THE GL ORIES OF NEBRA SKA
Mrs. Ada M. Sanders of Westminster,
California California, mind yon has
written tlie Lincoln Commercial Club
asking that she bo permitted to adver
tise the beauties of Lincoln and Nebras-.
ka to the people of the Pacific coast. She
wants to know what she can say about
Nebraska that is calculated to attract
emigration thereto from California and
other Pacific coast states.
.We haven't the pleasure of Mrs. San'
tiers' acquaintance, nor do we know her
ability as an advertiser, But this we
do know, if she wants to advertise things
that will exceed any advertisement ever
penned by the most enthusiastic public
ity agent, let her turn her hand to ad
vertising Nebraska climate, productiv
ity, enterprise, possibilities, anything at
tractive to the human mind. The trou
ble with most advertised articles is that
they fail to measure up to the advertise
ment. Not so with Nebraska!
Climate? None finer, because thero is
just enough of the chill to set the blood to
tingling; just enough of heat to ripen the
greatest crops grown in the temperate
zone without enervating the toilers ;
more days twice over with clear skies
than with cloudy; springs that renew
youth and autumns that rival the boast
ed fall weather of Italy.
Productivity? More wheat, corn, oats
and rye per acre than any other state in
the union. Fourth in corn and wheat,
third in oats and rye, third in sugar
beets, fourth in dairying and coming
fast in all of them. Sixteen million acres
of fertile land awaiting the plow of the
husbandman. Not one-third of the fer
tile lands of the state under cutlivation,
and yet one of five states raising more ag
ricultural and dairy products than they
consume.
Possibilities? Room, welcome, homes
and competence awaiting 300,000 indus
tries tillers of the soil. A million horse
power going to waste in her streams, all
ready to be harnessed to the wheels of
industry that will turn Nebraska raw
material into finished products boots,
shoes, woolens, cereals, flour, meal, brick,
tile, cement, agricultural implements
anything and everything made by ma
chinery handled by men of brains and
energy and skill.
Enterprise? In less than forty years
Nebraska enterprise and push and thrift
have builded a state of a million and a
quarter of people on what was deemed a
"desert" a half-century ago a state
with a permanent school fund of nine
millions of dollars; the fourth largest
state university in the republic; $200 in
bank for each man, woman and child;
340,000 school children and not one of
them ever going hungry to school
through necessity; without a dollar of
state debt, bonded or floating; four'
thousand miles of railroad; the largest
creamery in the world; the largest butter
market in the world; wholesale estab
lishments that compete with Chicago
even in Illinois, and dominate the mar
kets between the Missouri river and the
Pacific coast ;, manufacturing establish
ments whose output is sold in every
civilized country and used in every coun
try, civilized and semi-civilized; cities
with skyscrapers and without slums, and
villages with public utilities not pos
sessed by the big cities a quarter of a
century ago.
Anything about Nebraska calculated
to attract that you might advertise?
Bless your enterprising soul, dear
madam, when it comes to having good
things to advertise things that are so
good that they will make the best writ
ten advertisement read like the output
of a new graduate from a correspondence
school Nebraska has every other state
backed off the boards, pushed up in the
corner and calling for help !
If you want to see the real thing in
territory that will attract the people
who. are looking for homes, just get on a
Union Pacific or Burlington train at
Omaha and ride west by daylight any old
day between now and August 1. Better
do it before July 1, for then you will get
the best glimpse only a glimpse of Ne
braska's richness and greatness as a
state of golden opportunities for the
homeseeker.
Here we go either route ! What a
great chess board, with squares of yel
lowing grain and green alfalfa and corn.
Roomy, modern farm houses for castles,
prosperous farmers afield for knights,
happy farmers' wives for queens, cathe
drals and churches to represent the bish
ops, and lowing herds and fattening hogs
to represent the pawns in the great game
of prosperity 'we of Nebraska are plac
ing ! What a prosperous looking little
city! Thirty years ago its site was as
bare of houses as Hades is of water, and
the surrounding country deemed as un
productive as Sahara. Today the city
has ten thousand people, every .municipal
improvement, including municipally
owned waterworks and electric lights;
splendid sanitary school buildings, com
modious churches, and enterprising mer
chants. The country round about pro
duces more of wheat and corn and rye
and oats and alfalfa than any similar
area in the world. There are a dozen
such cities in Nebraska outside of Lin
coln and Omaha, a score with from three
to five thousand, a hundred with from
one to two thousand. It would be more
difficult to find a Nebraska farm house
without a telephone than to find a trust
magnate with a conscience; more diffi
cult to get out of sight of a Nebraska
school house than to get in sight of King
George's coronation.
If all that was , raised upon Nebraska
farms last year -grain, hay, live stock,
butter, poultry and eggs were loaded
into standard freight cars and made up
into one solid train, before that train
could start on a straight track it would
be necessary to bridge the Atlantic ocean,
the English channel and the Baltic sea,
for with the caboose in St. Petersburg it
would be necessary to run a bridge one
thousand and four hundred miles out
into the Pacific ocean west of San Fran
cisco to find a place for the locomotive!
Bless you, dear madam, if the butter
made in Nebraska last year were packed
into pound cartons and those cartons
stacked up, end on end, they would make
a column of butter two and one-half
inches square and two hundred and eighty-five
miles high. Thirty thousand
Washington monuments stacked up end
on end would scarcely equal in height
that one year's output of Nebraska but
ter so placed! Loaded into standard
freight cars, 36,000 pounds to the car, it
would make a train of 1,200 cars, thirty
three miles long!
Nebraska is 1,500 miles from tide
water,., yet her manufacturers are mak
ing marine engines and selling them in
Russia, Germany, China, Japan, France,
India and England! Nebraska flour and
Nebraska packed meats are as staple in
Great Britain and Europe as they are in
Nebraska, and the chances are ten to
one that .the "prime roast beef of old
England" that graces John Bull's table
today was raised, on a Nebraska farm
and packed in South Omaha.
Suppose, dear Madam, that there was
just one bushel of oranges in the whole
world, and California oranges at that;
and just on bushel of -apples in the
world, and Nebraska grown Jonathans
or winesaps wouldn't you be tickled to
death to trade the oranges for the
apples?
Has Nebraska anything to advertise
calculated to attract the homeseeker?
Why, dear Mrs. Sanders, we haven't be
gun to tell you what she has. We
couldn't tell it all, even though we were
gifted with the inspiration of a Paul or
a Shakespeare and had an eternity in
which to tell it. Nor would it avail to
tell even half the truth, for half the truth
about Nebraska would be considered
greater prevarication than any ever yet
indulged in by the phenomenally gifted
artists in the dispensation of superheated
atmosphere who have been writing about
the glories of the aPcific coast country for
the past generation Here in Nebraska
we live with and for one another, not
upon one another as is the custom in re
gions further west that we will refrain
from specifically mentioning. Here we
reap our abundance from the soil, con
tent that others, nameless liere, may gar
ner their little from the misguided tour
ist searching for the unattainable a bet
ter country than Nebraska.
We wish with all our heart, dear