i6 



THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



promising vineyards. An occasional meager crop 

 has sufficed to keep some still pegging hopefully 

 away, many of them assisted by sympathizing friends, 

 and by state or national charity. Some of the 

 abandoned claims have been actually re-located, 

 perhaps to be again deserted. The process of de- 

 population has continued ever since 1888, with very 

 little interruption. 



A comparison of the State census of 1887 with the 

 national census of 1890 shows an increase of popu- 

 lation in twenty-five counties, mostly in the eastern 

 part of the state, and in all the other counties of the 

 state, about eighty in number, a decrease is shown. 

 In the western and especially the southwestern coun- 

 ties, this decrease is very great, amounting, in sixteen 

 of the counties, to more than fifty per cent. In those 

 counties showing a decrease, the total loss of popula- 

 tion in the three years, was over 130,000, most of 

 which took place between the census of 1888 and 

 that of 1890. This illustrates for Kansas what took 

 place on a similar scale in eastern Colorado, in Texas, 

 Nebraska and the Dakotas. Whole districts have 

 been depopulated; the frame buildings and fences 

 have been removed or burned, but the sod houses 

 and the abandoned roads showing evidences of hav- 

 ing once been heavily traveled, still remain as wit- 

 nesses to a departed civilization. This information 

 closes with the year 1890, though the process of de- 

 population has been going on ever since. A letter to 

 a professional man of Washington from Marena, 

 Kansas, dated April 6, 1894, says: 



* I would ask your valuable 



opinion as to the probability of our obtaining artesian water for 

 the purposes of irrigation; for certain it is, that unless something 

 occurs to assist the ordinary farmer, homes will continue to be 

 abandoned, as many are already." * * * * 



We see, therefore, that the census furnishes merely 

 a partial indication of the depopulation of western 

 Kansas. The same influence that caused so many 

 people to attempt to make homes in this region when 

 it could not be done have caused, and are still caus- 

 ing the taking of lands in all parts of the arid region, 

 on which a subsistence cannot be or can hardly be 

 obtained, and this, as before remarked, is the best, 

 possible evidence of the exhaustion of the once 

 abundant supply of free homes. Large tracts of the 

 arid region can be made habitable and productive 

 by means of irrigation, but this costs money, and will 

 not add to the area of free land. 



The pressure for land was graphically illustrated 

 by the scenes enacted on the opening of the Cherokee 

 strip, where the applicants outnumbered the available 

 tracts, five or six to one; where a vacant prairie at 

 noon became before sundown a town of ten thou- 

 sand inhabitants, and a hundred thousand home-seek- 

 ers were turned away unrequited for their expendi- 

 ture of money and effort. 



This subject is one ot great moment ; for the ex- 

 haustion of the public domain marks a very important 

 epoch in our national history, if not in the history of 

 the world. Macaulay, the historian, writing to an 

 American friend many years ago, said: 



" Your fate I believe to be certain, though it is deferred by 

 a physical cause. As long as you have a boundless extent of fer- 

 tile and unoccupied land, your laboring population will be far 

 more at ease than the laboring population of the Old World. 

 But the time will come when New England will be as thickly pop- 

 ulated as the crowded districts of the Old World. Wages will be 

 as low, and will fluctuate as much with you as with us. You will 

 have your Birminghams and Manchesters and in these Birming- 

 hams and Manchesters, hundreds of thousands of artisans will 

 assuredly be sometimes out of work. Then your institutions will 

 be fairly brought to the test." 



Garfield said of that letter, " It startled me like an 

 alarm bell at night." An examination of the history of 

 this country, will, I think, vindicate the truth, not only 

 of Macaulay's words, but of their prophetic implifica- 

 tion. Ever since its birth, the United States has been 

 periodically visited by financial panics of varying or- 

 igin and severity, those of 1819, 1837 and 1857 being 

 notable cases in point. As in all such cases, thousands 

 of persons were thrown out of employment, but the 

 abundant and fertile public domain so completely 

 absorbed the surplus labor that the " problem of the 

 unemployed " did not force itself on the attention of 

 the country as it has done since, and business quickly 

 resumed the even tenor of its way. The panic of 

 1873, however, demonstrated that the spell was 

 broken. Though the tide of immigration again took 

 up its hopeful way westward toward free land, and 

 many new homes were established, the public domain 

 was no longer able to meet the requirements, and the 

 labor market was never entirely relieved. Within 

 a few years after that date, nearly every state in the 

 Union had passed a tramp law an exotic that had no 

 place upon American statute books, as near as I have 

 been able to learn, prior to the year 1874, but which 

 had long been in force in the Old World. The labor 

 riots of 1877, and later, the constantly recurring strikes 

 and business failures, bear testimony to the persist- 

 ence of savage competition for existence which is 

 tersely set forth in the following paragraph from the 

 New York Sun, in 1888: 



" The new Kings county elevated railroad wanted thirty en- 

 gineers last week; but the applicants numbered over five hundred. 

 It wanted thirty firemen; but the applicants numbered over one 

 thousand. It wanted three hundred conductors, gatemen, ticket 

 choppers, and other employes; but the applicants crowded the 

 company's quarters for ten days. For many other branches of 

 industry there are like reports. It is obvious that there is a large 

 amount of surplus labor on the market. Nciv York Sun, April 

 23, 1888. 



According to the census statistics for 1890, about 

 five per cent, of the people of this country are land 

 owners. With their families and personal dependents 

 these comprise about one-fourth of our population, 



