Mention of the conditions prevailing which molded the lives of our people at that time would be incomplete unless tribute was paid to the courage and resourcefulness of the women. Men may excel in physical courage, but the moral courage displayed by the women generally in those sombre days was fully sufficient to warrant any student of human nature in concluding that in time of universal and long drawn out disaster and hardship the women can carry the heavy load. The sublime hope and courage of the women of Dawes county were the chief props of our community life during the disastrous years of the nineties.

The people of the county today have no more fear of a return of the conditions of the nineties than of a repetition of the grasshopper scourge, for the reason that we have learned what the country is adapted for and how its natural resources may be utilized ; our industries are established and the foundations of our prosperity are sure.

Among other things, those pioneer settlers did demonstrate for us that ordinary farming methods as carried on in eastern Nebraska and Iowa were largely impractical in Dawes county in the average season; that the breeding and raising of horses, cattle and hogs, and the growing of alfalfa were more essential to the success and prosperity of the agriculturist than the raising of wheat and other cereals ; that is to say, experience has satisfied the old timers that it is a country better adapted to ranching than farming; that by combining ranching with farming the income for a term of years is sure and certain, for, no matter how unfavorable the season, a fair crop of grasses native to the climate is sure to grow and mature, which, when brown and cured, are rich in substance and a crop of much money value.