THE PROGRESS OF WESTERN AMERICA. 



95 



SENATOR WHITE, OF CALIFORNIA, 

 Chairman of Committee on Irrigation and Arid Lands, 

 U. S. Senate. 



single resource which can be developed by its own 

 brains and faith and which the rest of the world is 

 willing to acquire on terms within its means, and the 

 more so because depression prevails ? This is the 

 vital question for Western America at this hour. 



What Can After taking full account of every draw- 

 Without back, including heavy interest charges, 

 Capital, comparative poverty and sparseness of 

 population, THE IRRIGATION AGE unhesitatingly 

 asserts that the people of Western America are to-day 

 in a position to be more independent, and to more 

 greatly enhance their prosperity, than are the people 

 of any other section, not excluding New England 

 itself. This is rather a bold statement. We have not 

 been in the habit of looking at things in just this 

 light. We have said, " We have boundless resources, 

 if we only had the money to develop them." And 

 then we have sent our agents to the East and to 

 Europe to float mortgages against the future. This 

 is all right in ordinary times. The mortgages are 

 good. They justify the confidence of the investor 

 and the faith of the promotor. But we are not living 

 just now in ordinary times, but in very unusual times. 

 This is a good season to be working out the plans for 

 future enterprises, and to be educating certain invest- 

 ment circles with a view to obtaining their coopera- 

 tion at a later period. But it is idle to talk about 

 obtaining large amounts of means for the average 

 project to-day. Now, then, is there anything which 



the West can do without delay and without attract- 

 ing large amounts of new capital? Yes, it can utilize 

 the surplus millions of land already under ditch, but 

 not yet under cultivation. It can develop the highest 

 forms of agriculture and horticulture under irrigation, 

 and fill its valleys, already watered, with tens of 

 thousands of prosperous people. It can come down 

 from the clouds and grapple with problems of the 

 earth, by which we mean that its enterprising citizens 

 can postpone the making of their millions to a more 

 favorable season, and satisfy themselves by helping 

 to increase the common prosperity, taking modest 

 profits for their own labor and pains. There are 

 countless opportunities for new enterprises of all 

 sorts, but these can wait. In the struggle to make 

 new things we have forgotten or neglected to utilize 

 those already made. 



Look at Colorado. She is a candidate 

 Millions Un- for money in the markets of the world. 

 occupied, g^ e OU ght t o b e a candidate for people 

 in every agricultural district and factory town of the 

 over-crowded East. According to the figures of 1891, 

 Colorado had under ditch 3,007,500 acres and under 

 cultivation only 1,800,000 acres. The latter figure in- 

 cluded some large areas. Practically Colorado has 

 to-day not far from 1,500,000 acres of irrigated land 

 waiting for the settler. California has about as much 

 more. Arizona's surplus irrigated soil mounts up in 

 the hundreds of thousands of acres. Idaho has a 

 million acres ready and waiting for the husbandman, 



A. G. KINGSBURY, OF FLORIDA, 

 Member of National Executive Committee of Irrigation 

 Congress. 



