118 THE IRRIGATION AGE 



It by no means follows from this that it will pay to build a rail- 

 road. And a hotel built in such a way as to require a ]arge force of 

 servants when there is no one there is also a nice thing to handicap a 

 proposition. Of all things to sicken a colonist few equal a country 

 hotel aping city style and making a wretched botch of it, especially 

 when one is charged city prices. There is a general air of financial 

 inanition about such a concern that quickly alarms one of any sense. 

 And by the way you might remember that a large business office with 

 fancy furniture and swell clerks hanging around big safes and rustling- 

 ponderous maps has seen its best days. The trick of a beggar wear- 

 ing good clothes, displaying a "wad" of goodly proportions and giv- 

 ing champagne suppers is also understood quits well in these later 

 days of the century. 



Our lines have fallen for the present in a very practical age where 

 unreasonable busybodies are talking abont "brass tacks" and such 

 nonsense unheard of in the days when we got rich over night on the 

 money of the verdant and hasty. 



These people are very annoying to one who has the Universe by 

 the hair, but as they happen to have the money just now we may have 

 to listen to them until theiday of the enthusiastic and reckless returns. 

 When Kansas farmers can again borrow fifty dollars or so an acre on 

 their farms to go west with for town lots we may again do some of 

 the old time business. In the meantime let us remember that though 

 there are still in the sea as good fish as ever were caught they do not 

 bite as they used to. 



The proposition then must be strict business from start to fin- 

 ish, founded on facts and not on fancy, with all matters of cost fig- 

 ured high and everything in the way of income reckoned IOW T . The 

 contingency list must be made as large as possible, instead of small, 

 and it must be ever borne in mind that every contingency is sure to 

 continge. There are enterprises where all this can be done and a fair 

 profit still be made. But one may as well lay aside all ideas of doubl- 

 ing money or getting control of something that can be manipulated by 

 construction companies or other wheels within wheels so as to roll up 

 a fortune for the inside few without any one knowing of it or without 

 injuring the enterprise. Unless you can get an honest enterprise that 

 will pay when run in an honest way you might as well let it alone, for 

 capital is very weary of anything else and is not blind as it once was. 

 Nor are settlers struggling as they once were for land under ditches 

 that are to go bankrupt. They too have an idea that the success of 

 the company has something to do with their land values and also with 

 the delivery of water in case of a pinch. 



Abandon all ideas of making dividends out of annual rentals or 

 tolls for the use of water. A company cannot be safely operated on 

 any such basis and the annual payments should be just high enough to 



