vt
St
3
A WEEKLY
JOURNAL
OF
CHEERFULNESS
Printed primarily for people
who look upon life cheerfully and
hopefully. Also for people who
ought to do so. The promotor of
all good things and good people,
of which first Nebraska is chief
and of which second Nebraskans
are mostly.
DOLLAR A YEAR
E
OLUME 8
f A DREAM THAT
V.. .
For years on end many Nebraskans
have been dreaming of the time when
some method would be introduced
whereby the untilled lands of Ne
braska would be occupied and culti
vated. Scheme after scheme has been
thought out, then abandoned some
times from lack of capital, more often
because of lack of push and managerial
ability to make the scheme go through.
And now comes a young man who
shows that while others have been
dreaming and thinking he has been
doing and the dream is coming true. .
Ie is not a philanthropist, yet he has
quietly put into execution a plan that
is better than the philanthropy of
building libraries, establishing educa
tional pension funds, endowing uni
versities or financing schemes to bring
about universal peace. His philan
thropy is based upon enlightened sel
fishness, because in helping others he
is profiting himself.
William P. O'Brien is the young
man's name, but he probably would re
spond quicker if addressed as "Bill."
He lives in Atkinson and he owns
A lot of land in Holt county. It so
happens that while Holt county land
id fertile, it has been a slow process
to induce people to settle in even some
of its richest parts. O'Brien owned
3,200 acres of as fine land as lays
out of doors, in an ideal dairying
country, and possessing wonderful
possibilities under intelligent cultiva
tion. He couldn't farm all of it him
self, so he set about figuring up a
scheme to get it all under cultiavtion,
inducing industrious and thrifty peo-
le to settle thereon, and thus build up
the country incidentally adding to the
value of his other land holdings. Fin
ally he had it all figured out, and
financed, too boot. Straightway he
proceeded to put his scheme into oper
ation, and without any blare of trum
pets or press agenting of his "philan
thropy," he has it going.
, O 'Brien cut his 3,200 acres up into
80 and 160-acre tracts. Upon each
tract he is building a cottage, with
the outbuildings necessary for suc
cessful farm and dairy work, including
a small silo. He is now locating
thirty families upon these tracts, and
inside of a month every tract will be
occupied. Each tract holder agrees to
pay a stated price per acre and is
payments. Each tract holder is sup
I plied with from fifteen to twenty
cows, two teams of horses, plows,
Jiarrows, etc., which they will be per
mitted to pay lor on easy payments.
O'Brien will personally supervise each
tract, giving the farmer the benefit of
his advice and experience, and seeing
to it that each one exerts himself to
the utmost to make good. The men
he locates upon this land are men of
family, all of them Russian Jews, and
need have but little money. If they can
show themselves to be the right sort
they don't need to have any. In fact,
O'Brien has sold 160 acres to a man
who had but one five dollar bill to
pay down and O'Brien stocked the
farm, furnished the implements and
supplied the seed the first year.
He is building a church and school
house on the land, paying for both. He
is going to have experts teach' these
people how to handle dairy cows to
the best advantage. He is going to
lv ; J-
CAME TRUE !
. . '
have experts in all lines of agricultural
work give these people practical dem
onstrations as well as sound advice.
"I'm not performing a work of char
ity," said O'Brien when Will Maupin's
Weekly asked him about the plan. "I
am making money for O'Brien. If I
benefit the people I locate on that
land, I'll be mighty glad of it. And I
know they'll be benefited but so will
I. I have provided for every contin
gency. I know the soil is productive,
for there is no more fertile soil in the
country than that of the Elkhorn val
ley. And I expect my enterprise to
grow and spread until we have the
whole upper valley peopled by men
and women who are prospering and
helping to make Nebraska bigger and
better and richer. While they are mak
ing money for themselves, they'll be
making money for O'Brien."
And this is the way this young Irish
man is helping to boost Nebraska. He
is putting industrious men and women
on the soil, taking them out of the
MAM'S OPEN UTTER
Having decided to become a candidate for .the
democratic nomination for railway commissioner I
believe it due to the public that I give my reasons
for such decision. Unlike many other candidates
for public office, I am not sacrificing anything.
They are wholly disinterested, being actuated sole
ly by a desire to be of service to the people, and
caring nothing for the emoluments of the office.
Not me ! I frankly confess that the salary attached
to the office of railway commissioner , is attractive to
me. Were there no salary attachment I wouldn't,
look at the job. But I believe I can come as near
earning that salary as any man ever holding the
position, and nearer than some. At any rate, I be
lieve I can say, truthfully and without boasting,
that so far in life I have made good at earning my
salary in every position I have ever held.
I believe I have some qualifications for the
job. In the first place I am neither a physician nor
a lawyer, nor a shipper just one of the "ulti
mates" upon whom all the rest of them shove off
the final payment. These may be negative quali
fications, but it seems to me that it is about time
that the ultimate consumers be given some sort of
representation. Confessing ignorance of the art
of rate making, I claim to have some little idea of
common fairness, and common fairness between cor
poration and public is all that anybody can ask
unless an undue advantage is sought. After twenty
five years of active newspaper service in Nebraska
I believe, I know Nebraska about as well as any
other man in the state; that I
as to the needs of the people; that I know the rail
road situation quite as well as anybody save the
men actively engaged in railroad management.
Of course, I could frame up a platform in
which I told how much I love the dear people, how
interested I am in defending their rights, what sac
rifices I am willing to make in their behalf, and all
that sort of tommyrot, but I won't. The man who
tells you that he is sacrificing a lot to take an office
paying $3,000 a year, with a six-year term, is
merely advertising his opinion that the public is
made up of a lot of suckers. I purpose being hon
est with the people by telling them that the office
looks good to me, and that I am willing to give
them the best service I possibly can in return for
the $250 per month. ' .
LINCOLN, NEBRASKA, FEBRUARY 23,
cities, giving the mfresh air and sun
light and a chance to get ahead. ,
Will Maupin's Weekly has chron
icled a good many things that mean
much for Nebraska, but it holds that
"Bill" O'Brien's scheme is the best
ever promulgated for the upbuilding
of this good state. What it means for
the future of Nebraska only time will
tell. But we believe that the "O'Brien
Plan" is going to be enlarged upon
until it brings thousands of industrious
people to this state to till her fertile
soil and add to the wealth of nations.
"DIET CHEAP."
That expression may go in some
places, but not in Nebraska, j There, is
no "cheap dirt" in this good state.
Some of it may be had at comparative
ly low prices, but it is far from being
"cheap." A few days ago Fielding
& Lonham, real estate dealers in Lin
coln, closed a deal involving the trans
fer of 80 acres of land near Alvo. The
purchase price was $160 an acre, and
it is not a well-improved farm, either.
Of course the commission plan of
.municipal government will not please
men who have a pet plan of their own.
s It appears to me that it is time for the dear
public to put the rollers under those distinguished
patriots who are so willing to sacrifice themselves
upon the altar of the public good, and turn to men
who are willing to admit that they need the money
and are willing to go the limit of their ability to
earn it. Just now I am not in the sacrificing busi
ness I am seeking better opportunities to provide
for the wife and babies now and put by a little to
keep the wolf away from their door after I am
called hence.
The office of railway commissioner is an im
portant one, to be sure. But isn't a newspaper man
of a quarter of a century's experience fully as
well fitted for the place as a physician who didn't
know the difference between a differential rate and
the designation "KD" when he was elected, or a
lawyer whose knowledge of railroading was con
fined to a speaking acquaintance with a railroad
president up to the date he qualified as commis
sioner? Besides, wouldn't it be a pretty good idea
to have a newspaper man on the commission, thus
insuring the public that it would be kept informed
as to the commission's actions .at all times?
I .believe I have made my position sufficiently
plain. I haven't consulted anybody about this.
Admiring friends have not urged me to become a
candidate. In fact, nobody ever suggested it to me.
This is a plain case of the man seeking the office,
not because he is actuated by the sole desire to
serve the public, but because he is actuated by a
desire to give the
am as well informed, sibly can in return
That's a pretty good salary for these days, and the
man who earns it will have to keep busy. I'm
willing to keep busy on the job. ,
If you are inclined towards my candidacy after
reading this frank statement, just tell me so. If
you are not inclined towards it, tell me so any
how. I want to know. The corrupt practices act
limits a candidate for railway commissioner to
about $650 for campaign expenses. This is just
about $625 more than I could put into the cam
paign. If nominated and elected I would be one
successful candidate who could very truthfully
make affidavit to the statement that he had not ex
ceeded the limit fixed by law.
) With this I leave my candidacy in your hands.
WILL M. MAUPIN.
1912
THE LAND AND
v.....
With increasing frequency we hear
the plaints of the pessimists who dole
fully declare that the world is facing
starvation; that soon will come the
time when there will be no more land
for the landless, and that we have
almost reached the limit of cultivated
area. Then these pessimists declare
that "intensive farming" is the only
solution of the problem of feeding
the hungry.
Even Uncle Sam has been wrought
up over these lugubrious wails, and
he has been spending millions of dol
lars to irrigate a few thousand acres
and thus stave off for a few years the
inevitable time of starvation. And
all the time the pessimists have been
wailing and Uncle Sam has been pour
ing out money to irrigate little garden
patches, millions of acres of the most
fertile soil in Ihe world, all located in
the middle west, have been over
looked and neglected.
In the two middle western states of
Nebraska and Kansas there are not
people the best service he pos-
for a salary of $250 a month.
A MERRY HEART
DOETH GOOD
LIKE
MEDICINE
But a broken spirit drieth the
bones. That's what the Good
Book says, and we'll bank on it,
sure. Will Maupin's Weekly.
works to make cheerful the hearts
of its readers,, and thus do medi
cal duty. Fifty-two consecutive'
weekly doses for a dollar.
GUARANTEED
NUMBER 48
lHb LAlNLILLob !
less than 30,000,000 acres of land that
will raise immense crops of corn,
wheat, oats, rye, barley, sorghum cane,
kaffir, speltz and hungarian, and which .
have not yet been touched by the
plow.
"O, yes; but that land is in the arid
districts, where it never rains," de
clares some one who has given the ,
matter superficial thought and there
fore thinks he knows all about it.
There are no arid districts in either
Nebraska or Kansas that is, districts
where there is no' rainfall. The aver
age rainfall in the driest sections of
Nebraska during the last decade has
been more than 10 inches, and the
driest sections of Kansas have aver
aged practically the same. The trou
ble with these so-called arid sections
is not the lack of rainfall but the un
timeliness thereof. In other words,
the rain too often fails to come at
the right time, measured by man's
experience in farming in the past. If."
that average of ten inches of rainfall
could be spread out or made to fall
at the right time, these arid sections
would today be as populous and as :
productive as the eastern and central
sections of the states named,
if But for a- thousand years or more''
men figured that there were but two
ways of getting water on growing
crops at the right timerainfall or
irrigation. If it rained at just the
right time the crop was saved. Or by
digging some ditches water might be
brought from afar . and spread over
the thirsty soil. But it would not rain
at the right time in the so-called arid
sections, and no scheme of irrigation
would bring water to the land. Hence
these 30,000,000 acres in the two states
have been unproductive. Yet the soil
is as fertile as that of the valley of the ,
Nile. For countless ages it supported
the buffalo in ' uncounted numbers,
and these prairie cattle fertilized the
soil; antelope and deer and wild horse' .
assisted the bison, and flood and
freshet and melting snows carried the
silt down from the mountains to the
far east. It is almost exactly the same
soil as that further east in Nebraska
and Kansas that raises record-breaking
crops and which has made these two
' states the greatest , producers of agri
cultural wealth in the world.
But if it will not rain at the right
time, and if it is impossible to -irrigate
it, why consider it at all in the scheme
of production!
Because it is productive soil, and be
cause man is just learning that if the
rains will not descend at just the right
time at least the rain," after it has
fallen, may be held in the ground until
needed at the surface for the nourish-
ment of the plant roots, and then
drawn up drawn up without machin-'
ery, without pumps, without power. It
is all so simple that the wonder is it
was not discovered ages and ages ago.
And despite its simplicity and its oft
demonstrated success, there are those
who hoot at it, and the man who is
devoting his life to a demonstration
of . its practicability, is often dubbed a
lunatic and a fakir.
"Dry farming" does not mean that
crops are raised without moisture. It
simply means that the moisture is con
servedsaved until needed and then
brought up' to the plant root. There
is a tradition that during some great