258 THE IRRIGATION AGE 



ture and that is why prices have run to four and five hundred dollars 

 and even over. 



But these cases are the exception and there have for years been 

 hundreds of thousands of acres of the finest of land with all the water that 

 one can use at from fifty cents to a dollar and a half an acre a year going 

 begging at from thirty five to sixty dollars. And this in a well settled 

 country and near a railroad and in a proved locality. The only trouble 

 with it was that it was not likely to be in demand for immediate boom 

 purposes. 



There is not one place in a hundred where one could find such land and 

 water rights and make the combination at those figures and every acre of 

 such land was worth for steady production four acres of the best prairie 

 the earth ever produced. The most positive proof was all around that 

 it had repeatedly turned out twelve tons to the acre of alfalfa hay besides 

 pasturing cattle most of the winter. Yet one company spent nearly a 

 hundred thousand dollars in advertising and working for colonists and 

 averaged about one settler to each thousand dollars, principally black 

 sheep from English families sent over here for regeneration if possible 

 but at all events to get out of the way. They gave the state a fine "black 

 eye", irrigating with the bottle and cultivating with poker chips. But 

 for the credit of the Englishman it must be said he was no meaner than 

 the American black sheep and was much more of a gentleman. This 

 company had four hundred and fifty thousand acres with over three 

 thousand feet of water from one of the best rivers in California, yet 

 abandoned colonization three years ago as a dead failure. 



If the reader will be fool enough to put his hard earned money into 

 land and water and build some expensive works he will find himself 

 seized with a verv sudden and violent desire to get back some of it. The 

 inclination to hold it all out of market at a price no one can afford to pay, 

 which he has heard of so often from the politicians, he will find entirely 

 missing. He will find he has some very delicate crockery on hand and 

 will do almost anything to unload it. I have known but two exceptions 

 to this and one of them was because the company concluded it was 

 cheaper to plant the land and work it itself than to try to sell it in small 

 tracts to many settlers. Another was held out by the stupidity of some 

 directors who ignored all the plans of the projectors and builders, but 

 this did not last long. In every case that I have known the price asked 

 by the company was far below what is gladly paid per inch by the aver- 

 age fool settler for a "Jim Crow" windmill of not one tenth of the effi- 

 ciency of a ditch. 



It is much the same with the annual rates. In most all the companies 

 the per inch rates are satisfactory. They are highest in the land owner 

 companies where all the stock is owned by the irrigators and where to pay 

 a dividend would be merely transferring money from one pocket to the 

 other. In some of these it runs to seven dollars and over an acre with 

 every one satisfied. That is they recognize the fact that it is worth that 



