Page:History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century Volume 1.djvu/583



The slow but sure accumulation of property on the fertile prairie farms had brought a degree of prosperity to all classes and there was gradual relief from continuous toil and rigid economy that was unavoidable in the pioneer years.

The new system of banks had for the first time furnished a safe currency for the transaction of business and eastern capital was now seeking investment in the State, facilitating the building of railroads and thus furnishing better markets. The liberal grants of public lands for railroad building attracted the attention of outside capitalists and far-seeing men realized that these fertile millions of acres must become valuable as they were made accessible to markets by the extension of railroads.

The hard times beginning with 1857 were passing away, and a steady and heavy immigration was annually coming into the State in search of cheap homes. Thousands of eastern men of wealth were sending money where the legal rate of interest was ten per cent, and the security as fertile lands as any in the world.

The reports of the discovery of rich gold deposits in the eastern range of the Rocky Mountains, near Pike’s Peak in 1859, attracted thousands of Iowa people to that region, and it is likely that these departures in search of gold nearly equaled the immigration from eastern States into Iowa. But the tide soon turned back and most of the gold seekers returned to the prairies of Iowa again, better content to rely upon the steady gains derived with certainty from the fertile soil of well-tilled farms.