THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



scribbling for the newspapers, was told 

 that he would never make much of a me- 

 chanic, but was already fitted to undertake 

 responsible, newspaper work. For the next 

 two years he worked as reporter and night 

 editor of the Haverhill Gazette. At the 

 age of nineteen he became editor of the 

 Medford Mercury, and his writings on 

 Massachusetts polities attracted consider- 

 able attention among the politicians, who 

 were generally surprised to find a boy on 

 seeking the editor. Later Mr. Smythe did 

 good work on the Boston Herald and other 

 daily newspapers, until he was attracted 

 into an ill-fated book publishing business 

 in his early twenties. When this venture 

 ended disastrously Mr. Smythe accepted 

 an offer to become editor of a daily paper 

 in one of the boom, cities of Nebraska. 

 The newspaper, the Kearney Enterprise, 

 perished with the boom, but not until it 

 had made a state reputation for the editor, 

 who had on more than one occasion been 

 invited to remove to Omaha and take a 

 position on one of the leading papers. 



In the autumn of 1890 Mr. Smythe 

 joined the staff of the Omaha Bee, devot- 

 ing his time to writing editorials and 

 signed special articles. It was here that 

 his interest in irrigation began, with a 

 series of articles that attracted wide atten- 

 tion, and may be said to have marked the 

 beginning of a new era in the agricultural 

 life of Nebraska and the irrigation move- 

 ment of the West. 



In 1890 the Corn Belt suffered a severe 

 drought. It happened that Mr. Smythe 

 had business that season in New Mexico. 

 Passing through the blighted fields of 

 .Nebraska and eastern Colorado, he was- 

 amazed to discover in New Mexico and 

 the greater portion of Colorado a land 

 which sustained a perpetual drought, yet 

 prospered beyond districts favpred with 

 generous rainfall. He was immensely im- 

 pressed with this fact. Looking into the. 

 matter more closely, he discovered (hat 

 aridity is a positive blessing when supple- 

 mented by irrigation. 

 Returning to Nebraska Mr. Smythe^e- 



gan a campaign for irrigation in that state 

 with a series of vigorous articles in the 

 Omaha Bee. The editor, Mr. Rosewater, 

 at first demurred to their publication on- 

 the ground that they would be regarded as 

 a libel on the state, but he consented 

 when the writer offered to sign his own 

 name and personally assume the risk of" 

 unpopularity or lynching. The result was 

 most surprising. It was indeed a popular 

 uprising throughout the western counties, 

 but in favor rather than against irrigation. 

 Mr. Smythe now entered on an active 

 campaign of speeches and conventions to 

 organize the public sentiment he had 

 aroused. The result of a series of county 

 conventions was a demand for a state con- 

 vention, which assembled at Lincoln in 

 the winter of 1891, with ex-Governor 

 Turner as president and Mr. Smythe as 

 vice-president. The result was the organ- 

 ization of a strong movement, which per- 

 sisted year after year until the state had 

 adopted a code of irrigation laws, second 

 to none in the United States, provided a 

 State Engineer, and brought 400,000 acres 

 under irrigation. These events made a 

 revolution in the agricultural methods of 

 Nebraska and other semi-arid states, and 

 put prosperity where hopelessness had 

 been. Of course many influences contrib- 

 uted to this great result, but the begin- 

 ning was Mr. Smythe's articles in the 

 Omaha Bee, and the state campaign he 

 conceived and engineered. 



There, was another result of far-reaching 

 consequence. Mr. Smythe brought before 

 the Lincoln Convention a project for call- 

 ing a national congress for promoting irri- 

 gation sentiment. The motion prevailed, 

 and he was named as chairman of a com- 

 mittee to arrange for the formation of such 

 a congress. The result was the First. 

 National Irrigation Congress held at Salt_ 

 Lake City in September, 1891, and was, 

 followed by a permanent organization,' 

 which haa become one of the strongest 

 factors in the intellectual life of the West, 

 and made its influence felt throughout the 

 nation. . In fact, its influence has been, 



