88 



THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



poor things poorly you will always be poor. 

 What you can do, a bucket of coal and a 

 bucket of water, guided by a thimbleful 

 of brains will do more effectively. When 

 the time shall come that each workman 

 can use his power to the best advantge, 

 we shall have an end to the labor 

 problem." 



The young man on the farm looks with 

 longing eyes to the city it is the Eldorado 

 of his dreams. The memory of men who 

 have gone from the country to the busy 

 cities, there to amass fortunes, haunts 

 him, and the farm grows more and more 

 distasteful. He does not ask, "Have I the 

 ability and brains that he had; am I com- 

 petent to fight the many obstacles of city 

 life?" No, he simply goes forth with no 

 preparation, with no trade, no profession, 

 no experience, to join the many who are 

 "looking for a job" and who provide the 

 material for Mr. Wyckoff's realistic story 

 "The Workers." 



The poor in the country may be miser- 

 able, but ah ! how vastly more FO are the 

 poor in the city ! Even though you know 

 their poverty and misfortune may be in a 

 great measure due to their own improvi- 

 dence or vice, your heart still aches at the 

 hopeless daily struggle of the elders and 

 the dreary future of the children. 



And so, unless you are well prepared to 

 fight for your share of the "goods the gods 

 provide" in the city, you had best hesitate 

 ere leaving the country. There, at least, 

 your children may have fresh air, pure 

 water and plenty of sunlight, and the 

 wolf will not howl any fiercer at your door 

 than he will in the city, where these other 

 blessings are denied you. 



Our May 

 Number. 



We expect to publish in the 

 May number of the AGE an 

 address by Dr. Clark Gapen, of Madison, 

 Wis., formerly superintendent of the East 

 Illinois Hospital for the Insane, at Kanka- 

 kee. Dr. Gapen is well versed in the sub- 

 ject of irrigation and his address will be 

 interesting as well as instructive to bur 

 readers. 



A Premature Now and then we read of a 

 Obituary. case in which a man is re- 

 ported dead; his friends grieve and buy 

 mourning, his death notice is published, 

 and then the man turns up, safe and sound, 

 and has an opportunity to read his own 

 obituary. And in passing let us add that 

 most obituaries are calculated to make the 

 victim rise from the dead. But to con- 

 tinue: It has always been a matter of 

 conjecture to us to know how the man felt 

 to find that he had been regarded as dead; 

 whether being "supposed to be dead" he 

 had any hesitancy in making his existence 

 known. 



This is a matter of conjecture no longer, 

 for from personal experience we are per- 

 mitted to speak. We recently read in a 

 Wyoming paper called the "Saratoga Sun" 

 that "The Irrigation Age, which led a 

 rather erratic existence, has at last given 

 up the ghost, and gone the way of all the 

 earth." 



Now from its name one would imagine 

 this little sheet to be a bright and shining 

 light in the journalistic world, but if the 

 above item is a sample of the reliability 

 and truthfulness of its "news", we fear 

 its readers are often deluded. 



Like the child who closes his eyes and 

 cries "now you can't see me," thinking be- 

 cause you are shut out from his range of 

 vision, he must necessarily be invisible to 

 you, the editor of the Sun has failed to re- 

 ceive the AGE and thereupon concluded 

 that it has "gone the way of all the earth." 



No, Mr. Editor, though you may not 

 have seen the AGE it is still alive, very 

 much so and though you have ceased to 

 be one of its readers it still manages to 

 struggle on in this "vale of tears", and we 

 are quite confident that the seasons will 

 come and go, the moon wax and wane, 

 many times ere this little notice of yours 

 will be needed. 



An old gentleman, whose death notice 

 had appeared by mistake in the columns 

 of the local paper, appealed to the editor 

 to have the report denied in the next 

 week's paper. The editor prided himself 



