126 THE I R RIG A TION A GE. 



individual contributions. Churches and schools costing $4,000,000, 

 have been erected. A sum equal to $10,000,000 has been expended 

 in missionary work and an additional $8,000,000 used to assist poor 

 emigrants in removing to the state. 



While the public expenditures have been necessary and contin- 

 ual the expense of individual families estimated at $875 each per year, 

 has amounted to $35,000,000. The cost of building roads and bridges 

 and opening the mountain canyons of commerce has been $4,000,000. 

 Indians were troublesome during the first few years of colonial his- 

 tory and the people were compelled to build forts and collect together 

 for mutual protection, the expense of which reckoned at ordinary 

 laboring prices amounted to $5,000,000. After peace had been de- 

 clared and the Indians had transferred their lands to the whites the 

 redmen had to be cared for, furnished with provisions and clothing 

 and their children educated, which has cost the Mormons $2,000,000. 

 An organized effort was made in 1857 to prevent what they regarded 

 as a hostile army of extermination from entering the possessions 

 called Desert and for this equipment and consequent removal to dis- 

 tant settlements there was an expenditure equivalent to $6, 000, 000. 

 The first few years of conquering the desert were attended by diffi- 

 culties in the form of crickets, grasshoppers, locusts and rabbits that 

 devoured crops to the value of $2,500,000. 



Many unsuccessful attempts at establishing factories for making 

 iron, sugar, paper, nails, leather and cotton goods have been made at 

 an expense of $6,000,000. While this was being done and railways 

 were not constructed the ox team freighting from the Missouri river 

 and Pacific coast cost not less than $8,000,000. An overland mail and 

 express system was established, forts and posts built, and afterward 

 abandoned at an expense of $2,000,000. The cost of protecting this 

 and feeding unfortunate California gold seeking emigrants was $2, - 

 000,000, and later an additional $3,000,000 was expended in building 

 railroads and telegraph lines. Added to all the enumerated expense 

 of colonization are items of $2,000,000 for abandoned towns in Nevada 

 and settlements in southern California and the Sandwich Islands; 

 losses by fire and other incidents amounting to over $12,000,000; taxes 

 and cost of getting building material and fuel from the mountains 

 si 8,000, 000. This vast sum with the possible exception of $10,000,000 

 taken to Utah by colonists, has all been made through co-operation of 

 the original 2,000 settlers and those following them into the Salt Lake 

 Valley. Without this union irrigation would be impracticable and 

 except for irrigation the colonists would have starved and the desert 

 remained victorious. 



Utah may be termed a co-operative commonwealth, because the 

 present 265,000 people population could not exist in any possible man- 

 ner without a union of individual interests. This state has numerous 



