50 THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



the same, some are doing it and one in the San Joaquin is making it 

 pay well. Yet such works are called failures because they are not 

 paying dividends to the stockholders of the parent company, or be- 

 cause there is a freeze out game and a receiver to work it with, or 

 some one of the infinite entanglements that .western ingenuity can in- 

 vent to dispose of the assets without paying dividends and without 

 paying interest on the bonds. And the bonds may be all taken by one 

 or more of the stockholders instead of paying in the money in assess- 

 ments. This is right enough, but it tends to develop a discovery, a 

 discovery that any parties not badly wanted in the corporation may 

 be unloaded by allowing the corporation to default on its bonds and 

 then foreclosing. No matter how much of a success the company may 

 be so far as being paid for its water is concerned, it stands before the 

 world as a failure. The disrepute into which irrigation projects as 

 paying properties have fallen is largely due to the causes above given 

 and when examined on the lines laid down it will be found that the 

 real failures are far less numerous than they appear. They are cer- 

 tainly no more than there are of railroads, street railroads, and many 

 other things in new countries. And most of the real failures have 

 been due to mismanagement so stupid or careless that it would have 

 made a failure of anything. But one need not know much of the west 

 to know that a failure to pay dividends or'even pay interest on bonds 

 may be a long way,.from a financial failure of the proposition. 



