THE IRRIGATION AGE. 279 



meantime the land owner will pocket all the difference in value created 

 by your capital without risking a cent himself or incurring any obliga- 

 tion. 



Here is an entirely new principle of human nature developed by ir- 

 rigation. It is not the only one. But the consequence of this one is 

 that the building of irrigation works becomes exactly the reverse of 

 building water works for city supply. If you have a city of so many 

 people to build for you can calculate with certainty that ninety-five, 

 ninety-eight or oven ninty-nine per cent will take and and pay for water 

 and take it continuously from the very day it is first delivered. Where 

 such is the case it is very easy to make the rentals pay a fair interest 

 on the cost of the plant, because every one begins paying at once and 

 continues paying. 



But with irrigation works you can figure quite as certainly the otner 

 way. If there are fifty thousand acres instead of people you can calcu- 

 late that not a thousand will take water the first year. The second year 

 it is not likely that there will be three thousand acres paying and irriga- 

 tion supports so many more people to the same area than rainfall that 

 five thousand acres in five years will be quite a rapid rate of settlement 

 unless there is some special boom under way on which no calculations 

 can be placed. 



For the city you can build small works at first and extend afterward. 

 But for the land you must build works large euough'to satisfy people 

 that there is to be a large and permanent settlement or you will get 

 very few settlers to start with. As a rule the settlers or those who own 

 the land when you build the works, may be counted out as a source of 

 revenue. Here and there the owner of a quarter section may take water 

 for a ten or twenty acres but the rest he will hold out to sell to a tender- 

 foot. This would be all right if one would sell at a price that would per- 

 mit the new comer to buy water. But not a bit of it. He wants the 

 highest price there is and will hold it out of market for years hoping 

 to get it. If the stranger does buy it then he is horrified to find that 

 you want something for the water beside a pitiful annual payment that 

 is rarely higher than necessary to maintain the works in effective shape. 

 Wh >n one has bought dry land at a hundred dollars an acre because 

 there is a ditch above it but 6ne thing remains. He must get water for 

 nothing in order to make it worth what he paid for it. 



In the meantime interest is running on the investment, the office ex- 

 penses and the maintenance of the ditch in good order cost almost as 

 much as if the whole fifty thousand acres were settled and pay- 

 ing. All of which means that bankruptcy is in sight. The promoter 

 who has sense enough to crawl out from under in the early stages of the 

 game may make something, but the capitalist who smiles when he buys 

 him out will soon be holding the empty sack. I know all this sounds 

 very foolish to one who has never been through it, but go and build some 



