THE IRRIGATION AGE. 125 



irrigation and become wealthy through personal marketing of his 

 products and purchasing of supplies, but the combining of one hun- 

 dred similarly industrious characters insures greater profits in selling 

 and less commissions in buying the necessities and comforts of life. 

 Individual ditches are frequently more desirable, and cheaper, yet the 

 farmer, large or small, must depend upon his neighbors co-operation 

 for the cultivation and marketing of crops and the many advantages 

 over solitude and desert isolation. 



In co-operative colonies the union of labor is carried into all the 

 avenues of business. What is to the interest of an individval member 

 is usually beneficial to the whole and where the collective body is 

 stimulated each member feels the effect. Thus the colonial ditches 

 are kept open to extend their assistance to all classes of consumers, 

 regardless of wealth or social standing; roads are constructed into 

 the canyons for fuel and timber and to the central marts of commerce; 

 school houses are erected and independent educational facilities given 

 every family because of the brotherhood of manhood being the foun- 

 dation of the organization. The Utah colonies number three hun- 

 dred and twenty cities, towns and villages and almost every place 

 was made through co-operative ditch building and colonial union in 

 every public enterprise. The mercantile interests have been built up 

 by small contributions as stock in co-operative stores, where supplies 

 of all kinds are handled at nominal profit and the surplus income 

 divided among the patrons. This co-operative spirit has entered 

 into the building of railroads, erection of telegraph lines, construction 

 of woolen mills and numerous, factories consuming home products and 

 furnishing the demand for manufactured articles. Two of the largest 

 sugar factories in the inter-mountain West have been built in Utah by 

 the co-operative action of the people. 



The Mormon church historian has prepared a statement of ap- 

 proximate results from fifty years experience in co-operation. These 

 figures include estimates of all incomes and expenditures originating 

 in the land which was their only means for sustenance when the col- 

 onies were formed. The closest calculation shows that not less than 

 562,900,000 have been accumulated by the people and expended in 

 various home and colonial enterprises. The estimate gives the aver 

 age cost of establishing 10,000 farms of 27 acres each at $187.50, or a 

 total of $75,000,000. This cost, of course, is reckoned in labor as no 

 money considerations entered into such work when coin possessed no 

 value. The cost of making irrigation canals and ditches is given at 

 $15,000,000, reckoned in co-operative labor. Expense of irrigating 

 the reclaimed farms at $24 each per annum is given at $6,000,000, and 

 includes only actual work. The cost of building co-operative fac 

 tories is placed at $5,000,000 in work and materials contributed as 

 stock. Temples have cost- 18,000,000, the entire sum coming from 



