THE IRRIGA TION A GE. 



ciple that some men have in going to the circus "to take the children," 

 is beginning to wonder how the algebra and latin they are alleged to 

 be learning at the great high school will help them make a living any 

 better than the stuff taught at the country school. And then, too, the 

 man who had that great genius of a boy that he had to bring to town 

 to "give him a chance in the world;" what a dreadful thing it is to 

 find that so many other farmers have a boy equally smart, if not 

 more so! 



Alas! here is the main trouble after all. Each one of us thinks he 

 is one out of a million. The deuce of it is he is. There are a million 

 others just as smart, many of them a great deal smarter and thousands 

 of them more active. In the city we meet competition at every turn. 

 The only man who is free from it is the man who has a good piece of 

 land and -works it directly for a living first and -a surplus afterward. 

 The competition he meets in struggling for the surplus is nothing 

 beside that which the city man meets in struggling for the living. 

 And in the struggle for theliving the farmer has no competition. And 

 where he has a good piece of irrigated land and will work it with one- 

 half the industry and business capacity necessary to make a sure liv- 

 ing now days in a city of any size, he cannot fail to make both living 

 and surplus. And if he has good land and plenty of water the surplus 

 he will make will be greater than that of the average surplus made in 

 the city. The politicians may talk to the contrary as much as they 

 please, the testimony comes too strong from every irrigating settle- 

 ment in the west. The farmer is not suffering as much as the rest of 

 the community, and the great majority in the irrigating sections know 

 nothing different from the best years before the late depression. 



