THE IRRIGATION AGE 



13' 



ity comes from Mother Earth, all that 

 may augment or facilitate the products 

 of the soil is of primary importance to 

 the agriculturist and horticulturist alike, 

 for they are sister industries, and stat- 

 istics from along this line prove beyond 

 a doubt that the vigilant irrigation of 

 lands, where artificial application of the 

 aqueous fluid, is necessary, increases its 

 productiveness from two to ten-fold, and 

 this has a decided tendency to increase a 

 country's population in about the same 

 proportion. 



population is sufficiently dense to afford 

 a large attendance from their immediate 

 locality. And it is also a remarkable 

 fact, that advanced learning in the 

 United States, has drawn a very large 

 proportion of its most illustrious ex- 

 amplars from those who were bred upon 

 the farm. 



There are, I believe, four very, very 

 important elements without which the 

 common genus homo, cannot live the 

 rays of old Sol, oxygen, aqua, and this 

 mundane sphere. There should not be, 



A CABBAGE FIELD 



The science, (for science it is, and not 

 a scheme) of irrigation has a tendency 

 to increase the density of population up- 

 on the farm. It also has a most pro- 

 nounced effect on the growth of cities, 

 towns and villages. Plain figures show 

 .that in modern times one farmer is taken 

 as the basis of support, of from two to 

 seven persons engaged in the other oc- 

 cupjitions pursued by the urbanites. 



It is a well-known axiom that the 

 high school, seminary, college and uni- 

 versity can only be most efficient when 



1047495 



IN WESTERN KANSAS, 



there cannot be, in the name of human- 

 ity, any monopoly of these elements so 

 essential to man's existence, and at the 

 present time, I think, there is no other 

 question not even the silver- question- 

 that begins to equal in importance the- 

 question of the development of the arid 

 and semi-arid lands of the United States 

 cf America. 



It is very well understood by every 

 citizen that these arid lands belong to the 

 American people, for they are a grand 

 heritage from the United States. In 



