Already
several of our young men are reading dime novels and taking
lessons in banditry; but the sheriff has stated that this
parole will not be considered a precedent. The affair has
resulted in some good, however. In addition to placing the
young man under Christian influences, and others, it has
unearthed a patch of the biggest, best, ripest and sweetest
wild strawberries in Monterey County on the ancestral estate
of the criminal, known as Vandemark's Folly, and by the use
of prison labor, and through the generosity and public spirit
of our rising young fellow-citizen, Jacob T. Vandemark--whom
we hereby salute--we are promised another strawberry festival
before the crop is gone.
"In the meantime, it is worthy of mention that the industry
of claim-jumping has suffered a sudden slump, and that the
splendid pioneers who have opened up this Garden of Eden will
not be robbed of the fruits of their enterprise."
When I came to run for county supervisor, he rehashed the matter without
giving any hint that after all what I did was approved of by the people
of the county in 1856 when these things took place or that he himself
was in it up to the neck! But enough of that: the historical fact is
that Settlers' Clubs did work of this sort all over Iowa in those times,
and right or wrong, the pioneers held to the lands they took up when the
great tide of the Republic broke over the Mississippi and inundated
Iowa.
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