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brothers. To be sure, some buy steel ranges for hen-coops and porcelain bathtubs for watering-troughs, but they are getting past that.

It is a curious thing that, despite the apparently full settlement of the most desirable lands of Oklahoma, immigration is all the time adding to the population. In the land offices are found farmers from Illinois, Indiana, and Kansas, with a considerable contingent from the Northern States-people who have grown weary of battling against twenty-below-zero weather. They want to buy farms, and the agent has plenty of land to show them.

"Where is the man who sells out going?" is the question that naturally arises. This brings to light one of the curious elements of Western development-one that is worthy the attention of

a philosopher, and which has had a wide influence on the civilization of the prairie, accounting for some of the strange chapters in its history. This is the moverthe settler who is never satisfied, who holds all he possesses for sale, and who sees something better just beyond. Thousands came to Oklahoma because they wanted to move on; they are willing again to move on, and they will probably emulate the Wandering Jew to the end of the chapter. They never become rich, and their families are the real sufferers from their course. Those who receive twentyfive hundred to four thousand dollarsthe usual price for a fairly well improved claim-seek cheaper lands in the western part of the Territory, or wait for another "opening." The new population is of the substantial kind that comes to stay.

This changing is going on rapidly, and the population figures are creeping well upward, the new census giving the Territory three hundred and ninety-eight thousand. The immigrants who cannot afford to buy the better farms take their way westward, and, with stock as an added source of income, make a start on the cheaper lands. Thus it is that there is opportunity for all who come. Even the money-loaner who puts his trust in farm mortgages reaps a good harvest--seven to nine per cent.; a rate, by the way, that is higher than the regular crop conditions seem to justify.

In the past season, the fourth of the series of good crop years, Oklahoma has produced 25,000,000 bushels of wheat, 15,000,000 of oats, 70,000,000 of corn, and 140,000 bales of cotton. This, with the small fruits and the yield of its stock interests, makes it remarkably prosperous. Its property is valued for taxes at $49,338,000—a rather tidy substance to be gathered in a decade. The cotton crop alone sold for over $6,000,000; the wheat brought $13,000,000. Each year the total is larger, and each year sees better farming for even in the western section, as in the western parts of Kansas and Nebraska, the lesson of the adaptability of soil and climate has been learned, and experiments are less numerous. The people who have settled Oklahoma have put in long, weary years experimenting with the climate, and know what to expect from the rain-clouds. More "experience" was brought to the conquering of the soil of the Territory than to any other part of the West, and the advancement made is evidence of its value.

In the towns of Oklahoma, more, perhaps, than in the country, is seen evidence of the Territory's youth. The towns were settled on the run. They might have for their motto, "Cities made while you wait." In a day were erected the first structures, and in a fortnight the town-sites presented as well developed a situation as grew up in other communities in a dozen years. But it was all very temporary and very rambling The first buildings were mere shacks sufficient to keep out the weather. Like the cabins on the claim, they pretended nothing, but accomplished their purpose, which was to hold down the land

for later improvements, and for this purpose anything was good enough.

As the Territory gained in years, these first buildings gave way to brick and stone blocks, pretentious corner fronts, and the habiliments of civilization. Yet some of the first comers remained, and there is yet presented in most of the smaller towns an incongruous comparison of the old order of things and the new. There was, too, as in the other prairie communities, a tendency to overbuild, and the effect was seen in empty buildings fringing the busy section of the town. Of course decreased revenues formed a corrective of this tendency, and the town has waited for the country to catch up. This, generally, has been accomplished now, and the building that has been resumed is in accordance with the legitimate demands of the places.

The railroad towns are, for the most part, located along the two main lines— the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fé, and the Chicago, Rock Island, and Pacificwhich traverse the eastern portion of the Territory from north to south. They have enjoyed a trade reaching back into the country east and west thirty to sixty miles, and have thrived on the business that came, not alone from the settlers directly, but from the little settlements that made local distributing points. So it often happens that the business of the towns has been out of proportion to their size, and merchants located in unpainted frame shacks have been piling up bank accounts at a rate that many a betterhoused dealer might well envy.

This condition is passing away. Cross lines of railroad are being built as rapidly as the work can be done, and along them are springing up new business centers, each cutting off the trade of some older town. It is a repetition of the history of other sections of the West, and will continue until the town and country reach an equilibrium where further town-building becomes unprofitable.

The rivalry of the towns has been very bitter. It began when the first locations were selected, rival town companies racing for the favored spots. In one instance where two towns were located close together, the railroad took a hand, and by efusing to stop its trains at one of them compelled a consolidation. Many town

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sites were deserted as the development went on, for Western people are quick to read the future, and are not inclined to continue a fight when it affects their pocketbooks. After the towns were located came the contest for the county seats. To succeed meant permanent prosperity and advancement, together with a material local prominence. Every effort is put forth in such struggles.

"We got every vote we could in our neighborhood," remarked a young enthusiast, describing a county seat election. "We got 'em all but two. We couldn't get them for love or money-and," he added, naïvely, "we tried both."

In one instance last summer, when an election was held, the successful town could not wait for the official announcement of the result of the ballots, but, on being satisfied that it had won, the citizens took fifty teams and wagons and made a pilgrimage to the losing village. They loaded into the wagons all the county records, the household goods of the county officers, the officers and their families, and then, with a brass band playing strains of victory, took up the journey homeward. The rejoicing when the caravan filed into the new county capital may be imagined.

It was a typical incident in Western life, and the wonder is that all the inhabitants of the vanquished community did not of their own accord join the procession.

It is notable that in their construction of public buildings the people of the Territory have looked to the future and have built with wisdom. The public-school buildings, the court-houses, and the institutions of higher learning are imposing and modern in their architecture. They are fitted for the development of decades to come, and are a credit to the far-seeing faith of their projectors. This confidence of the Oklahomans in their coming greatness is nowhere more strongly manifested, and there is no reason to doubt the basis of their trust.

The race for recognition as the commercial headquarters is between two cities. Guthrie, the capital of the Territory, and Oklahoma City, fifty miles farther south. The former enjoys a prestige that gives it some advantage, while the latter, fully its equal in population, lays claim to being the business center for wholesale houses and is reaching out for manufactories of various sorts.

It is not clear to the people of the Territory why, with its annual production of

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Norman, Oklahoma, June 29, 1889. Now it is a city of four thousand inhabitants.

140,000 bales of high-grade cotton, an output steadily increasing, it should ship its raw material to the Atlantic States for manufacture and then ship the finished product back again for use. So there is an earnest effort to secure cotton-factories to stand beside the cotton-seed oil mills and so utilize all the possibilities contained in this yield of the fields. Their coming is but a matter of time. Situated at the door of a market that includes the whole Middle West and with the cotton crop of the Southwest close at hand, the question of a supply of raw material and of a market ought to be answered fully.

The little white school-house is omnipresent, for the settlers brought with them a firm belief in education. Every neighborhood is provided for, and high schools, normal schools, and colleges are waiting for the young men and women. Churches in city and hamlet and even in some country districts minister faithfully to the religious needs. Newspapers, good ones too, chronicle with exultant eulogy every advance of each community. It is a country of modern ways and high ideals. The sun shines most of the year, and its cheer is reflected in the hope and energy of the people.

Two "openings" have made Oklahoma what it is the original one in 1889 and that of the Cherokee Strip in 1893. An

other that will probably be more interesting than either will occur next year-that of the Kiowa, Apache, and Comanche reservations lying to the south of the land first given to settlers. This land extends from the Washita River on the north to the Red River on the south, about one hundred miles, and from the ninety-eighth degree of west longitude on the east to the north fork of the Red River on the west, comprising approximately three million acres. By an act of Congress it is to be opened to settlement as soon as the allotments ordered for the Indians of the tribes named shall be made.

Under the agreement between the tribes and the Government each Indian is to have one hundred and sixty acres of land located where he desires it, and also another one hundred and sixty acres located in a great undivided pasture to be situated on the southern border. In the three tribes are 2,900 persons entitled to allotments, and under the act of Congress, with its complicated provisions as to age and intermarriage, there will be a total of 467,840 acres to come out of the 2,968,983 acres in the reservations. Then there are school and college lands, fort reservations, and the grazing lands to be reserved, which leaves 1,614,000 acres, or about eleven thousand 160-acre quartersections, to be opened to settlement. Some of this is included in the Wichita

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