VOL. XIX.
INDIANAPOLIS, IND., SATURDAY, NOV. 22,1884.
NO. 47.
LETTER FROM TEXAS.
San Antonio—Its  Interesting
Places and Curious Customs.
Beautiful, Fertile Country, and
" Chances for Home».
Kdltors Indiana Farmer:
I am here In this grand old city, of about
20,000 people of every nation and State.
San Antonio is a pleasant and novel place
to the strangers. A beautiful stream runs
through it, whose clear blue ■waters are
bordered by green trees and semi-tropical
plants. This river flows out of rock a short
distance above the city, in sufficient volume to run mills in the city, and in two
places are natural rock dams. A part of
the water, above the city is diverted into
irrigating canals, making it the best watered city I ever saw.
A NEW   PROGRESSIVE CIVILIZATION       .
is here, pressing hard against the old. The
splendid new block of beautiful stone
buildings, with plate glass, stands alongside the old one story adobe. The new additions to the city have wide straight
streets, and side walks adjoining the old
narrow crooked streets of the old town.
In many places the side walks are only
three and four feet wide. The new church
has risen close to the old cathedral, 160
years old, which though still used is crumbling to decay. The new spacious school
house has risen where formerly there was
none. Tbe electric light, telephone etc.,
are here, and have come to stay. The old
ways and usages "must go," but it will be
gradually. The plazas and narrow winding streets are here forever. I like the
plazas (open squares of three or four acres).
The marketing is nearly all done here and
all kinds of traffic. I wish our northern
cities had plazas. On Military Plaza nightly, the year round, the Mexicans make a
spread of about 30 tables, set in the farm
of a hollow square. Their tables lit up by
shaded lamps,and with their dusky colored
owners make altogether a novel, and en-
• tertaining sight. They serve all kinds of
food; some peculiar to this people and
city. One among them, called "Chilli Can
Carne," is very profitable and popular here.
Prices are very reasonable. When I sat
down to tbe table, I had to get an interpreter to tell what I wished for. So you
can almost feel you are
IN A FOREIGN COUNTRY
here in San Antonio. I like the place and
the quaint ways of its inhabitants. It is
healthful and the climate is delightful.
I visited the Alamo, where the brave
Davy Crockett met an unworthy fate.
The old adobe building^ with walls four
feet thick, is crumbling to decay.
San Pedro Park is one of the most beautiful natural locations for a park I ever
saw, but unfortunately is poorly kept aud
is badly out of repair.
Government Hill Is a beautifully improved military place, owned by the U. S. Here
are kept military stores, and a considerable number of soldiers. It is a very
handsome place overlooking the city.
But what interested me most was
-  "    THE SPLENDID COUNTRY
you pass through from the north boundary
of Texas to  reach   this  place.   I do  not
think it can be excelled in the world, taking the whole distance, some 500 miles, for
beauty and natural fertility of soil. The
most of the way is rolling prarie, bordered
by timber.
There is a settlement of Germans at
New Bromfels, that by their thrifty, tidy
homes and well kept farms, show what
can be accomplished in Texas by industry
and labor. It is the best improved agricultural community I have ever seen in
Texas. They raised two bales of cotton
to the acre in 1883; this year not over a
half a bale, on account of drought. I saw
in several places below Waco where they
were running corn shellers and Belling
corn at 40 cents a bushel. There are
millions of acres of this land here yet,
cheap, inviting the industrious classes to
acquire homes.
Yes, "Homes" sounds very dear to
me when I think of our own in Indiana,
and for this I principally write that the
toilers may know that they
CAN YET GET HOMES;
but, Oh! how fast the lands are being
taken up by large holders. God help the
"bread winners." The opportunity will
soon be gone for the man of small means,
to acquire a "home." Then to them I say
hurry. Oh! how prodigal the U. S., and
Texas have been of the rich inheritance
given by Providence.
I wish every industrious head of a
family in the United States had a home
of his own. How much more independent and happy the people would be, and
how much stronger the government.
Excursion tickets can be had in all parts
of the U. S., to see this inviting country,
and for those who wish to visit the World's
Fair at New Orleans. I would say If they
would go down through the Indian Nation and Texas by Dennison, Fort Worth,
Waco, Austin and San Antonio, it would
give them a good' view of this growing,
grand "State, whose lands invite all to
secure "homes." But don't expect to find
all the good things in one place. God has
wisely distributed his gifts. All localities
shows His beneficent hand, and Texas has
a goodly share, and its future is grand
beyond description. I can hardly realize
that in 1871 Texas had no railways, and
scarcely a city. Dallas, then with 400 inhabitants, now has 25,000. Fort Worth, a
few scattered dwellings; now 22,000 population. In the last three or four yeara
numbers of towns have grown to two,
three and six thousand, where there was
only the lovely prairie. The majority of
the people of the U. S., have but little idea
of the wonderful development of this
inviting climate. O.
 s    ♦    .
General Hazen, chief of the Signal-
service Bureau, in his report to the Secretary of War for the year ending June 30,
1884, says that an average of 85.4 per cent
of the predictions of his bureau as to the
weather in the country at large, east of
the Rocky mountains, were verified, while
the annual average of the Pacific slope was
89.3.
The average of the area in wheat in
England for the last 20 years has been 3,-
124,000 acres. In 18G9 the area was nearly
4,000,000 acres, in 1833, 2,715,000 acres, and
last year- 2,750,000 acres. The average
yield until recently has been 26Ji bushels
per acre; the present year it was 30 bushels.
Written lor tbe Indiana Farmer.
One Hundred and Sixty Acres Not
Enough.—No. 7.
BY JOHN M. STAHL.
If the farm hand has the money to purchase a small farm, he has the money to
purchase a larger farm where land is
cheaper. Can the reader now have any
doubt.of its being better for him to do so?
lam willing toJgo even further than my
opponents ask me to go. I will admit,
for argument's sake, that government has
the right to give every farm hand a farm.
But if it can give him a small farm, it can
give him a larger farm where land is
cheaper. We have seen that so far as he is
concerned it would be better for him to
choose the larger farm. It would also be
better for that truehearted girl who is
worthy of a pioneer's love. Why not? If
they choose the larger farm, they must be
pioneer's, itis true; lut noblemen and
women have been pioneers before them.
The pioneer's lot is not so hard. The birds
sing just as sweetly in Nebraska as they
do in Massachusetts; the flowers have the
same delicate tints and charming odors in
Kansas that they have in Connecticut; the
same soft winds make into billows the
golden fields of Missouri that rustle the
chestnut leavesof Pennsylvania; the same
sun wakes to life bud and seed in the valleys of far-off Washington Territory that
gilds the coast of Maine; the moon looks
down as softly on Wyoming as on New
York; love is as warm, yes, warmer, tenderer and more precious in the pioneer's
cabin than in the brown stone front; the
sweetest and purest of guardian angels flit
over Oregon as well as Ohio; and the kind
providences of God fall as thickly upon
Western plains as upon Eastern valleys.
Those who would give every man a
small farm and no man a large farm
would reverse the eternal course of events.
History records no time when there were
not rich and poor. Some possess greater
ability or stronger inclination for the accumulation of wealth than others. From
him whose only property is his poverty to
him whose cattle are upon a thousand
hills, we have every degree of worldly accumulation. It has always been so, it is
so to-day, and so will it be till time is
merged in eternity. It thus happens that
of those whose worldly possessions are in
lands there are some who have but few
and some who have many fertile acres.
There have been two classes always—the
rich and the poor. Some must needs be
hewers of wood and drawers of water.
Fate may be hard but it is idle to- seek to
change its decrees. And as we, as a
people, advance in power and wealth, we
will have yet larger farms and more farm
hands.
No one denies that this will be just as
well for the capitalist farmer. But the
cry is that it will end in the greater poverty and the oppression of the employed
My opponents forget that wealth need not
exist in land. The employe will do .well
not to invest his savings in a few acres,
Money breeds money. To the debtor, at
least; interest accumulates very fast. The
farm hand can lend his money at six,
eight, or ten per cent interest. Is not this
better than investing it in a small farm?
Statistics show that farmers realize scarce
ly  three  and one-half per  cent  on the
money invested in land. The small farmer must realize less than the average. It
is twice better to keep money at interest
than to put it into a small farm.
One more point and I am done. The
true test of any theory is the result it
would produce if put into practice.
Let us see what this theory of. smaller
farms would have led to if it had been put
into practice in the earliest settlement of
this country. The increase in population
would not have led to an increase in the
territory inhabited, but only an increase
in the number of farms. Instead of a
young man going West to open up for
himself a farm in the wilderness, he would
have purchased half of some farm already
occupied. As the number of farms increased, as 'the number of families increased, their area would have decreased
in proportion. As I have heretofore
stated, small and large farms are relative
terms; and as the farms continually grew
more contracted in extent by division, a
small farm -would bo considered a large
farm twenty-five years later. And now,
with fifty-five millions of people in a
death struggle for subsistence on a narrow
belt of exhausted land along the Atlantic
coast, we would yet have large and small
farms. The population of this country
would be crowded on this narrow belt;
we would have no fertile farms in the
valley of the Ohio, of the Mississippi, or
of the Missouri; the-western slope ofthe
Alleghanies, all that vast extent of territory drained by the Father of Waters and
his tributaries, and all of the fertile
western empire of the United States,
would be yet an untrod, uncultivated
wilderness, save where the Indian crept
steadily through the forest or perchance
planted a patch of corn. Telegraphs
would not form a network over the
length and breadth of the land, railroads
would not connect the Pacific witn its
more stormy brother ocean, and there
would be no commerce on the great lakes,
the mighty rivers, or along tho Pacific
coast. Will any one be so foolish as to
contend that such a state of affairs, would
be better than that which now exists?
Yet this would be but the natural, irresistible result of the theory of smaller
farms.
I now come to my last proposition—
that neither forty nor one hundred and
sixty acres are enough for a farm. As we
go eastward we find the farms smaller
and smaller, and as we go westward we
find them growing larger and larger.
Forty acres is a large farm in the East,
and would be considered a small farm in
the West. But the farm ol the right extent contains the same number of acres
whether it is in New York or Wyoming;
that is, the situation should have nothing
to do with the size. The character of the
crops grown upon it may somewhat modify its extent, but this only.
How small, and how large, then, should
a farm be? I say it should be so large
that its general business management
should occupy the time of the owner;
that it will furnish constant employment
for an accomplished accountant; and that
it will justify the employment of a general superintendent well versed in the
science and practice of agriculture, to
direct the general movements ofthe farm-
I ing operations and to oversee the employes.