THE IRRIGATION AGE. 409 



Then the ownership of such a farm would entitle him to go out on 

 the range and lease for a nominal rental of from one to five cents an 

 acre per year, his proportion of the public grazing lands, enough for 

 his needs, to which he would have the exclusive right of possession 

 With this, and a few sheep or cattle, he would be well started on the 

 road to independence and eventual wealth. 



As yet, the people who would avail themselves of these opportu- 

 nities were they once brought within their reach, have no conception 

 of the possibilities of an independent competence which they would 

 offer to every industrious man. These opportunities would be brought 

 within reach of all, if this policy were once adopted, of leasing the 

 public graxing lands and using the revenues to build irrigation works 

 to reclaim the irrigable arid lands so as to open them up for settle- 

 ment by actual settlers and householders. 



The multitude who would want these homes, and who would avail 

 themselves of the chance to get them, would create a steady current 

 of migration from the congested labor centers "Back to the Land," 

 and would relieve all overcrowding of the ranks of the wage-earners. 

 Social unrest and discontent would be avoided, and staole conditions 

 maintained which would benefit both employer and employed. It is a 

 shortsighted man who does not see that there can be no general and 

 permanent prosperity in which both do not share. The workers are 

 in the end the consumers, and they can not be the buyers unless they 

 have the wherewithal to buy. 



The. reclamation of this great territory in this way would benefit 

 not only those who went West to build homes; it would benefit every 

 Eastern interest manufacturer, merchant, farmer, and wage earner 

 by the tremendous stimulus that it would give to all our national in- 

 dustries. New Western markets, enormous in their extent, for East- 

 ern manufacturers, would make increased opportunities for labor in 

 the factories, and a correspondingly increased demand for the food 

 products of the Eastern farmers to feed the workers of the factories. 



But above all and beyond all, the cause is one which should be 

 taken up by the labor organizations of the country, because its inaug- 

 uration would, like the sword of Alexander, cut the Gordian knot of 

 the labor problem. It would provide something that must be found 

 a great labor regular, which would absorb all surplus labor, keep the 

 supply always within the demand, and afford a safety valve and a 

 mighty balance wheel for our social engine. 



