PULSE OF THE IRRIGATION INDUSTRY. 



177 



CLESSON S. KINNEY, OF UTAH 



The author of the articles on Irrigation Legislation " 

 now appearing in THE AGE. 



said. "How shall be get, a man's share? 

 By getting a home. The Mormons settled 

 that in a superb way. They traveled West 

 till they came to the superb valley of Salt 

 lake. Brigham Young's plan was to have 

 every man at work and every man in a 

 home. A home a man's share. Not only 

 that, but he overcame the isolation of 

 agricultural life by settling a town with 

 farms about it. He kept his people from 

 mines, the thirst for gold, and held them 

 to land and home. In addition, he as- 

 sociated his people FO that they operated 

 factories, mills, railroads, telegraph lines, 

 stores and all that pertain to life in a com- 

 munity. Jt has become the example and 

 pattern of the new colonial movement, and 

 its success means hope for the city-bred 

 man as well as the farm born. Whilst I 

 must dissent from polygamy with all my 

 being, I must say that it is the only re- 

 ligion which compels every man to own 

 his own home. It teaches that no man 

 has a right to own one more acre than he 

 can use, a great Christian lesson of un- 

 selfishness. They found a desert and 

 made it a paradise, because they taught that 

 God made the earth for all and not for a 

 few. Necessity taught them that no man 



had a right to waste one drop of the 

 precious water with which they irrigated 

 their lands; their religion and the religion 

 of Christ teaches that a man has a right 

 only to so much of God's land as he can 

 use. The Mormons are not allowed to 

 fence in a prairie, nor are they rewarded 

 for keeping land idle by having taxes re- 

 duced. It is a part of their religion to 

 make the waste places blossom forth and 

 to turn idle lands over to the industrious 

 to improve and own what they do improve 

 and use, but not one acre more. That re- 

 ligion places a premium on industry and 

 unselfishness; that part of it is Christlike, 

 and they live nearer Christ in this respect, 

 far nearer, than the vast majority of so- 

 called Christian people. Fully 98 per 

 cent of the Mormons own their houses and 

 the land on which their houses stand. I 

 want to see the time when every Christian 

 owns his home. I want to see a practical 

 use 6f the Christian religion as I believe 

 Christ intended it. I have visited the 

 Mormons and found them most delightful 

 and companionable, all of them in- 

 dustrious, and many highly cultivated." 



VALUABLE STATISTICS. 



The assessable property of Arapahoe 

 county, Colo., is reported at $82,133,000. 



Nebraska has 352. 028 children of school 

 age. According to the usual calculations 

 this would indicate that the State has a 

 population aggregating 1,760,000. 



The general land office report for the 

 fiscal year of 1895 shows some very inter- 

 esting figures relative to the business 

 transacted by the local land office in North 

 Dakota. At the Bismarck office 887 

 entries, covering 138.000 acres, were made. 

 The total receipts were $14,116.09. 

 Devil's Lake land office shows 1,067 

 entries, and total receipts of $19,441.56. 

 The Fargo office shows 766 entries and 

 total receipts of $9,755.25. The Grand 

 Forks office shows 1,234 entries, and the 

 receipts were $20,193.52. The Minot 

 office shows 86 entries and receipts of 

 $1,105.77. 



The total of land transfers for 'last year 

 was 132 millions, an advance of twelve 

 millions over 1894. There is a falling off 

 of forty-eight millions as compared with 

 1891 or 1892, but it must be remembered 

 that there was a great amount of specula- 



