260 



THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



to do so) that incomparable reservoir, the ample bo- 

 som of mother earth, where it is always within root 

 reach, without wells, without pumping, without 

 ditches; where every hour of the night and day its 

 life-giving moisture is in its perfect way ready to 

 help endow us with such a wealth of flower and fruit, 

 of grass and golden grain as the people of few coun- 

 tries are ever given to see. This must be attained 

 by a deeper, more thorough loosening, breaking-up 

 of the impervious, compacted subsoil, that it may 

 absorb and retain the rainfall rather than reject it, 

 and as is now the case, compelling it to find its way 

 to the rivers and the sea in disastrous floods. Acting 

 on this idea along with that of irrigation, which we are 

 here to encourage, there is no doubt about the won- 

 derful future of Kansas agriculture. This is a part 

 of our great problem that can be solved by individual 

 effort. The records for the past ten years show that 

 the average annual rainfall in Kingman County has 

 been about twenty-five inches; in Ford and Trego 

 Counties about nineteen inches; even in Kearney, 

 Greeley and Wallace Counties about fifteen inches; 

 in Decatur, Osborne and Cloud Counties about twen- 

 ty-seven inches, and at Manhattan more than twenty- 

 nine inches. Observers of such matters tell us that 

 even these smaller quantities of water, while not all 



that would be desirable, will, if judiciously conserved 

 and utilized, well-nigh give us a crop every year, and 

 in most years yields that are prodigious. The sort of 

 irrigation problems that confront us are in the main 

 radically different from those in any other like territory. 

 Whenever any large proportion of our State is arti- 

 ficially watered it must be from wells instead of 

 streams, and most of the help, most needed, is along 

 that line. Government should help us to locate and 

 determine the water supply. But we cannot wait on 

 Congress; we must be up and doing for ourselves; 

 we will have to rely chiefly on individual enterprise. 

 I am deeply imbued with the idea that for us the way 

 to irrigate is to irrigate and to subsoil. Kansas' sal- 

 vation in this direction must be worked out by Kan- 

 sas effort. The State law-makers must rise with us 

 to the importance of this movement and take it by 

 the hand. By judicious enactments and proper 

 financial support the State should immediately pro- 

 vide for a line of progressive work in the way of sur- 

 veys, experimentation, observation, superintendence, 

 and advisory aid, thus doing at a very small cost 

 per capita a part of the work that the individual 

 cannot afford to do. The people in two-thirds of 

 Kansas will be grievously disappointed if this is not 

 done. 



WHO OWNS THE MONEY? 



IN view of the gloomy discussions, by papers and 

 political speakers, the past two or three years, upon 



the subject of the awful "farm mortgage," it must 

 be interesting, especially to western farmers, and more 

 especially to those upon small, irrigated farms, to 

 take note of the facts as to real estate mortgage in- 

 debtedness, brought out by the reports of the elev- 

 enth census. By these it is shown that the heaviest 

 real estate indebtedness rests not upon the farm but 

 upon city property, and that the heaviest weight of 

 the farm mortgage itself rests not upon the newer 

 western States, but upon eastern and central States. 

 Kansas, for example, has been for some time past 

 held up as the frightful example of wreck and ruin 

 brought about by the farm mortgage, and, as a conse- 

 quence, people in New York, Massachusetts and 

 Pennsylvania became afraid to lend money in Kan- 

 sas. Yet 'the official reports show that New York 

 State bears the heaviest farm mortgage debt per cap- 

 ita of any State in the Union, and that the like debt is 

 heavier in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and several 

 other States than it is in Kansas. 



Farm mortgages are, in the main, given to secure 

 the payment of purchase money for land and to make 

 improvements, and instead of being an indication of 

 retrogression and ruin, the farm mortgage is the step- 

 ping stone upon which the landless citizen mounts to 

 the dignity of ownership that is, it is an indicator of 

 progress and growth. The census reports show that 

 nearly ninety-five per cent of all the farm mortgages 

 are of this character, while less than two per cent 

 were made to pay wages of help, store bills and 

 taxes. Most interesting of all is the fact that more 

 than two-thirds of the farms of the country are free 

 from mortgage. 



WHO CAN PAY THE MONEY? 



Apropos of this subject, it is a pleasure to call at- 

 tention to the fact that the man who is giving proper 

 care and cultivation to a small tract of irrigated land, 

 bought at a reasonable price, can safely defy the 

 deadly mortgage. Suppose a ten-acre home, pro- 

 vided with the means of irrigation, a neat dwelling, 

 all the land under the high state of cultivation possi- 

 ble in such a case, where an industrious family de- 

 votes all its energies to a small tract say five acres 



devoted to alfalfa and the rest to fruits and vegeta- 

 bles. An incumbrance of $500 on such a tract at 

 eight per cent would be a "gilt-edged security." Forty 

 dollars per year, or $20 each six months, would cover 

 the interest. Two or three shoats, kept on a little 

 corner of the alfalfa patch and fed kitchen slops, 

 small potatoes and the like, with a little Kaffir corn, 

 would pay it. One hundred dollars a year laid by for 

 five years would discharge the principal and leave a 

 balance of accumulated interest to the credit of the 

 farmer. Furthermore the profits off five acres of 

 sweet potatoes, any average year, would more than 

 pay the whole of it. Two good alfalfa seed crops 

 would do as much. A single acre of prizetaker onions 

 would more than pay it and an exceptionally good 

 crop would double it. So would an acre of onion 

 sets. These results are predicted at random upon 

 the basis of what dozens of men have done upon arid 

 lands upon the Great Plains in the past five trying 

 years of hard times and descending values. The raw 

 material for more than a hundred thousand such 

 homes fairly entreats the attention of the unemployed 

 heads of families in the great cities and manufactur- 

 ing centers of the east, the land being obtainable at 

 $5 to $20 per acre, with not a stump or a stone not 

 even a twig in the way of immediate cultivation, 

 and on ten acres of which a cash capital of $500 and 

 the proceeds of a five-year seven per cent mortgage 

 for an equal sum will pay for land, sufficient buildings, 

 fencing, absolutely reliable means of irrigation, team, 

 utensils, seeds, nursery stock for first setting in fact 

 all that is necessary to lay the foundation for the sup- 

 port of a family and for laying up money besides. 



These estimates are based upon the actual achieve- 

 ments of men most of them without previous experi- 

 ence in irrigation farming, the results of efforts ex- 

 tending over a series of years and attended by a very 

 full share of reverses, ill-luck and unfavorable con- 

 ditions, and it is upon such basis of fact that the 

 opinion is founded that there is no loan better secured 

 than that based upon a small farm of irrigated land 

 occupied as a home. And it seems to me that busi- 

 ness and philanthropy might be combined by the 

 hoarders of idle money by using it to assist homeless 

 families in establishing themselves upon such waiting 

 irrigable lands. 



