Dakota Farmers Flee 'Doubtful Crops' for the Sound
Two merchants from Monango, North Dakota, scouting Washington for agricultural opportunity, describe a cycle of debt and despair in the Midwest that drives farmers westward.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
D. P. Kuhn and B. Magoffin, merchants of Monango, North Dakota, are currently visiting Seattle to investigate the region as a potential new home. Mr. Magoffin stated, 'We have gotten tired of that country of doubtful crops and we came out here to see what this country was like. We have gone out among your farmers, seen their fields, and talked with them, and so far as I am concerned, I am coming here to live. These people in Dakota are industrious, thrifty farmers, but the conditions are too hard. We have to do a credit business, and when a bad season comes, we have to carry the farmers; if a second or third bad crop comes, we can never get settled up. Farmers there, filled with hope and energy, get $400 or $500 in debt for equipment, and after struggling for years, are swallowed up by their mortgage. Farming doesn't pay in Dakota, but I believe it will pay here.'
“Farmers come there and, filled with hope and energy, get $400 or $500 in debt for a team or implements, and after struggling along for eight or nine years, are finally swallowed up by their mortgage.”
The economic migration described here—driven by climate volatility and the impossible debt cycles of agrarian life—echoes contemporary debates about climate-induced migration and the precarity of the modern farmer. These Dakotan merchants were part of a massive late-19th-century internal migration that transformed Washington into a bustling, speculative boomtown.
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