Catholic Colonization Bureau

“ Where once the wild prairie grass waved, comes the cheery clatter of the harvester, and swath after swath of the golden grain falls down before it.
By and by the younger children return from school, rosy and hungry, and a small skirmisher is thrown out and enters the pantry; he is repulsed and falls back on the main body; then, taking advantage of the "good woman," being obliged to run to the oven to keep the bread from burning, the whole force advance, a pie is spiked and carried off in triumph. ”

“ It is an axiom that "they who own the soil own the country."
Happily, in this country, the people's title to the land is recognized, they are invited to take possession of their own, and the tall, luxuriant grasses of the broad prairie are the messengers it sends forth from its virgin bosom, telling of the wealth it has in store to reward honest, patient labor. ”

“ To the old settler of Minnesota, the seasons follow each other in pleasing succession. As the sun approaches his northern latitude, winter relaxes its grasp, streams and lakes are unbound, flowers spring up as if by the touch of some magic wand, and gradually spring is merged into the bright, beautiful June, with its long, warm days, and short, but cool and refreshing nights. ”

“ Now, we say to those for whose benefit this pamphlet has been written, if you come here you must come fully prepared to feel the effects of a great change. If you come from a city, you will, doubtless, feel lonely for a while, until you get accustomed to prairie life; you will miss many immediate comforts; you will have to put up with discomforts, with disappointments, with trials. The man who feels he can stand up against all such difficulties in the present, and look bravely to the future for his reward, let him come to Minnesota. ”

“ Where a few years ago the Catholic settlers, few and poor, waited anxiously for the visit of the priest, and where the holy sacrifice of the mass was offered up in the settler's cabin, we now find the resident priest, the handsome church, and in many instances, the Sisters' school. In those settlements the whole atmosphere is Catholic; here, with no bad influences around them, the young people grow up pure and virtuous, with the love of their religion warm in their hearts. ”

“ Pure air is health, life. Winter and summer, fall and spring, the air of Minnesota, free from all malaria, is pure. We promise to the new settler making a home on land in Minnesota, plenty of hard work, and the best of health and spirits—so far as climate has any effect on those blessings, and it has a great deal—while doing it. ”

“ It is a fearful reality before the eyes of many a poor Catholic parent, who obliged to be continually absent from his children, knows but too well the society they are likely to fall into.
In our Catholic colonies in Minnesota a parent has no such dread. He knows where his boys are on week days; they are helping him on the farm. He knows where they are on Sundays; they are with him at church. When they are amusing themselves, he knows that they are with the young people of his neighbors, their companions and co-religionists. ”

“ Thoroughly acquainted with the Catholic settlements in Minnesota, we cannot call to mind a case where a hard-working, industrious, sober man failed to make a comfortable home for his family. We know of many cases where such a man met with reverses, lost his crop, his cattle, his horses; but never a case where a man met his reverses with a brave heart and trust in God, that he did not overcome them, and come out of the battle a better and prouder man. ”

“ As capital increases, and the utility and profit of stock raising become better understood by the farmer, we shall see fine flocks and herds, in addition to the fields of waving grain, and our rich prairies teeming with the life they can so amply sustain. The abundance of clear, sweet water, dry atmosphere, its elevation, rich pasturage, freedom from disease, and direct and ready access to all the prominent markets, unite to make Minnesota the paradise of stock raisers. Good hay can be put in the stack in Southwestern Minnesota for $1.25 per ton. ”

“ The adaptability of our rich soil for all the staple crops, as proven by experience, the large yield per acre in wheat, oats, potatoes, &c., &c., the immense quantity of good land in large bodies, the truly magnificent water power within the State, and so beneficently located in its different sections; all these advantages, seen beneath a sky always bright, and in a climate at all [Pg 16] seasons healthy, may well account for the enthusiasm which inspired the above eulogy on Minnesota. ”

“ The land is rich and good, and the scene is fair to look at; but the reality is so different from the mental picture he made before setting out for the West, that he feels sad and disappointed. Then as he looks around him at his own,
HE MISSES THE BOSS.
At the thought, the spirit of independence which has led this man thousands of miles, perhaps, to seek a new home, and which sadness and disappointment—the first effects of a great change—for awhile subdued, leaps in his heart, and sends the red blood surging through his veins. ”

“ All the lands in our Catholic colonies are prairie lands, and in the colonies and adjoining counties, as we have already stated, the herd law is in full force.
No one, at the present day, who has any experience in farming in the West, would settle on an unimproved timber farm. It takes a lifetime to clear such a farm, and even then a man leaves some stumps for his grandchildren to take out. But we earnestly [Pg 40] impress upon our settlers the necessity of setting out trees around their prairie homes. The rapid growth of trees set out on any of our prairies, is absolutely wonderful. ”

“ The first rude shanty has given place to a nice two-story frame house, well sheltered from sun and wind by the healthy young trees the farmer planted with his own hands, and in the rear are the snug barn and granary. ”

“ The priest does his best, the Catholic parent grounded in his religion before he ever saw a city does his best, but his circumstances compel him to live where the foul air reeks with blasphemy, and low debauchery; vice and drunkenness are ever before their eyes. ”

“ There is no angry contest here for the possession of the soil, but there is, and should be, a noble, wise emulation among the [Pg 4] various races that have emigrated to these shores, for their just portions of it. The surplus populations in our cities, the depression of business, the scarcity of employment, the poverty, suffering and discontent attending thereon, the magnitude of labor strikes, and the dread of their repetition, have made the question of immigration to the land from our over-crowded cities of pressing, national interest. ”

“ Steele, Waseca, Olmsted, Dodge and Mower counties, our people are settled, prosperous and happy, their valuable farms giving ample and cheerful evidence, how bountifully the soil rewards honest labor. Nor, in their prosperity, have they forgotten Him from whom all blessings flow. ”

“ We want full representation for our people in the city, and full representation on the land. By encouraging those of our people adapted, and best adapted for agricultural pursuits, to seek the land, we benefit them and benefit those who remain behind as well, for we give the latter healthy room and more opportunities: in a word, we improve the condition of our people, both in the city and in the country. ”

“ The danger of a Catholic settling in any of the Western States now, and finding himself entirely isolated, by distance, from his church, is scarcely to be apprehended, for the West has now its handsome churches, its priests and Catholic schools; but it might come to pass, that coming undirected, and without any Catholic organization to which he might apply, the Catholic immigrant might find himself settled in a locality inconveniently distant from church and priest, and where he and his family would be separated from Catholic associations. ”

“ The soil of Southwestern Minnesota is adapted to the successful cultivation of grain, and so celebrated has its grain producing qualities become, that capitalists have put their money into large tracts of land, and have now immense fields under cultivation, and their investments have proven extremely profitable. There are farms of 600, 1,000 and 2,000 acres, all producing Minnesota's great staple, wheat. Every year, as the success of these investments becomes known, new and large farms are opening. ”

“ It has every variety of wealth, and every facility for profitable exchange. There is no more productive soil in the world. Then the State has an abundance of pine timber. It has a vast amount of available water power, and offers every facility and encouragement to manufacturing industry. It has mineral wealth on Lake Superior of iron and copper, in inexhaustible abundance. There is no region in this country, or any country, that I am aware of, that is so well watered. And the water is everywhere clear and pure. It is a land of great rivers, pellucid lakes, and sparkling streams. ”

“ Let a poor man in the city find his all swept away from him, [Pg 8] and what does he do? He slinks into its alleys and lanes, his pleasant, decent rooms are changed for one foul room in a tenement house, from whence, after a little, charity carries him to a pauper's grave.
We have spoken of the general prosperity of our Catholic settlements in Minnesota, and we have not to travel far from its capital to find some of them—only into the adjoining county, Dakota, one of the very finest in the State. ”

“ There is no doubt too, but that persons, during the land excitement last year, made government claims in Big Stone County—some within the colony bounds—which, from one cause or another, they will neglect to hold, by not fulfilling the conditions required by the law governing such claims. In all cases of the kind the lands revert to the government and are again subject to entry. Yet, so rapidly are those lands taken up that we cannot promise to our people, coming from the East, that when they arrive, they will find any homestead land adjoining or within any of our colonies. ”

“ Minnesota is neither a timber nor a prairie State; yet it possesses in a large degree the advantages of both, there being unquestionably a better proportion of timber and prairie, and a more admirable intermingling of the two than in any other State. It is estimated that about one-third of Minnesota is timbered land, of more or less dense growth. In Iowa, it has been officially estimated that only about one-tenth to one-eight of the State is timbered. ”

“ They grow most luxuriantly, and many claim that they contain nearly as much nutriment as ordinary oats. So excellent are the grasses that the tame varieties are but little cultivated. The wild grasses which cover the immense surface of natural meadow land formed by the alluvial bottoms of the intricate network of streams which everywhere intersect the country, are as rich and nutritious in this latitude as the best exotic varieties, hence cultivation is unnecessary. The yield of these grasses is 2.12 tons to the acre, or 60 per cent more than that of Ohio, the great hay State! ”

“ The healthfulness of Minnesota is one of its strongest points. Having been, for a long time, a sanitary resort for persons threatened with pulmonary complaints, it has disappointed no reasonable expectation. It is equally favorable for those afflicted with liver diseases. Thus for the two great organs in the tripod of life, [Pg 20] the liver and lungs, that is for two-thirds of life, Minnesota offers the most favorable conditions. She is more exempt from paludial fevers then any new State settled in the last half century. ”

“ In Illinois—of which corn is the chief staple—Mr. Lincoln, late President of the United States, in the course of an agricultural address in 1859, stated that the average crop from year to year does not exceed twenty bushels per acre.
These results, so favorable to Minnesota as a corn growing as well as wheat growing State, will surprise no one who is familiar with the fact established by climatologists, that "the cultivated [Pg 29] plants yield the greatest products near the northernmost limits at which they will grow." ”

“ Southwestern Minnesota has many advantages for stock raising, its soil is good, none better. Stock raising has been carried on successfully there to the advantage of a great many poor settlers, and men of wealth have opened large grain farms in this section of the State; the largest of these farms adjoins the colony lands of St. Adrian.
Of the 70,000 acres of railroad land which Bishop Ireland holds the control of for colony purposes, 22,000 acres have been sold to settlers. ”

“ Farming to be prosperous the industry on the farm must be diversified; there should be rotation of crops. It will not do to depend altogether on wheat or to be too ambitious to have a great breadth of it under cultivation; not an acre more than the farmer knows he will be well able to have out of the ground in good season, making no chance calculations.
CROP STATISTICS.
WHEAT, OATS, POTATOES, CORN, HAY, SORGHUM, FRUITS.
In 1849, Minnesota was organized into a territory, and the following year, 1850, she had under cultivation 1,900 acres of land. ”