THE IRRIGATION AGE 



VOL. VI. 



CHICAGO, JUNE, 1894. 



No. 6, 



THE PROGRESS OF WESTERN AMERICA. 



It has frequently been asserted in these 

 Overheard . , . . 



in Wall pages that the outlook for irrigation and 



Street. co ] on y development in the Greater West 

 is better to-day, in the midst of uncertain times and 

 widespread depression, than it has ever been before. 

 The statement has been made in good faith, and is 1 

 founded upon a knowledge of certain currents that 

 are, perhaps, better known to the writer than to the 

 public generally. Important business plans that may 

 be definitely discussed in private circles long before 

 it would be prudent to make them public often fur- 

 nish good ground for confident predictions about the 

 future. During the first days in May an interesting 

 conference occurred in New York City, at which the 

 future of irrigation and general western development 

 was discussed by several gentlemen representing 

 very different points of view and experience. One of 

 the party had just arrived from Europe, where he has 

 placed, personally and through agents, not far from 

 83,000,000 of irrigation securities in the past three 

 years. Another who was present is one of the most 

 eminent of New York lawyers, who is in very close 

 touch, from his office in Wall street, with the most 

 conservative class of eastern financiers. A third 

 gentleman is the owner of about two million acres of 

 land in the arid region, and he enjoys a very exten- 

 sive acquaintance with financial men and institutions 

 on both sides of the Atlantic. The fourth party is a 

 foreigner, but one whose business has kept him in this 

 country, engaged in the most exhaustive study of 

 irrigation enterprises, for months past. The fifth 

 party at the meeting was the editor of THE IRRIGA- 

 TION AGE. These five persons perhaps represented 

 as fairly as any five who could have been assembled 

 the various elements of knowledge and observation 

 essential to a just analysis of the situation, at home 

 and abroad, and to a reasonable forecast of the future. 

 Europe, New York and the West were reflected in 

 the views expressed, and the temperamental differ- 

 ences represented in the several personalities were 

 as wide apart as the localities from whence they came. 



PROF. CHARLES D. WALCOTT, 



Of New York, nominated by the President for Director of Geo- 

 logical Survey, vice Powell Resigned. See page 233. 



Here are The European financier stated that dur- 

 Worth 3 m S t ^ ie P ast ^ ew wee ks interest in general. 

 Having, investments had notably awakened ; con- 

 fidence is being gradually restored throughout Great 

 Britain; the total amount of money hoarded up as the 

 result of the panic following the failures in Australia 

 and the United States, and the collapse of English 

 trust companies somewhat in consequence of foreign 

 disasters, is enormous, in spite of the vast losses; this, 

 money is beginning to ask how it can earn a fair rate 

 of interest without unreasonably hazarding its princi- 

 pal; faith in America as the field of future industrial 

 expansion, and in Western America as the part of the 

 United States where the growth of values will be 

 largest and most rapid, is deeply founded. To these 

 generalizations the European emphatically added the 



225-, 



