172 



THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



and societies together are doing- but a very 

 small fraction of what is required, both by 

 charity and honesty, to supply this enor- 

 mous demand for the barest necessities of 

 life, it appears to be left for the United 

 States government to do the great work of 

 supplying, in such a way as to enable a 

 large proportion of our poor to begin to 

 become independent immediately, and to 

 render all the rest who are able to work 

 capable of undertaking private occupa- 

 tions, especially farming, within a few 

 years. 



Since life is necessarily dependent upon 

 products of the soil, the right to life can- 

 not be made good without them, or, in 

 other words, comprehends a right to them, 

 or to means of obtaining them by labor. 

 The facts that, in past history, the power- 

 ful have succeeded in getting and keeping 

 dominion over about all the earth's sur- 

 face, to the deprivation of the weaker or 

 less influential, and that the means of liv- 

 ing and of getting livelihood are still with- 

 held from a large proportion of the earth's 

 inhabiters, by the rest of them, render 

 governments now under obligation to act 

 in a large way, and each see that its own 

 poor have right the means of independ- 

 ently living by their own exei'tions. 



Present lack of capital results from 

 deprivation of opportunity in the past, 

 as does also ignorance of agriculture. 

 Evidently also this same poverty has been 

 a temptation to the greater evils of enerva- 

 tion, want of industry, and perhaps all 

 forms of sin and suffering. Certain it is, 

 that generally in civilized nations, the 

 respectability of people is in proportion as 

 they are well-to-do, or well off. Be it 

 emphasized, this is speaking generally. 

 But it is well known that the poorest 

 classes are the more dangerous classes. 

 The wealthiest streets in cities are the 

 safest streets. 



Thus it is seen that the United States 

 government has before it, even more 

 prominently and imperatively than it did 

 have its lately accomplished glorious work 

 for Cuba, the duty of enabling the great 

 body of its own poor to obtain independ- 

 ently their own living, and gradually to 

 rise to as high an elevation as any part of 

 humanity should. 



The method of this, it is thought, must 

 be by teaching, in farming and in 

 making by hand necessities, training and 

 temporarily managing the able-bodied 

 poor collectively upon large government 

 farms, thus enabling them to earn inde- 

 pendent capital, besides, if requisite, se- 

 curing repayment, in work, of all expend- 

 ed by the government for them. 



But, as soon as these ends are attained, 

 it seems certainly advisable to let the 

 laborers give their places to others, and 

 go elsewhere for permanent settlement. 

 There are a number of weighty arguments 

 for this, particularly, for instance, separ- 

 ating the individual families of the lower 

 classes from each other, for their own 

 elevation. Undue contact of the superior 

 poor with the degraded can be largely 

 avoided by dividing them at the outset, 

 and putting them on distinct farms. 



The lack of the advantages of actually 

 seeing the men settled in their own homes, 

 as common in small colonies, can, by 

 special arrangement, be made up for by 

 trying, whenever expedient, to induce 

 them to take land near the government 

 plantation by aiding them and by ex- 

 changing products with them. 



Friends of the work are needed to help 

 choose localities, suppose of a township 

 each, to aid in making minor details of 

 plans, and to uphold it by their sympathy. 



I-N MONTEREY, MEXICO. 



In a letter recently received from T. C. 

 Nye, of Laredo, Texas, he spoke of a visit 

 he made to the Sot Springs near Monterey, 

 Mexico, from which we make the follow- 

 ing extract: 



"I saw fine irrigated land, water by 

 natural gravitation; Mexicans plowing 

 with a pair of oxen and using a crooked 

 stick for a plow. On our hotel table there 

 were absolutely no vegetables. The street 

 cars of Topo Chico, [the springs] run 

 through some fine irrigated lands which 

 are given up to raising oats to be sold to 

 the brewery at Monterey. It looked to 

 me like a great waste of good land and 

 pure water to be -aisinS beer, while the 

 city of Monterey, 73,000 population, had 

 no vegetables. I had not seen Monterey 

 for two years before, and thought the city 



