THE IRRIGATION AGE. 89 



to one who will read the ways of men. But people look only at the 

 men in fine clothes and fine buggies with reserved seats at the show 

 and drinking fancy drinks at eleven and think the whole town is mak- 

 ing money. 



During all the hard times the farmers have suffered less as a class 

 than any other class, that is, farmers who farm. Farmers who specu- 

 late are no different from other speculators. And the farmer who 

 farms exclusively for something to haul miles to market to sell for 

 money with which to buy food to haul back home to eat is not a farmer 

 but a speculator. He never did succeed in the history of the world ex- 

 cept for short periods, on some exceptional product. He is up to day 

 and down to-morrow. The true farmer does not play eagle to day for 

 the fun of playing gopher to-morrow. He finds it better to play plain 

 jack rabbit and keep on the surface all the time. If he does happen 

 to fall through some mischance he does not make much of a hole in 

 the ground. But under any and all conditions he can keep afloat 

 longer without angel's wings than any other member of the com- 

 munity 



This is true of the common farmer but far more so of the irri- 

 gating larmer. From all quarters of the west have come the same re- 

 ports about this class. In California and Arizona they have laughed 

 at the hard times. In many places they have felt them some, but in 

 most places not at all. Thousands have made money right through it 

 all, and whole sections like Orange county in southern California and 

 Salt River Valley in Arizona are well worth a study by any one who 

 wants to know what true independence is. Take five, fifty or five hun- 

 dred farmers as they come, and compare them with an equal number 

 taken at random in the city on the best street, and the comparison 

 would be ridiculous. The same industry and business capacity that 

 will ensure a living in the city will ensure a surplus in the country on 

 the irrigated place, and that is why we find the banks in all these sec- 

 tions full of farmer's money. 



The complaint will find its own remedy. It is already doing so. 

 Already the real estate agent is tilling the soil that but a few years 

 ago he was trying to sell to someone else for a commisson. The curb- 

 stone broker is folding his tent and quietly stealing away to where he 

 can make living directly and certainly. The sweet-voiced pro- 

 motor is following suit and learning to dig in the ground instead 

 of in the pocket of some stingy capitalist. The man who started 

 the fifth grocery^ on the same block because his dear wife wanted 

 "society" is growing tired of seeing all the folks go to his rivals 

 while the only profit he can figure out after cudgelling his brain 

 till ten o'clock over his books, is the difference in the retail and whole- 

 sale price of the canned stuff on which he lives as a matter of economy. 

 The man who moved into town to educate his children, on the prin- 



