" Not above taking government assistance himself—as an official, he had his rent paid by the state—Pillsbury warned farmers against “weakening the habit of self-reliance.”82 To comfort the starving, he prescribed a day of prayer. Throughout his term, he would trivialize “poverty and deprivation” as “incidents of frontier life at its best.”83 The St. Paul Pioneer Press praised Pillsbury’s censure of grasshopper paupers, reasoning that any relief would have a “very demoralizing effect” on those known for their “suicidal indolence.” The “better class of people,” it argued, would not demean themselves by accepting aid. “If anybody chooses to lie down and be eaten up by grasshoppers,” it remarked, “we don’t care much if he is devoured body, boots, and breeches.”84 "

― Caroline Fraser , Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder