THE PROGRESS OF WESTERN AMERICA, 



foundation industry of man is agriculture, using the 

 term in its broadest sense. The Greater West will 

 furnish the most marvelous field for the various forms 

 of diversified agriculture that has ever been opened 

 to enterprise. Major Powell, who will be accepted as 

 very conservative authority, asserts elsewhere in this 

 number of THE AGE that the arid regions will sup- 

 port a population as great as the present total of the 

 entire United States. There is not space in this de- 

 partment to prove by elaborate argument that the 

 agriculture of Arid America is peculiar in its promise 

 of almost absolute independence, when considered in 

 connection with the home markets with which it is 

 everywhere surrounded. But the proposition may be 

 proven in a dozen lines by reference to a single ex- 

 ample, the truth of which is beyond dispute. Utah 

 presents a fair average of the conditions existing in 

 the arid West. In altitude and climate it is the mean 

 between extremes. Less than fifty years ago it was 

 colonized by a people who had no assets except the 

 brain of a masterful leader of men. Under the guid- 

 ance of this leader a certain industrial policy was 

 applied. The farm unit was fixed at twenty acres. 

 Each family was taught to produce first of all what it 

 consumed, and second, a surplus convertible into some 

 other form of property. This was accomplished by 

 diversified production and intensive scientific cultiva- 

 tion. Upon the public range adjoining the cultivated 

 valleys flocks of sheep and herds of cattle and horses 

 were sustained. This experiment in colonization was 

 carried to success without original capital. The peo- 

 ple lived; they multiplied and prospered; they wrung 

 from unpromising soil the capital for cooperative 

 stores, for factories, for banks. And after paying for 

 all this, they had an ample surplus to carry on costly 

 church enterprises, building massive temples and 

 sending their missionaries to the uttermost parts of 

 the earth. Are the valleys hidden among the mount- 

 ains of Utah any more productive than the irrigable 

 lands of Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana on 

 the north, Colorado and Wyoming on the east, New 

 Mexico, Arizona, California and Nevada on the south 

 and west? Are the unprosperous millions of the old 

 world and old States less capable of conquest over 

 nature than the simple folk who compose the mass of 

 the Mormon people? Is capital distrustful of its 

 ability to find security and create values in conjunc- 

 tion with enlightened labor in a field where labor un- 

 aided by capital has alone created enormous values? 



Agriculture is not the only resource 

 lines of which the West holds out to revive the 

 Industry, sicken prosperity of the times, but 

 agriculture must be the basis of the first great im- 

 pulse of settlement. Population secured, the growth 

 of manufactures will be as phenomenal there in the 

 future as it has been in the East during the past two 



E. S. NETTLETON, 

 Chief Engineer of the Yaqui Irrigation Co. of Mexico. 



generations. Manufactures never precede agricult- 

 ure. They never flourish until the food supply is 

 established, but in the West there are all the raw ma- 

 terials of manufacture and their use will be facilitated 

 by the universal presence of water power and the 

 rapid strides now making in the application of elec- 

 tricity. Mining will ever be a prolific source of 

 wealth, but the wealth so obtained has generally gone 

 quickly to remote metropolitan centers. Mining took 

 over a billion of money from Nevada and left little 

 but tin cans in exchange. The mining camp is a 

 good home market, and as such will have an impor- 

 tant part in the development of the country. Every 

 single State and Territory is now increasing its gold 

 output, and gradually the development of other min- 

 eral resources is supplying the place of the silver 

 industry. In all these lines of activity success will 

 turn on the policy of industrialism. Speculation is 

 eliminated. Western institutions will stand the test 

 of the new principle as readily as it will repudiate any 

 attempt to revive the operation of the old. Let any 

 fair-minded man compare the natural endowments 

 of western States with those of the East and he will 

 have a sudden and startling revelation of future 

 events. 



