246 



THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



lands of any of several great land companies, and to 

 accept the financial backing of such companies for 

 the work, the undertaking might have been launched 

 long ago. But it would have been impossible to ob- 

 tain public confidence under such conditions. The 

 effort would, have been construed as an elaborate ad- 

 vertisement and men of reputation could not afford to 

 lend their names to it unless it were frankly avowed 

 to be a purely private enterprise, in no sense related to 

 the general movement. The new colony will be made 

 in a locality where it has been possible to buy up sev- 

 eral thousand acres of land, with water-rights from a 

 group of individuals who had acquired titles from 

 the government in the natural way. The financial 

 backing has been obtained on the personal responsi- 

 bility of the projectors of the movement. There will 

 be no attempt to realize profits, but those who give 

 their time to the matter will be fairly well paid for 

 their services, while the real profits of the enterprise 

 will be invested in making improvements and creat- 

 ing industries for the benefit of the settlers. If the 

 enterprise be as thoroughly successful as hoped, it 

 will be valuable not only to the country as a whole, 

 but to every valley, every community and every land 

 company in the arid West. It will attract a degree 

 of public attention which could not possibly be ob- 

 tained for any private enterprise. It will stand as a 

 great object lesson worthy to be imitated everywhere. 

 It will be a gleaming beacon light, pointing the way 

 to prosperity for millions. It will mark the laying of 

 the corner stone in the industrial system of the fut- 

 ure. This is the spirit in which it is undertaken, 

 and in which it will be carried out. The very name 

 it will bear is a name sacred to liberty in the annals 

 of Anglo-Saxon men. 



The first lesson which it is hoped to teach 



The for the benefit of the West as a whole is 



Principle, that settlement can be best accomplished 



by reliance upon the true colonial method 

 and spirit. That is, by settling people in groups, or 

 colonies, instead of settling them as individual fami- 

 lies. Those who have given most study to the sub- 

 ject are convinced that this must be adopted as a 

 fundamental principle in the colonization of arid 

 lands. Natural conditions make this quite impera- 

 tive in cases where the highest results in community- 

 making are sought. The principle is by no means a 

 new one. It was adopted by the English, the Dutch 

 and the Huguenots in founding their settlements on 

 the Atlantic seaboard. It was also the plan adopted 

 in making the most successful settlements of the 

 past fifty years on arid lands. The first reason for 

 the choice of this method is a physical one. The 

 economical distribution of water and management of 

 canals demand compact settlements. Many a com- 

 pany has been involved in severe and needless ex- 



penses by diffusing a few settlers over a wide area. 

 But there are better and higher reasons founded on 

 social, industrial and ethical considerations. In the 

 development of communities in new countries, per- 

 haps even more than in the movement of armies, it 

 is essential that there should be esprit de corps. 

 There must be enthusiasm for a common purpose. 

 There must be fellowship. There must be something 

 of that sublime inspiration which bears men up, even 

 in the face of danger and hardship, when engaged 

 in the task of making new institutions. These 

 qualities are impossible under a policy of individual 

 settlement. But these qualities are indispensable to 

 the realization of very high results. The plan to make 

 a colony founded on lofty ideals has never yet failed 

 of popular interest and support when presented 

 under auspices that commanded general confidence. 

 One of the most interesting books ever 

 The Prin- published in the West is Hon. David 

 Cl ready~ Boyd's " Greeley and the Union Colony 

 illustrated, of Colorado." The projectors of this 

 new undertaking have studied Mr. 

 Boyd's book with profound attention. Greeley was 

 undertaken in precisely the spirit we have described 

 as essential to high results. It was first presented to 

 the public twenty-five years ago the present month 

 through a modest announcement in the New York 

 Tribune. Mr. Meeker, the father of the project, ap- 

 pealed to the common human instinct for a home and 

 independence. He sought also to evolve improve- 

 ments over the ordinary way of living. He had been 

 a disciple of Fourier, an earlier Bellamy, and had lived 

 in one of the ill-fated communities patterned on the 

 model advocated by that brilliant but impracticable 

 philosopher. Mr. Meeker had trimmed down his 

 ideas of the millennium very considerably before he 

 projected Greeley, but there was enough of it left to 

 make his announcement very attractive. More than 

 1,000 people replied very promptly to the letter in the 

 Tribune and the first meeting of intending colonists 

 adjourned from the newspaper office to Cooper In- 

 stitute to find room for its deliberations. This was a 

 quarter century ago. when Colorado was relatively as 

 distant as Korea is to-day, and yet not less than 850 

 people enrolled themselves as members of Union 

 Colony, paying 155 in cash as their first subscription 

 to the common fund. Horace Greeley addressed 

 them and warmly endorsed irrigation and the colonial 

 policy. Very many lessons may be learned from Mr. 

 Boyd's fascinating history of Greeley, but the one we 

 are directing attention to here is the fact that the or- 

 ganization of a large party of colonists, bent on the 

 purpose of facing the frontier together and develop- 

 ing better conditions for common prosperity, was 

 the winning policy then, as it will be hereafter. The 

 same principle was illustrated by Brigham Young in 



