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A History By Sam Schall [Schaal], Sr. -1895

       From the Church in the Settlement, we made a road across the country to Claremont. There was not one farm until we got within two miles of town. Five farmers lived around Claremont -Wellman and Kern, east along the railroad; Fuller on the north, Hobart and Chalmers northeast.
       Claremont had one store which Jim Roberts operated. He had the post office, dry goods, drugs, groceries and a little hardware. He sat in a wheel chair, as he could not walk, but his head was all business. To get trade from the Settlement he would pay one or two cents per dozen or more for eggs, and sell a sack of flour five cents cheaper than Burlington, and that would do it.
       He got around pretty good in the store. At noon his wife would come after him for dinner and bring him back, and the same mornings and evenings. They built a sidewalk from his home to the store. His home was where the Mobile Homes has now rented a garage for their work. Roberts had one man to help, and he was the only dealer in town. He would order farm implements, plows, wagons, or anything you wanted. In two weeks you would have it, and you paid for it when you got it. I got two John Deere plows and a Moline Wagon from him, and saved ten dollars each on them.
       In the Spring of 1889; the John Zeigler family came from Tripp, South Dakota, and settled seven and a half miles southwest of our church. His father bought land for him and he took a homestead. He was the only man between the Settlement and Claremont. He told me how the antelope would run around in bunches of fifteen to thirty head. We had quite a few of them in the early years. People would go out at lambing time and catch a few, raise them on cow's milk and tame them. E. G. Davis had a pair for several years, a billy and a nanny. The nanny was shy, but the billy would come to you.
       (This is not about Stratton, but it is descriptive of the times. It is included to show what people went through in those days.) In 1892 I went to Denver and got a job in the Globe Smelter on the blast furnace. There were twelve of them. They melted are to get gold, silver, lead and copper. We had to wheel the red hot slag away from the furnace. A bigger pot on a steel truck that operated on a little railroad, took it from there and dumped it farther away. We had two cars that worked three hundred and sixty-five days a year without stopping, in two twelve-hour shifts that worked from six to six, and we were paid two dollars and sixty cents per day. We changed shifts every two weeks, from days to nights. It was a hoi job and a lot of sweat went into the dollar before it went into your pocket. E ach furnace had a lead well, and a man poured the melted ore into molds of one hundred and ten pounds each. When it cooled they were put on railroad cars and taken to the refinery and smelted. There were about seven hundred men working. Free silver was the big issue in 1892. In the election that Fan, Harrison was the Republican candidate and Cleveland was the Democrat. He was for free silver and was elected, then the bottom dropped out and the smelters and the mines closed. When I went back to Denver in 1893 they were still closed. I tried the ranches to get work, putting up alfalfa. I got a job on a dairy farm, but when the first crop was cut they laid us off for two weeks. After that I went back and helped cut the second crop. It was all pitch fork work. Things got worse and Denver was full of idle men. I bought a ticket home and cut feed with a knife. There were no binders.
       In the Spring of 1894, after I had put in some crops on my place and took my stock to E.G. Davis, I went to Denver again, but the conditions had not changed. It was a very dry year. I looked for work in Nebraska and Kansas but couldn't find any. Some believed they should go to Washington to see the President and ask for help. They made up an army of eight hundred thousand men with Coxy as their leader. Cleveland heard about their coming and they never got to see him. He never did anything to help either.
In the fall I went home and spent the winter in peace and rested. Several of the homesteaders went to other states, but we had no place to go, so we stayed knowing that God feeds the sparrows and would feed us. He did, or we would not be here today.
       In 1895 I went to the smelter for the last time. They were running but had cut the wages to two dollars for twelve hours of work. I went to work and was glad to get it.