The Irrigation Schemes of the West. 907 



ferred to keep vacant until a growing demand should bring an 

 increase in their selling value, and the Bostonians living round 

 these lots should endeavor to seize them, under color of develop- 

 ing Boston and providing homes for the homeless, one can im- 

 agine the indignation of the owners and the opinion they would 

 express of the conscienceless rapacity of the plotters. The shoe 

 is on the other foot; it is not their ox that is gored; and the 

 j)lotting and scheming goes bravely on. 



This brings us directly to the answer to the question — no mat- 

 ler about the past; what is now to be done? Just exactly this. 

 Let every man of you resolve to exert himself in all proper ways 

 (and there are man}) to kill every bill that comes before this 

 present session of Congress and every future session for the irri- 

 gation under any pretense of the arid lands, or for the giving of 

 them away to the States in which they lie. You can accomplish 

 infinitely more than you perhaps suppose, if you will use your 

 power. The editorial pages of the Country Gentleman will keep 

 you constantly informed of every one of these miserable b'.lls as it 

 comes up, giving definitely the number on the calendar, the name 

 of the introducer, and the committee to which it is referred. Let 

 every man who hears me sit down then, immediately, and write 

 a personal letter to his Senators or to his Representative, accord- 

 ing as the bill makes its appearance in the Senate or in the House, 

 and also to the chairman of the committee having it under con- 

 sideration, invoking his active opposition. Let him ask all his 

 neighbors to do the same. Let him see that his grange, or any sort 

 of agricultural union with which he may be affiliated, adopts ring- 

 ing resolutions of protest, and that the secretary sends copies to 

 the Representative and the Senators. God helps those who help 

 themselves. If the farmers of the East permit the far-western 

 schemers to pursue their course of determined spoliation, enrich- 

 ing themselves, indirectly perhaps, but not the less really, at your 

 expense and mine, the farmers of the East must expect conditions 

 increasingly unfavorable, year after year, decade after decade, for 

 themselves and for their children; must expect that increasingly 

 severe and unintermitted toil will yield increasingly meagre re- 

 turns; and must expect themselves to descend gradually but 

 steadily in the social scale till there shall be none so poor to do 

 them mfimce. In time, no doubt, a century or two perhaps, 



