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Provided by: Harold Victor Eck
I secured another quarter section of school land nine miles northeast of Newkirk and moved there in 1894 and stayed there for thirty-seven years, until I lost one of my arms in 1931, when I came to the town of Newkirk.
On this school land where I lived so long I raised lots of horses and mules. I kept a good jack and stallion and one year I collected $2500 in cash that they made in breeding.
Through the more prosperous years I had made some investments in different enterprises, among which was a Community Co-operative store gotten up by the farmers of the community. This institution has proved a success and saved the farmers many dollars in the purchase of their commodities.
At one time when coal sold by the local dealers in Newkirk for $6 a ton, the Community store bought several cars of coal that was sold to the people at $4 a ton - a saving of one-third in their coal bill expense. Seed potatoes that were sold at $1.50 per bushel by merchants of the town were bought by the Community store and sold for 70 cents a bushel.
The store grew and prospered and added to its stock until it now carries all kinds of merchandise, including implements and furniture and at the same time it has paid dividends to the stockholders that was a fair return on the money invested. I still have a small amount of stock that I invested in the beginning in the institution.
Many of the other investments I had made in the prosperous years of my life were lost in the decades of prices in 1929 to the later years. In 1932 I moved to the town of Newkirk and have lived here ever since.
