THE IRRIGATION AGE. 255 



"WANTED. Some good families who are not afraid of work to start 

 a colony under a new canal. Land and water at twenty-five dollar* 

 (three acre feet) with annual rates at a dollar and a half an acre. Price- 

 payable in ten years with interest on deferred payments at six per cent. 

 Entire purchase price, interest, water rates and all payable in any kind 

 of produce raised on land at the regular market price at the nearest 

 railroad station." 



Now anybody who knows anything of building water works knows" 

 that this price is less than the actual cost of the land and water under 

 most of the ditches of the country and less than any one by any private 

 system can make the combination in any part of the country in any way 

 that is at all reliable or effective. 



Considering what the combination of land and water will do, espec- 

 ially in the countries of long seasons and bright suns, it is the cheapest 

 land in the world. Yet any one trying such an ad. will b^ amazed at the 

 small number who even care to know where it is or anything about it. 

 To the credit of the human race there are some, but they are painfully 

 few. I know whereof I speak, and know too well. It is painfully ap- 

 parent that poor distressed humanity does not want that kind of land. It 

 wants: 



First. Indian land. 



Second. Land that some railroad, or company of large concern 

 thought it owned but which really belongs to the government. If al- 

 ready improved with ditch, railroad, town, etc., these things will not in- 

 jure it. 



Third. Failing a good supply of these, any kind of government land 

 will do provided the settler doesn't have to improve it too much to com- 

 ply with the law, don't nave to pay over a dollar and a quarter an acre, 

 and don't have to pay that before he can sell it. 



Fourth. Dry land at low figures, long time and low interest, pro- 

 vided always that it is likely to sell on the next boom. Otherwise it is 

 not wanted very much even at government price, unless it is Indian land. 



I am aware that this sounds very ridiculous. But there are too 

 many who have painfully good reasons to know it is correct and that 

 those who doubt it know little of the business of selling land of late 

 years. Oppressed humanity wants the excitement of the city, it wants 

 to buy its cigars through the nickel-in-the-slot machine. That is "life" 

 while a good living in the country is social death. To be a miserable 

 lawyer in a dingy back office, dodging your grocer today and changing 

 butchers every w r eek, or to be an electric doctor or magnetic healer or 

 palmist, or something else in town competing with women for a bare sub- 

 sistence is all right; but the quiet, independent life that makes a com- 

 fortable living on the farm with no frills, that has raised America's best 

 men in all the stages of her existence, is now all wrong. 



Of course this has to change and is liable to do so very soon. They 

 are getting starved out of many cities and will have to go to the country. 



