THE REPUBLIC OF IRRIGATION. 



WITH OPEN LETTERS TO SEVERAL DISTINGUISHED AMERICANS. 



BY WILLIAM E. SMYTHE. 



BEHIND the creative energies of the new gener- 

 ation of western Americans stands the concep- 

 tion of a noble civilization. The time seems to have 

 come when the great message may be profitably de- 

 livered to the country and to the world. Silently, but 

 swiftly and surely, in seventeen States and Territo- 

 ries, men are laying broad and deep the foundations 

 of institutions. The results of their labor and faith 

 will be calculated, not merely by miles of ditches 

 built and acres of soil reclaimed, but in social and 

 economic developments more precious to humanity 

 than material assets. 



The representatives of the irrigation movement, 

 assembled in their international congress at Los 

 Angeles in October, 1893, declared that a national ir- 

 rigation policy meant "not only the conquest of a 

 new agricultural empire and a tremendous contribu- 

 tion to the national wealth of the future, but involved 

 the development of new forms of civilization and will 

 give new life to popular institutions." This declara- 

 tion was merely a generalization, but it rested upon 

 convictions that are real and upon ideas that are 

 workable in a practical sense. 



A NEW OUTLET FOR HUMAN ENERGIES. 



Human genifls demands a new field for conquest. 

 The conditions of prosperous activity in all settled 

 communities, alike in the new world and in the old, 

 appear to have been outgrown. For the past twenty 

 years the current of population has set steadily and 

 strongly in the direction of great cities. Manufact- 

 uring industries have enormously expanded and 

 agriculture and horticulture have exhibited the same 

 tendency to specialism that has marked the recent 

 development of nearly all trades and professions. 

 We are in the midst of a world-wide depression that 

 will be historic. Industries are in total or partial idle- 

 ness. Millions of people who have formerly added 

 something each Saturday night to their savings ac- 

 counts are drawing to-day upon their principal. 

 Tens of thousands are menaced by real hardship, and 

 thousands of desperate men are marching in the di- 

 rection of the national capital to demand relief. 

 Whatever may be the cause and whatever the rem- 

 edy, the condition is not in dispute. Industry and 

 commerce show an unhealthy pulse. 



ARID AMERICA'S OPPORTUNITY. 



It almost seems as if there were too many people 

 in this world as if there were more mouths to feed 



than food with which to satisfy them. Whether we 

 have reached the crisis of our social and industrial 

 woes, or whether events more dangerous than any 

 yet encountered are still before us, no one can tell. 

 But it seems plain that the world demands some new 

 field for the profitable employment of human ener- 

 gies, some field which will not only absorb labor, but 

 reward it, at least, with the means of living. In this 

 situation, so full of evil promise to many students of 

 events, Arid America beholds her opportunity. Her 

 friends have long seen that the time must come when 

 she would present the one broad field remaining on 

 this continent for agricultural and industrial expan- 

 sion, but they expected that the realization of this 

 condition would come gradually and that it would 

 not be very marked for some years. It seems, how- 

 ever, to be close at hand. In this springtime of 1894 

 the first light of a new morning appears to be break- 

 ing for Arid America. It is in her valleys and upon 

 her plains, guarded and shadowed by her eternal 

 mountains, that the problem of how to find the high- 

 est average prosperity for the common people may 

 be solved. The case needs but able and* persistent 

 presentation to take it home to a world that is sorely 

 in need of such a solution. 



THE THEATRE OF FUTURE EVENTS. 



The drama of the future will be enacted in West- 

 ern America. Its stage will be half a continent. 

 The period of greatest development will be the 

 twentieth century. And those who have most care- 

 fully studied the conditions to be presented by the 

 new country, and the forces that will rule the new 

 time, religiously believe that there and then civiliza- 

 tion will score its highest triumphs. It is unneces- 

 sary to describe here the wealth and variety of the 

 resources, soil, and climate of the States and Terri- 

 tories of the West, since every issue of THE IRRI- 

 GATION AGE is a reflection of these things. But it 

 may be said that in all parts of this broad empire the 

 people are alive to their responsibilities, and realize 

 the importance of the things which are being borne 

 to them on the swift tide of time. Along the eastern 

 boundary of the arid region in the Dakotas, in Ne- 

 braska, in Kansas, in Oklahoma and in Texas ir- 

 rigation is beginning to receive the profound atten- 

 tion of the people. The same is true along the west- 

 ern boundary, in California, in Oregon, and in Wash- 

 ington. So also in that wonderful region which lies 



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