. Why don't Bismarck try this home remedy for his complication of gout and trichinæ?