190 



THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



between the Rocky mountains and the Sierras, 

 bounded on the north by Canada and on the south 

 by Mexico. Montana, Idaho, Utah, Nevada, Wyom- 

 ing, New Mexico and Arizona each and all of 

 these mighty commonwealths of the future are wide 

 awake at last to the tremendous significance which 

 irrigation holds to the evolution of their industrial, 

 social and civic life. 



THE IMPERIAL AMERICAN. 



Before proceeding to a statement of the practical 

 side of the subject, let me say a word about the char- 

 acteristics of the western man. Of all Americans, 

 he is the one imperial American. While he labors 

 incessantly in the making of cities and States, he is 

 thinking of his country's glory and his country's 

 greatness. The citizen of New England, like the 

 citizen of the South, is full of the pride of his pro- 

 vincial history. He has much to be proud of along 

 this line, and very naturally it colors his thought and 

 conviction. The citizenship of the West is founded 

 on New England and southern stock, and its aspira- 

 tions are curiously and grandly blended in a desire to 

 make the western States and Territories the great- 

 est and best half of the American Union. The pro- 

 gress of the West, as the citizens of that section see 

 it, is inseparably associated with the progress of the 

 United States. Men go out into a western wilder- 

 ness from ancestral homes in eastern and southern 

 States and foreign countries, and resolutely face the 

 ghardships of pioneer life. They subdue Indians and 

 wild animals, divert rivers, conquer deserts, open 

 mines, construct railroads and build towns, and then 

 they return and proudly lay a new American State 

 at the feet of the mother nation. This they have 

 done in the spirit of imperialists, and in the same 

 spirit they continue to urge forward the development 

 of the Territories they have acquired. . 



II. -ARID AMERICA'S CLAIM ON MAN- 

 KIND. 



The number of physicians who profess to have 

 sure remedies for the present ills of the world is very 

 great, but the men of the West do not hesitate to 

 make their appeal to the great good sense of the 

 people on that account. They know the potential! 

 ties of the arid region for the production of average 

 prosperity. They appreciate the tremendous fer- 

 tility of the irrigation idea. Their dependence is not 

 upon legislation, except in the most incidental way, 

 but upon brains and muscle and human sympathies. 

 These are elements not peculiar to any race or age, 

 and elements of which a supply is not lacking, even 

 in these hard times. 



THE DESIRE FOR INDEPENDENCE. 



The first desire of man is to be independent. This 

 is one of the precious things for which men have 

 struggled through the centuries. True independ- 

 ence is not merely immunity from the exactions of 

 church and state. For more than a hundred years 

 this republic has offered an asylum for those op" 

 pressed by pope and king, and yet we are very far 

 from a realization of that quality of independence 

 dearest to the human heart. This is security in the 

 support of one's family. The sharp and sudden 

 business convulsion of last summer, followed by the 

 long period of depression, again taught the world 

 that no man is independent who does not live under 

 his own roof, and support his family from the pro- 

 ducts of his own acres. In the best sense no man is 

 independent who works for another. He cannot tell 

 at what moment a threat of tariff-tinkering at Wash- 

 ington, the cessation of silver coinage in India, or 

 the collapse of a boom in Argentina or Australia, may 

 render his fancied security in employment a precari- 

 ous dependence for the support of his family. 



THE FAILURE OF AGRICULTURE. 



It will instantly occur to the reader of these pages 

 that our agricultural population is nearly, if not 

 quite, as unprosperous to-day as the arm) of laborers 

 in great cities and manufacturing towns. There is 

 much truth in this, and to say that the average farmer 

 is barely existing is to fail of a complete statement 

 of the case. He is not only unprosperous, but un- 

 happy as well. His children have been leaving the 

 farm to swell the already superfluous population of 

 great cities. His wife has lived in drudgery on the 

 lonely expanses of the big farm. She has been de- 

 nied the comfort of near neighbors and nearly all the 

 advantages of social, literary and religious institu- 

 tions. The universal unrest is nowhere more marked 

 than on the farm. Indeed, the farmers of the West 

 and South have been foremost in forsaking old po- 

 litical idols to join in new movements, tending they 

 knew not whither, in the vague hope of finding reme- 

 dies for existing evils. If the men of Arid America 

 offered no remedy except farming in the sense that 

 farming is now known, they would not expect their 

 prescription to be enthusiastically received, or cheer- 

 fully taken. 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE SMALL FARM. 



Arid America does indeed intend to turn the cur- 

 rent back to the soil and to revive the charm of coun- 

 try life, but the agricultural industry of the new em- 

 pire and the new century will have little in common 

 with the agricultural industry as it exists to-day east 

 of the imaginary line which divides the humid area of 

 the United States from the semi-arid and arid 

 regions. The men of the irrigation congress prom- 



