the stress of adversity peculiar to the condition of the frontier farmer, there has come to be an expansion of the legal meaning of the term “poor” sufficient to embrace a class of destitute citizens who have not yet become a public charge. The main features of the seed-grain statute are neither new nor novel. It was borrowed from territorial legislation, and long prior to that the state of Minnesota, in aid of agricultural settlers upon its western frontier, enacted a series of statutes which are open to every criticism which can be made upon the statute under consideration. Chapter 43, Laws Dak. 1889. See also, pp. 1024-1030, Gen. St. Minn. 1878.
The legislature of Minnesota has frequently, and by a variety of laws, extended aid to the frontier farmers of that state, who, far from being paupers, were yet reduced to extremities, by reason of continued crop failures resulting from hailstorms, successive seasons of drought, and from the ravages of grasshoppers. Under one law, towns are authorized to vote a tax to defray the expense of destroying grasshoppers; under another statute, the governor, state auditor, and state treasurer were authorized to borrow $100,000 on state bonds, to be issued by them, and the proceeds were to be expended in the purchase of seed-grain for the needy farmers. Again, and at the same session, the same state officials were empowered to issue additional bonds to the same amount, to pay a debt contracted for a similar purpose, upon warrants of the state auditor. § 6 of the Minnesota act of 1878, c. 93, provides as follows: ‘The credit of the state is hereby pledged to the payment of the interest and principal of the bonds mentioned in this act, as the same may become due.” By another section the state auditor is authorized and required to levy an annual tax necessary to meet the interest and principal of the debt created by these bonds. Many of the features of the two seed-grain statutes passed at the first session of the legislature of this state are borrowed from Minnesota. In principle, the legislation of the two states is identical The aid extended is furnished in the form of a loan to individual farmers, secured on their crops, but to be met primarily by taxation. The destitute communities of farmers who were thus assisted in a neighboring state
