TEE IRRIGA TION A GE. 153 



irrigation unit under it, how are they to be sustained until they get 

 returns from their crops? (4) How is the large capital which will be 

 required by construction companies to be raised? 



In answer to these questions it may be said: (1) Colonizing experi- 

 ments have shown that the burden of transportation, in case large 

 bodies are organized to go to common points, is lightened in several 

 ways. Western railroads are interested in the irrigation movements, 

 as settlement of their tributary territory is their only hope of profit- 

 able operation. Furthermore, construction companies make advan- 

 ces on wages, because they are obtaining not merely laborers, but 

 settlers who are to make their investments profitable. (2) Laborers 

 will be supported after their arrival and during the period of their 

 work on canals by construction companies which will pay so much a 

 month and board. (3) The problem of supporting a class which starts 

 without original capital during the period intervening between the 

 planting of the crops and the harvest is the most serious question in 

 the list. But it would seem to be feasible to pay the settlers but little 

 cash for their labor while working for their board on the canals, and 

 to pay the balance in orders good for seed and provisions. Under this 

 plan each settler would have the same capital. (4) Capital will be 

 raised for these enterprises in the same manner that it is raised for 

 others. The class of securities which can be offered, based on water 

 rights and ultimately on the land, will be "gilt-edged." The first cap- 

 ital required would probably be advanced in the West and by contrac- 

 tors. Ulitmately it would be realized by the sale of securities. The 

 holders of western railroad stocks and bonds should furnish a large 

 market for these securities, since the reclamation and settlement of 

 these lands is the only hope of making the railroad property 

 remunerative. 



If these conditions be true, Arid America can perhaps contribute 

 to the solution of the problem as to how tenement wretches may be- 

 come a community of home builders and bread- winning citizens. 



b. By improving the condition of the laborer. The principal ills 

 from which laborers as a class-suffer today are unemployment, insufficient 

 remuneration for work done, and a feeling of dependence. Irrigation 

 by promoting intensive farming lowers the margin of cultivation and 

 thus increases the productiveness, of the laborer, the source of his real 

 wages. The small farm unit, requiring little capital for its cultiva- 

 tion, affords a ready market for unemployed labor and makes that 

 labor independent of the entrepreneur class and the pauperization 

 plans of charity. 



Fourth, irrigation confers direct benefits on the State as distin- 

 guished from the individual. 



a. By widening the basis of taxation. Taxes are generally paid 

 out of the annual national production, although they sometimes en- 



