THE PROGRESS OF WESTERN AMERICA. 



247 



Small Di- 

 versified 

 Farms. 



WILLIAM H. PHIPPS, 

 Land Commissioner of the Northern Pacific R. R. 



founding Utah and by Judge North and his friends 

 in founding Riverside. There are many other in- 

 stances which furnish proof of the same sort. The 

 principle is one which has its foundations deep down 

 inhuman nature, and it is hoped that the typical col- 

 ony now projected will do more than any of its prede- 

 cessors, to fix this principle as one of fundamental 

 importance in the making of Arid America. 



The small farm unit will be another 

 feature of the new undertaking. In spite 

 of the fact that all experience points to 

 the small farm as the basis of the best 

 average prosperity, men were found in the last Irri- 

 gation Congress to defend the Desert Land law on 

 the ground that 320 acres of arid lands were barely 

 sufficient to sustain a family. And yet a careful study 

 of any valley now occupied in the arid region will 

 disclose the striking fact that the farmer who is cul- 

 tivating intensely a small acreage is making more 

 money, year in and year out, than his neighbors who 

 cultivate several times as much land. Not only this, 

 but in Utah the experience of a whole people, over a 

 period of twoscore years, demonstrates that the small 

 farm is best. In the proposed colony, which will be 

 located where the average conditions of soil, climate 

 and altitude prevail, the farm unit advocated by the 



projectors will be twenty acres and no one person 

 will be permitted to buy at first hands more than forty 

 acres. It is believed that nearly all the colonists will 

 prefer fhe smaller unit. The foundation principle of 

 the new colony will be diversified production, ap- 

 proaching to the nearest practicable point of produc- 

 ing absolutely what the family consumes. Beyond 

 this it is proposed to produce on each farm a wisely 

 chosen surplus. And an Advisory Board, consisting 

 of about twenty prominent citizens of the arid region, 

 is busily engaged in working out all the details of 

 these features of the plan. Colonists will have an op- 

 portunity to study fully a dozen diagrams of diversi- 

 fied farms, each representing the best thought and 

 experience of practical men in the West. There is 

 certainly reason to^ hope that the plan of the in- 

 tensely cultivated small farm will be brought to a 

 higher perfection by this method than has ever been 

 done before. When these plans are fully matured 

 they will be freely given to the public, and thus be 

 available for colonies elsewhere. If they are gener- 

 ally adopted, with the result of giving a great im- 

 pulse to the settlement of irrigated lands everywhere 

 and to the outworking of new and better forms of 

 prosperity for average people, the highest wish of the 

 projectors will have been realized. 



SENATOR A. L. BABCOCK, 

 Of Montana. 



