184 



THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



of settlement. The demacrats, by now 

 favoring this idea themselves of providing 

 homes in the west for thousands of Amer- 

 ican citizens, could with entire consistency 

 charge the republicans with having for- 

 saken their old-time policy for that of 

 colony-building. 



Irrigated In the irrigation debate in the 

 Homes. house of representatives Rep- 



resentative Bell, of Colorado, stated that 

 he had served on a special committee 

 which went to the arid west to investigate 

 conditions of labor and capital, and that 

 they found in Utah the best labor condi- 

 tions of anywhere in the United States. 



"Why, "he said, "did we find there the 

 best condition of labor? The reason given 

 was that the men employed in the coal 

 mines and in the metalliferous mines and 

 everywhere else had small homes on this 

 irrigated land, and whenever there was a 

 shortage of work the miners of Utah went 

 to their little homes and cultivated their 

 land. A family can raise more on one 

 acre of good fertile irrigated land, in my 

 judgment, than can be raised on an aver- 

 age of three or four acres in the Eastern 

 states. This condition quadruples the in- 

 ducement for laboring men to make homes 

 on this land, and causes them to take a 

 lively interest in their reclamation." 



For Small Congress is beginning to re- 

 Settlers, cognize that the national irri- 

 gation propaganda is not a scheme to irri- 

 gate vast tracts of private lands at public 

 expense thereby putting money into the 

 hands of speculators and those already 

 well able to take care of themselves; but 

 that it comtemplates the reclamation and 

 putting upon the land of Itona fide settlers 

 home-builders. When this idea becomes 

 firmly grounded in the minds of Eastern 

 men that the land is not to be reclaimed 

 and then jobbed away in large tracts, but 

 that it is to be safe-guarded so that it will 

 become available for the small settlers 

 who wants to take up forty or eighty acres, 

 and build a home upon it and stick his 

 plow into the soil and let the water follow 

 his furrow, then there will be very little 

 opposition to storing, by the Government, 

 of the flood waters of the West, so as to 

 make it available for such use. 

 ' Such a policy carried out would people 



the arid West with the same class of hardy 

 citizens as the early pioneers who settled 

 the great Mississippi valley, carving out 

 for themselves and their children, homes 

 in the wilderness, and making and creat- 

 ing their living and prosperity from the 

 soil. 



Tolstoy s bring us the sad 



Farmer and intelligence that Count Leo 

 Philosopher. Tolstoy, the military leader 

 who abhors war, the landlord who be- 

 lieves the present holding of land in pri- 

 vate ownership to be wrong in every way, 

 the nobleman who dresses in the garb of 

 the humblest peasant, the literateur and 

 art critic, who plows his fields and cobbles 

 his own shoes the cables tell us that this 

 wonderful and good man is dead at his 

 home farm, Yasnaya Poly an a, Russia. 



Perhaps no better idea of the character 

 and order of mind and heart of this man 

 has been given to us than that which 

 Edward A. Steiner contributes when, in 

 Farm and Fireside, he describes a recent 

 visit to the great humanitarian, and re- 

 peats his interview with the greatest 

 writer and thinker, perhaps that Russia 

 ever has given to the world. Of the farm 

 and its relations to life, Count Tolstoy 

 said to Mr. Steiner: 



"The truly happy life can be lived only 

 on the farm, away from the struggles of 

 the markets, content with what the earth 

 brings forth, living upon God's bounty, 

 asking nothing of men and giving them 

 everything they need. Tell your 'farmers 

 and farmers' sons," continued the great 

 thinker, "to cling to the soil, to live sim- 

 ply, purely and lovingly. Tell them not 

 to forsake' the country because they are 

 lonely; there is no loneliness like the lone- 

 liness of the city, and there is no sweeter 

 companionship than that which they may 

 have with God in the field. Tell them 

 that labor alone enobles, and that obedi- 

 ence to Christ's law alone brings salvation. 

 There is no greator curse than money, 

 and there is no greater blessing than to 

 live the Christ-life." 



Who, witnessing the strife and selfish- 

 ness of the modern commercial spirit, but 

 hopes that some day the world, following 

 out that divinely instituted order first 

 the simple, then the complex, then a re- 

 turn to the simple will return, like some 

 weary prodigal, to the arms of the great 

 Earth-mother, glad to be at peace with it- 

 self once more and engaged in the whole 



