THE PROGRESS OF WESTERN AMERICA. 



217 



ous and effective member. He is planning a State 

 Irrigation Convention with auxiliary associations in 

 every county. Utah will be confronted with a unique 

 problem before long. This will involve the abandon- 

 ment of many of the old ditches and their replace- 

 ment by a few larger and more comprehensive sys- 

 tems. There will be a great saving in the annual 

 cost of maintenance, while the well-established and 

 prosperous farms will furnish excellent guarantee of 

 returns to the capital employed. The writer is in- 

 debted to Judge Shurtliff for the pleasures of a most 

 memorable day a day devoted to a drive of seventy 

 miles through the golden valleys and interesting 

 settlements of northern Utah. 



In Southern Idaho, and notably at Boise, 

 as a Field Nampa and Payette, the writer found 

 for Homes. some peculiar conditions which account 

 largely tor the disappointments of irrigation invest- 

 ment. Large canals have been built, but the land 

 has been gobbled by great numbers of speculators 

 who have neither the money nor the disposition to 

 improve it. The speculators cannot buy water and 

 the companies cannot control the development of the 

 land. Progress is being made and the future is full 

 of promise, but the situation forcibly illustrates the 

 evils of our wretched land laws. Southern Idaho 

 will be the field of wonderful development in the next 

 few years. It has the ideal climate for the Anglo- 

 Saxon. The twenty-acre farm is large enough to 

 support a family with comfort and thrift. Forty 

 acres should be the outside limit for a family of 

 ordinary means. Eighty acres constitutes a mis- 

 fortune, and one-hundred-sixty acres a calamity. No 

 ordinary family can cultivate so much land wisely and 

 intensively under irrigation. And only wise and in- 

 tensive cultivation fits the conditions of the arid 

 region. Southern Idaho has the advantages of cheap 

 land, ample water and good transportation facilities. 

 To study the opportunities which it offers for the 

 making of independent homes for free men is to ex- 

 perience a thrill which has not been felt since 

 Abraham Lincoln signed the Proclamation of Eman- 

 cipation. That meant much to black men. This 

 means much to white men. Intelligent effort in 

 the way of colonization will start Idaho upon a 

 wonderful era of prosperity. She has all the ele- 

 ments of a great civilization except the chief 

 one, which is men. She can readily sustain 

 hundreds of thousands where she has tens of thou- 

 sands to-day. The writer is under obligations for 

 courtesies received at the hands of leading citizens of 

 Boise, Nampa and Payette. 



A very different condition of affairs was 



Evil in found in Eastern Oregon. Umatilla coun- 



Oregon. ^ Q f w hi cn p en dleton is the chief city, 



represents the best and the worst that the mistaken phil- 



osophy of the single crop can do for a country. Here 

 is a region of fertile soil and delightful climate where 

 men cannot make a living on 5,000 acres. They are 

 raising wheat and wheat and wheat. They are doom- 

 ing their children to hopeless competition with the 

 servile labor of India, Egypt and South America. 

 And servile labor has planted its heel on the neck of 

 the free-born American citizen. The farmer is learn- 

 ing that speculation is just as bad in Oregon as it is in 

 Wall street. Mayor Taylor, of Pendleton, hasfone 

 irrigated acre that is worth more than 5,000 acres 

 in wheat, because it supplies his family with all 

 the small fruit, vegetables and poultry products 

 they eat, besides a surplus exchangeable for much 

 at the store. He has one cherry tree that earned 

 more than a hundred bushels of wheat. The writer 

 had the opportunity of addressing the citizens of 

 this county in their Court House at Pendleton 

 on the evening of October 1, and used it to 

 proclaim the philosophy of the small, diversified 

 farm, erected on the principle of self-susten- 

 ance, and carried on in the spirit of industrialism. 

 He urged the people to build canals and advised that 

 if they could not command aggregated capital they 

 might command aggregated labor, as the Mormons 

 did. Umatilla county is destined to be irrigated and 

 settled in thousands of small farms. It is destined to 

 realize a wonderful prosperity. And this will 

 come when the ditch comes. And no citizen of 

 Pendleton should rest until the ditch is provided, if 

 he has to turn out with his own shovel and team to 

 provide it. The writer returns thanks to Messrs. 

 Livermore, Lowell, Taylor, Boyd and the citizens of 

 Pendleton generally for very marked courtesies re- 

 ceived, from the moment of his arrival at midnight 

 until he departed thirty-six hours later at sunrise. 



The conditions in Eastern Washing- 

 Different in 



Eastern ton are precisely the reverse of those 

 Washington. jn ks ne j g hbor, Oregon. In the Ya- 

 kima valley of Washington irrigation systems are well 

 under way and the country is starting in the right di- 

 rection. There are few more beautiful valleys than 

 that of the Yakima, and perhaps there are none where 

 the chance for average prosperity is better.. But even 

 here it is desirable that the people should engage 

 more thoroughly in diversified production. The thriv- 

 ing town of North Yakima imports from outside the 

 pork products it uses during eleven months of the 

 year, the surrounding farmers supplying but one 

 month's need. So it is with some other items, while 

 Washington as a whole sends away annually millions 

 of dollars to pay for things which could be raised 

 within its borders. The Yakima valley is very fortun- 

 ate in soil and climate, as well as in nearness to the 

 growing commercial outlets on Puget Sound. The 

 surrounding mountain scenery is of the noblest, the 



