Most of the aristocrats who came early to Iowa to build up estates, lost
everything they had, and became poor; for they did not work with their
own hands, and the work of others' hands was inefficient and cost,
anyhow, as much as it produced or more. Gowdy would have gone broke long
before the cheap land was gone, if it had not been for the money he got
from Kentucky. The poor men like me, the peasants from Europe like
Magnus--we were the ones who made good, while the gentility
went bankrupt.
After a few years the land began to take on what the economists call
"unearned increment," or community value, and the Gowdy lands began the
work which finally made him a millionaire; but it was not his work. It
was mine, and Magnus Thorkelson's, and the work of the neighbors
generally, on the farms and in the towns. It was the railroads and
school and churches. He would have made property faster to let his land
lie bare until in the 'seventies. I could see that his labor was
bringing him a loss, every day's work of it; and at breakfast I was
studying out ways to organize it better,--when a small hand pushed a cup
of coffee past my cheek, and gave my nose a little pinch as it was drawn
back. I looked up, and there was Rowena, waiting on our table!
"Hello, Jake!" said she. "I heared you was dead."
"Hello, Rowena," I answered. "I'm just breathin' my last!"
All the hands began yelling at us.
"No sparkin' here!"
"None o' them love pinches, Rowena!"
"I swan to man if that Dutchman ain't cuttin' us all out!"
"Quit courtin' an' pass them molasses, sweetness!"
"Mo' po'k an' less honey, thar!"--this from a Missourian.
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