THE IRRIGATION AGE. 121 



thus scratched together piecemeal the work will cost far more, with a 

 good chance of losing your hold upon it at any stage of the game. 

 The hardest thing in all building of irrigation works is not the engi- 

 neering, which is generally very simple, but to find the ultimate 

 tenderfoot who is to do the bleeding. Nearly every one in the long 

 line of those that ' 'can raise the money" is but a promoter posing as 

 a capitalist putting up his own money; whereas he is in fact trying to 

 ' 'pull the leg" of some confiding friend in the rear and turn a commis- 

 sion on the operation. And the richer you r capitalist the more he 

 likes to do this very trick. 



Then once an enterprise gets "in the hole" no one now days is 

 going to try to pull it out until fully assured of the depth of the hole. 

 The fragments of the broken crockery will then be gathered in at the 

 lowest possible price and capital is generally in so little haste about 

 this that it leaves a very small platform for impecunious promotors 

 and small fry investors to get off on. Paying for the work with 

 stock, water-rights, bonds, or other assets except cash, is a very 

 troublesome and dangerous way of getting out of such an abyss. Men 

 doing high class work like the engineers and attorneys will do good 

 service for such pay, but all the common grades of labor will do very 

 poor work and you are not in condition to object very strongly. More- 

 over the stock and bonds want to be held well together and the bonds 

 must generally be in one block to sell well, and often to sell at all: for 

 nothing spoils the price like having some thrown back on the market 

 at a lower figure, or being held at an extravagant figure when it is 

 necessary to have them all to nrake some deal. 



This subject would make a book and I must cut it short with only 

 a few hints. The engineering and legal work in any irrigation enter- 

 prise is play beside the business part of it. It is the failure there that 

 has made so much loss. There is positively nothing the matter with 

 the land and water part of it in nine cases out of ten. If handled in 

 a business way and the first water available used for actual production 

 in the best manner by the company itself, the proposition ought to 

 carry itself until settlers enough can be secured to make a profit well 

 worth working for. If land enough of the right kind and in a good 

 locality has been secured at the outset at a dry figure, and the water 

 is not too expensive, there should be little trouble in paying some in- 

 terest on the cost the second year from annual crops, provided the 

 projectors have put in enough of their own money and have not bor- 

 rowed too much at too high interest. There are few enterprises of 

 any kind that will now justify the old time "hurrah-boys, -here-we-go" 

 style, and the fact that irrigation works can no longer be built in that 

 way is nothing against them. 



The system of a central village of acre lots with the cultivated 

 tracts outside, which was started in Payette, Idaho. I believe, by 



