THE IRRIGATION AGE. 369 



The irrigated farm is necessarily a small farm. It must be so 

 because it is expensive to build and maintain reservoirs and canals. 

 Not only so, but irrigation so largely increases the productive capac- 

 ty of each asre as to make twenty acres practically equal to one 

 hundred acres depending upon rainfall. The small farm means plenty 

 of neighbors. And that, in turn, means social advantages which were 

 not within reach of country people in the boyhood days of Garfield 

 Lincoln, and others of their generation. The boys and girls of Arid 

 America will have the intellectual stimulus which goes with neighbor- 

 hood association. Thus they gain one of the chief advantages for 

 which so many people are rushing into the towns. But this is only 

 half of their advantage. The other half is the industrial independence 

 and the glorious contact with nature which come with life on the ir- 

 rigated farm. 



The boys and girls who grow up in the great city learn from the 

 beginning their dependence upon others. They must work for others 

 as a means of livelihood, as their fathers are doing. They must live 

 in houses which other men own. Why, mother cannot have a new 

 sink in the kitchen without first petitioning the landlord and convinc- 

 ing that august personage that the expenditure is really demanded in 

 the interests of economy or comfort 



Ah how different it is with that family when they acquire their 

 part of the national heritage a little irrigated farm in Colorado, in 

 Idaho, in California or any other of our beautiful Western States. 

 The soil which they press is their own soil. The roof that shelters 

 them is their roof. Now father works for himself and for his babies. 

 When mother needs a new sink in the kitchen there is nobody to ask 

 except the man who loves her. This is freedom. What does it mean 

 to the nation to have millions of people gradually pass from the serv- 

 itude of the town to the sovereignty of the country? It means, my 

 friends, the enlistment of a new army for the defense of the Republic 

 in every hour of need. Give a man a home upon the soil and you 

 have made him into a patriot who will defend your institutions at the 

 ballot box and on the battlefield. 



This is a very fascinating subject to me and I would like to pursue 

 it at much greater length. I cannot take your time for this purpose. 

 But I wish to impress clearly upon your minds that it is the humani- 

 tarian aspect of national irrigation which will move our countrymen 

 and induce them to enter upon this policy on the grandest scale. Open 

 the doors of the West and you need not worry about the future. Let 

 the people have easy access to the land and most of our other troub- 

 les will settle themselves. The property owner is a conservative man 

 who loves his family and his country. Then let the property owner 

 be as numerous as possible. 



