THE IRRIGATION AGE 



VOL. VII. 



CHICAGO, DECEMBER, 1894. 



No. 6. 



THE PROGRESS OF WESTERN AMERICA. 



It is high time that the influences en- 



The Colo- gaged in the making of Arid America 

 nist is the 

 Foundation, assumed a new direction. Heretofore 



most of our literature and all of our pub- 

 lic appropriations have been devoted to the engin- 

 eering aspect of irrigation, while nearly all the mis- 

 sionary work in the East and abroad has been direct- 

 ed to the investment side of the subject. This was 

 natural and proper enough at the beginning of our 

 development. Irrigation works could not be built 

 without the knowledge of physical conditions which 

 the engineer supplies, nor without capital. But the 

 time has come when the engineer and the capit alist 

 realize that another factor is the foundation of all 

 prosperity on arid lands. And this factor is the col- 

 onist. It is for his benefit that all skill and capital 

 have been expended, and it is by his presence that 

 new demands will arise for the services of the engin- 

 eer and new opportunities be opened for profitable 

 investment. The lack of the colonist is almost 

 alone responsible for the disappointments 

 which have attended irrigation investment. The 

 great Arid America of which we dream the field 

 where a new civilization may be erected and where 

 popular institutions may be invigorated and perpetu- 

 ated can only be made by tens of thousands of men 

 who shall develop industry and create homes on the 

 reclaimed desert. And we have reached the stage in 

 our progress when the best thought and the sturdiest 

 effort should be devoted to the work of peopling the 

 lands under ditch, and thus making an insistent 

 demand for the reclamation of the millions of acres 

 which now lie waste. The whole future of the arid 

 region, improved and unimproved, is comprehended 

 in the word colonization. This involves not merely 

 the millions already invested in irrigation, but also 

 the destinies of States and the future of national ex- 

 pansion. 



Considerable space in this department 



Typical o f THE IRRIGATION AGE has been de- 

 Colony . . , . , . , 



Proposed, voted to this subject during the present 



year. We have persistently sought to 

 arouse interest in the necessity of developing colonies 

 of the best kind. More than once we have hinted 

 that the subject of a typical colony was under con- 

 sideration at the hands of men prominent in the irri- 

 gation movement. We are now happy to announce 

 that these plans are taking shape, and that there 

 seems to be a good prospect that a notable achieve- 

 ment will be recorded during the first half of 1895. It 

 is desired to make a colony that will illustrate the 

 best possibilities of home-making on irrigated lands. 

 The thing aimed at is to develop a scheme of pros- 

 perity for the average man. The difficulty in formu- 

 lating plans has been to find the calm sea level of 

 common sense in a mass of suggestions, all more or 

 less colored with Utopian tints. None of the many 

 minds consulted have doubted the possibility of mak- 

 ing an improvement on our present industrial and 

 social conditions, but several have been inclined to 

 insist on having the millennium at once. Those in con- 

 trol of the matter, however, while insisting upon pro- 

 gress, have insisted also upon conservatism. Thus 

 the new undertaking is in no danger of revolutioniz- 

 ing society, though it is believed that it will present 

 many features that will be regarded as exceedingly 

 hopeful and full of promise of better average condi- 

 tions for men who earn their bread in the sweat of 

 their faces. 



The proposed colonial undertaking, of 

 For the course, is no sense a private or specula- 

 Benefit, tive affair. If such were the case it could 

 not be presented in this place, nor could 

 it hope to exert a far-reaching influence upon the 

 future of Arid America. If the projectors of the 

 enterprise had been willing to make the effort on the 



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