THE PROGRESS OF WESTERN AMERICA. 



229 



among circles especially interested in investments, can 

 prevent the success of any project which does not de- 

 serve to succeed. It is not a grateful task to assail 

 anybody's project, but it is a pleasure compared with 

 the sensation of witnessing the needless loss of 

 honest dollars in an industry which offers the 

 most ample security for investment and the most 

 generous return for human industry. There ought 

 not to be another irrigation failure of any conse- 

 quence in the next five years. There will not be 

 if western men do their duty, and eastern and 

 foreign agents and investors exercise proper care. 

 THE IRRIGATION AGE invites the public to call for a 

 statement of any water and land enterprise in which 

 the public is asked to invest. We will state the facts 

 fearlessly, concisely and as promptly as they can be 

 ascertained and verified, and we invite all friends 

 of Western America to join us in a war of extermina- 

 tion against every species of fraud and deception in 

 this, the most magnificent field for investment and 

 industry now open to human enterprise. 



The The people of this country are suffering 



andThePub 1 - a S ood deal of distress J ust at this time 

 lie l,ands. but the things they suffer now are not 



as bad as those they dimly fear. They are oppressed 

 by dread of grave consequences to flow from the 

 congested population of great cities, from the idle 

 hands in manufacturing towns, from unprosperous 

 and therefore discontented planters and farmers on 

 southern and mid-western farms. And in their 

 distress, present and prospective, they turn as they 

 did of yore to the great West, where elbow room has 

 always been found for surplus men and energies. 

 Propositions looking to the speedy occupation of the 

 arid public lands are cropping up in all parts of the 

 country. The labor unions of Cincinnati demand 

 that the unemployed shall be set at work construct- 

 ing canals to reclaim public lands and that they 

 shall then be permitted to make homes upon these 

 lands. Similar propositions have been advanced in 

 Chicago, St. Louis and Denver. An impressive reso- 

 lution adopted by the St. Paul Chamber of Commerce 

 recites that no good can come of the weary tramp to 

 the national capital; that banks have got down to 

 bedrock ; that all industry and commerce are in 

 process of readjustment; and, finally, that it is ap- 

 parent that cities and towns are overgrown and that 

 the solution of the economic tangle is the location of 

 surplus population on surplus agricultural lands. All 

 this simply confirms what has long been asserted and 

 predicted by the men of the West. It is all very 

 true. The future belongs to Arid America. There 

 alone can population safely expand; there alone can 

 labor win independence; there alone can a new and 

 a better civilization be erected under the impulse of 

 the new century about to be born. 



And yet the results so much to be desired 

 Obstacles 



to the cannot be realized immediately. Large 

 Movement. o bj ects mO ve slowly. It is not possible 

 under any laws now existing to set at work even one 

 thousand men in the reclamation of the arid lands. 

 The desert land law grants the settler a half section 

 at a cheap price, and upon easy terms of payment, 

 but money is required, nevertheless. Not only that, 

 but engineers, expert direction and large working 

 capital are required. None of these things can be 

 supplied under our present laws. We cannot make 

 a law that will apply to an isolated case. What we 

 need, and what we must obtain within the next year 

 or two, is a comprehensive national irrigation policy, 

 supplemented by good State laws. This cannot be 

 spoken into existence to meet the present emergency. 

 But it can be formulated at the National Irrigation 

 Congress next September and carried triumphantly 

 through Senate and House next winter. How fortun- 

 ate it is, in view of the present insistent demands of 

 the public, that the last Irrigation Congress created 

 seventeen State and Territorial commissions to study 

 the question of irrigation policies in every aspect 

 and report the views of the people, together with the 

 facts relating to the lands and waters, to another 

 session to be held in the early autumn. We are 

 coming, Father Abraham, and we will bring with us 

 the noblest opportunities for labor and for capita! 

 and the grandest promise of independence and 

 equality. 



But although some little time must pass 

 Homes are before the new national policy can be 

 Waiting. p er f ec t e d ( no industrious man need wait 

 a moment for a small irrigated farm. Millions of 

 acres are under ditch, but not under cultivation. In 

 a dozen localities farms can be obtained on the easiest 

 terms. In Washington there is a company which 

 sells land and takes its interest and principal in the 

 form of a part of the crop. The settler can have as 

 long a time as he may need to pay for his home, and 

 is not required to pay a dollar that he does not take 

 from the soil, nor a dollar that he cannot spare above 

 necessary living expenses. There are good lands in 

 California, Idaho, Utah, Colorado and many other 

 localities that can be obtained on much the same 

 terms. So that Arid America can furnish a sufficient 

 outlet at this very time to relieve the pressure upon 

 the country. Nevertheless, no time should be lost in 

 making ready for the accommodation of the great and 

 permanent stream of home-makers that is about to 

 set in. 



David Lubin David Lubin, a merchant of Sacramento, 

 at Ec"nomi? Cal - has recently attracted wide atten- 

 Idea. tion throughout the West and South by 

 the publication of a new remedy for the present low 

 prices of wheat, cotton and other staple products. In 



