Excerpt from Gazette and Courier, Greenfield, Mass., July 18, 1914; transcribed by Pamela Hodgkins 2025.
Various Phases of County Life

There has been a large increase in values in farming land in Deerfield, Sunderland and Whately in the last 15 years, particularly in land for the cultivation of onions. The average price for good onion and tobacco land has been sold as high as $1000 an acre, and much onion and tobacco land cannot be purchased at any reasonable price. 

There has been no particular increase in the price of tobacco land alone in the past 15 years, although in years of depression, when the prices for tobacco are poor, the land sells far less readily and at somewhat lower prices. It was within 15 years that land in the three towns sold as low as $35 to $50 an acre. 

An acre of onion land can now be leased at $50 an acre for a single year. The increase in the price of land in the three towns is due to the coming in of the Poles. They are willing to work long hours, to live at the start in a very crude way and save their money. It is not an uncommon sight now in the three towns to see Polish women weeding onions, going across the fields on their hands and knees and at times having their babies in carriages alongside. The Poles have courage. After they have accumulated $100 or $200, they are ready to run in debt for land, give their notes and in a few years many of them have accumulated several thousand dollars. 

There are Poles now living in the three towns who are probably worth from $10,000 to $15,000 each, who started living in henhouses or out-buildings. Their children have graduated from the schools with high honors. [Greenfield correspondent. Boston Globe]