True, many of them could not last out in the bitter combined
fight with nature and the grasping conditions of commerce and
transportation of that time. The western Canadian farmer of today
is a cherished, almost a petted being. But no one ever showed any
mercy to the American farmer who moved out West.
As always has been the case, a certain number of wagons might be
seen passing back East, as well as the somewhat larger number
steadily moving westward. There were lean years and dry years,
hot years, yellow years here and there upon the range. The phrase
written on one disheartened farmer's wagon top, "Going back to my
wife's folks," became historic.
The railways were finding profit in carrying human beings out to
the cow-range just as once they had in transporting cattle.
Indeed, it did not take the wiser railroad men long to see that
they could afford to set down a farmer, at almost no cost for
transportation, in any part of the new West. He would after that
be dependent upon the railroad in every way. The railroads
deliberately devised the great land boom of 1886, which was more
especially virulent in the State of Kansas.
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