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.