THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



23 



for ideas of social progress, have a right to know that the person who 

 edits this department has at least some claim to authority on this 

 subject. For ten years I have been thinking of nothing but irriga- 

 tion and the social problems growing out of it, and for five years been 

 practically engaged in planning and organizing colonies. It has be- 

 come my life-work. I feel that it is my mission, and that the present- 

 ation of it is my message. Like all work that partakes of the nature 

 of construction or reform, it has been attended by many difficulties 

 and hardships. It has not yet reached the point of acceptance and 

 of triumph not, perhaps, by many hard years. Yet no salary or 

 position could tempt me from the work 10 which I have set my hand. 

 I believe profoundly in its usefulness and its ultimate success aye, in 

 its very necessity as an imperative conditioa of the peaceful progress 

 of human society everywhere. And in future numbers of THE AGE, 

 I shall try to give good reasons for my faith. 

 Standish, Gal., Sept. 25, 1869. 



