416 



THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



THE DAY WE IRRIGATE AND WHAT 

 IT HAS BROUGHT TO THE 



AMERICAN PEOPLE. 

 About 126 years ago the people of this 

 country numbered only a few millions and 

 were colonists of Great Britain. Today 

 we are fast nearing the hundred million 

 mark and are the proud and happy sub- 

 jects of the Standard Oil company and the 

 Sugar Trust. To say that our progress in 

 many ways has been phenomenal is stat- 

 ing the case tamely indeed. There is no 

 parallel in history for what we have done 

 and are doing. The nearest thing to a 

 parallel I can think of at the moment was 

 the matter of the Romans who, having 

 conquered the world, gave the wealth of 

 the empire to Nero to enable him to get 

 on an extended imperial whiz whieh he 

 did. With "life, liberty and the pursuit 

 of the Filipinos" as our motto there is no 

 telling what we will do in another hundred 

 years Just as apt as not in 2001 we will 

 have swallowed up China and have the 

 laundry business and wooden idol industry 

 of the world well in hand, or China will 

 have swallowed us and some pig-tailed 

 emperor will have built a lot of speckled 

 awnings around the Washington monu- 

 ment to make an ornamental pagoda and 

 be using the capitol building as a joss 

 house. Of course there is no immediate 

 danger of this, but it might happen. Civ- 

 ilizations are peculiar. They go up hill 

 slowly in an ox-eart, but go down on a 

 toboggan "ker-zip" and stick half up in 

 the mud. Had some one told Augustus 

 Caesar that some day a hirsute barbarian 

 would ride victorious into Imperial Rome, 

 fodder his horses in the temples of the 

 gods and chop up the statuary with a meat 

 axe, the prophesy would have appeared 

 very funny to him. His successors, how- 

 ever, failed to see the fun. The barbar- 

 ian got between them and the joke. The 

 way the American people have been whiz- 

 zing along and getting their wealth all up 

 in a wad in New York has probably made 



th3 shade of the Caesars smile to think 

 how easily a great leader with a million 

 men might hog. the whole thing. But let 

 that go. We are talking now of our na- 

 tional growth. We have during the past 

 hundred years done what all the world in 

 all the known past had never dreamed of. 

 We have yoked up the two mysterious 

 elemental giants, steam and electricity, 

 and swept across the world in a chariot of 

 glittering progress. We have learned how 

 to build railroads, and water stocks, and 

 capitalize wind and syndicate a hole in 

 the ground; We have harnessed Niagara, 

 civilized the Indians (that is the dead 

 ones), whipped Mexico, admitted Texas, 

 organized Tammany hall and reduced 

 politics to one narrow channel with a bar- 

 rel at one end and a blow-hard at the 

 other. We have had a war of our own, 

 have licked Spain with one hand tied be- 

 hind us, have subdued Guam island and 

 planted our imperial eagles on the adobe 

 palace of Honolulu. We have struck oil 

 in every newspaper in the United States, 

 found golden California, demonetized sil- 

 ver in Colorado and produced the populist 

 party and the Omaha platform. We have 

 learned to play baseball and football and 

 faro and craps and progressive euchre, and 

 to gamble in stocks and make oleomargar- 

 ine and moonshine whisky and to dodge 

 taxes and carry sixshooters and to wear 

 bicycle suits and br'ght red belly-bands; 

 and in many ways have we accumulated 

 the ornamental regalia of a higher civiliza- 

 tion. We have elevated the stage from 

 Shakespearian coarseness to refined vaude- 

 ville and midway productions of current 

 theatricals; have banished polygamy from 

 Utah and paesented Porto Rico with a 

 beautiful new tariff, having many frills 

 and ruffles and warranted not to rip, ravel 

 or tear- We have produced more colonels, 

 published more books and printed more 

 newspapers than any country in the world. 

 We can pour a great man's speech into a 

 funnel and grind it out of a brass horn 



