THE IRRIGATION AGE. 307 



spike operator. If some one will furnish the spike and Jupiter furnish 

 the thunderbolt of a boom to drive it with he can hold it under the 

 hammer in great shape. But when the boom is gone and things settle 

 down to a matter of "brass tacks" with which the great business of the 

 world is in the long run done, your smart promoter is of little use. He 

 can't stop to bother his great brain with such things but still scours 

 the stars in the chase for that inevitable recognition that awaits all 

 good things. In some cases the immediate cultivation of the soil with 

 the first water brought into the ditch would be the salvation of the com. 

 pany and it could well afford to give forty acres, water and all free, each 

 year to tlie man who made the best showing. But I have never known 

 it done. The owners are too busy with hotels, railroads, townsites, 

 water-powers and will not stoop to such trifles. In almost every case 

 the plainest prudence dictates that no one should be allowed to touch the 

 soil in a new proposition unless he does it right. Yet they allow any 

 blockhead to go in and flood land, ungraded and unchecked, at will in 

 the old Indian style and make a showing that will drive away the next 

 one that comes. They are too busy with inside intrigues or struggling 

 for control, or working up some stock deal to bother with such "minor 

 details" as that. Such matters they call "minor details" unworthy of the 

 attention of great financial genius. I have been unable to make any as- 

 sociates in any enterprise listen to advice of this kind and it will prob- 

 ably be thrown away forever. But I have seen many of them ]ose 

 money by it and have lost some myself through their stupidity. 



Many of her companies have brought great discredit on the business 

 of building irrigation works by the manipulation of the stock, or assets 

 of the company in outside "deals" of some sort connected with it. In 

 most cases these are legitimate parts of the business but those who em- 

 bark in them get wild, they think they can stir up a cyclone and ride it 

 safely into port, but they don't know when they have sighted land. Not 

 one in a thousand has sense enough to quit before he has swamped him- 

 self and crippled the company. One of the finest water propositions in 

 the world, one of the surest and safest, requiring very little -money to 

 build and with the best market on earth for water lies a wreck today as 

 it has for years through such work and no one can see exactly where 

 the present owners, who got it apparently cheap enough, are to make 

 anything out of it. This was without any inside quarreling or attempts 

 to "freeze out" the smaller stock holders, but was simply too great an 

 expansion of ideas that in themselves- were sound enough. "Freeze out'* 

 games are of course another fertile source of trouble -but I am dealing 

 now only with those troubles that arise from fair dealing, deadened by 

 stupidity or addled by to lofty a flight into the stars. 



Another common result of having "the biggest thing on earth", 

 which almost every water proposition is to its projectors, is that it must 

 be immediately and fully completed. It is too great and grand to wait 

 or to move by slow and easy stages, feeling its way along by safe steps. 



