THE REPUBLIC OF IRRIGATION. 



191 



ised "new forms of civilization 1 ' and "new life to 

 popular institutions." The foundation of their phil- 

 osophy of great average prosperity for common 

 people will be the small farm, varying in different 

 localities from ten acres to forty acres. Irrigation 

 will make its crops absolutely sure and enable its 

 proprietor to cultivate it intensely and scientifically, 

 to the end that each acre shall produce the largest 

 possible crop of the best possible quality. We do 

 not yet know precisely what this means, since 

 progress is constant, but we do know that the small 

 farm, intelligently managed, under these conditions 

 will produce many times as much in pecuniary value, 

 acre for acre, as land in the most favored sections of 

 the rain belt. 



PRODUCING WHAT THE FAMILY CONSUMES. 



But we have not yet stated the fundamental tenet 

 of the new philosophy. It is this: That each family 

 shall produce, by a system of diversified farming, as 

 nearly as possible everything it consumes. During 

 the past ten years the tendency has been very much 

 in the opposite direction. We have the Tobacco 

 Belt of Virginia, the Cotton Belt of the Gulf States, 

 the Wheat Belt of Kansas, Minnesota and the Ua- 

 kotas, the Corn Belt of Nebraska. On the Pacific 

 coast we have the prune district, the raisin district 

 and the orange district. Now, we can have too many 

 prunes, raisins and oranges, too much wheat, corn 

 and cotton, but we cannot have too many people ab- 

 solutely self-supporting and hence beyond the reach 

 of industrial calamity. We shall always have periods 

 of financial distress. The prices of the great staples 

 will sometimes fall below the cost of production. 

 Manufacturing communities will sometimes be idle. 

 The ships of commerce will sometimes lie becalmed 

 on the sea of world-wide depression. But for the 

 man who lives under his own roof, producing system- 

 atically from his own land what his family consumes, 

 there can be no panic, no calamity, no hardship, no 

 despair. He and his will eat three meals each day 

 and feed " industrial armies " at their door. 



THE ONE-CROP ERROR IN THE WEST. 



It is not claimed that this ideal industrial condition 

 has yet been fully realized, even in the arid region. 

 In a recent speech a resident of the San Joaquin val- 

 ley of California made these truthful observations : 



"We let our timber rot and buy fencing. We 

 throw away our ashes and grease and buy soap. We 

 raise dogs and buy hogs. We let our manure go to 

 waste and buy guano. We grow weeds and buy 

 vegetables and brooms. We catch five-cent fish with 

 a four-dollar rod. We build school houses and send 

 our children off to be educated. And, lastly, we send 

 our boys out with a forty-dollar gun and a ten-dollar 

 dog to hunt for ten-cent birds." 



Another intelligent western man recently stated in 

 an interview: " It seems a funny thing that thousands 

 of ranchers in this western country should buy con- 

 densed milk, canned fruits and vegetables, and 

 stranger still that they must buy the common fruits 

 and vegetables of the country from their wiser broth- 

 ers, or go without them. . It is worse than funny or 

 strange, when not only the stockman from the ranges, 

 but also the wheat-growers and fruit-growers in the 

 fertile valleys, send their dollars by hundreds and 

 thousands two thousand miles away for hams and 

 bacon, butter and eggs, when all may be produced of 

 the highest quality on their own places. Southern 

 planters have told me that their worst troubles came 

 not from the war in the sixties, but from the exclusive 

 cotton planting that followed after the war, induced 

 by the unnaturally high prices of that period." 



There is great truth in all this, but only a slight 

 beginning has been made in the settlement of the 

 arid region. The high prices formerly obtained for 

 cattle and sheep in some localities, and for fruit in 

 others, did lead farmers in the arid region into the 

 wrong path. But they have not gone far and, what 

 is much more important, ninety-nine one-hundredths 

 of the population of Arid America has still to make its 

 start. And a very large proportion of the new popu- 

 lation will start right. 



BRIGHAM YOUNG'S SUCCESSFUL POLICY. 



Against the folly and error of the one-crop country, 

 east and west, there is one bright example of success 

 through diversified production which cannot be too 

 often recalled. It is the example of the builders of 

 Utah. They went to that beautiful land a little less 

 than fifty years ago as a band of fugitives. They 

 were cut off by high mountain ranges and great dis- 

 tances, then untraversed by the iron horse, from civ- 

 ilization. They had no assets, save the brain of a 

 masterful leader of men. Whatever may be thought 

 of the religious doctrines then sincerely held and 

 practiced by the Mormon people, Brigham Young 

 was a very great man. He was animated by the 

 spirit of the empire-builder. In all-round practical 

 sense and capacity to do a great many things well, he 

 much resembled Benjamin Franklin. Finding him- 

 self in what appeared to be a hopeless desert, he 

 formulated an industrial system to which he adhered 

 to the day of his death. So perfectly was he able to 

 enforce it that every Mormon farmer and artisan 

 labored with the brain of Brigham Young. He said 

 the farm unit should be twenty acres. He said each 

 family should produce first of all what it consumed 

 and then a surplus exchangeable for some other form 

 of property. The surrounding mountains were burst- 

 ing with mineral wealth, but he said it should lie there 

 untouched, because of all things he abhorred the 

 spirit of speculation. He had founded his state upon 



