THE IBEIGATION AGE. 



are difficult to administer over so vast a territory, with 

 the utterly inadequate means at the disposal of the 

 Reclamation Service, still the terms of the act are suf- 

 ficiently explicit to show there never was an intention 

 on the part of Congress that vast bodies of tillable land 

 should be withheld from entry for a long series of years, 

 nor that they should be placed under such restrictive 

 rules as to practically prevent their settlement. 



"There is no just reason why these rules and regu- 

 lations, and if need be, the Act itself, should not be so 

 amended as to permit the unrestricted development of 

 all lands suitable for settlement as fast as applied for. 

 A year's investigation ought to enable the department 

 to determine whether or not a project is feasible, and 

 no restrictions should be placed upon settlement more 

 than a year prior to construction. Some allowance 

 should be made to the settler who, in the interim, is 

 forced to construct a private irrigation system, to enable 

 him to comply with the law." 



The pioneer upon the desert has proven through 

 the hard and oft-time unremunerative school of ex- 

 perience what can be raised upon these lands. His life 

 is a strenuous battle for a home upon lands which our 

 fathers taught us was a wilderness. No one knowti 

 what this means save those who endured the years of 

 privation, and a life-time of hardships, which would 

 satisfy even our most strenuous President. A large 

 part of the reward for his labor comes to him now by 

 reason of the rapid settlement and development of the 

 country. His lands, which were scarcely worth the pay- 

 ment of taxes, become rich and valuable. 



The early settler who braves the hardships of pio- 

 neer life, who proves the soil and climate, showing what 

 crops are adapted to the country, thereby paving the 

 way for more effective service by the government's 

 reclamation, is surely entitled to all he gets. 



And there is no just reason why whole communi- 

 ties, and whole counties should be thus handicapped and 

 their development retarded through a long series of 

 years by such needless extension of these blanket with- 

 drawals over every acre suitable for settlement. 



Will pay for the 



$2i50 I RRIGATION AGE one year and the 



PRIMER OF IRRIGATION 



EDITORIAL NOTES. 



BY G. L. SHUMWAY. 



J. H. Edmiston is in jail. He was once state oil 

 inspector and a politician of importance and character. 

 He combed the hair of the grafters the wrong way. 

 Subsidized and guilty publishers made much of his ar- 

 rest and conviction. 



They in some occult manner had before his in- 

 dictment hinted at a man "high in the political world" 

 on whom the federal sleuths had tangible evidence of 

 frauds. In fact, the public mind was poisoned in the 

 usual way now employed by prosecutors of the govern- 

 ment and the mysterious unknown person was con- 

 victed before the public knew whom it was or what were 

 his crimes. 



One of the principal witnesses of the government, 

 it is now stated, is a man who is under indictment for 

 almost every crime except murder, and on the testimony 

 of such as these, good men are sent to jail. 



At the time of Mr. Edmiston's indictment others 

 were involved, among which was W. E. Keefer. Some 

 time previously Mr. Keefer had filed upon a claim 

 over which roamed the herds of Mr. Edmiston. He 

 never settled upon the land and never pretended to. 

 On the- contrary, failing health and a change of opinion 

 caused him to migrate to the Pacific coast, where he 

 died and was sleeping the long sleep in that far off 

 mould long before the sleuths of the land department 

 charged his name with crime. 



Dean Ware has also served his term for being 

 guilty of the crime which for forty years were not 

 considered crimes. It was at the time of his convic- 

 tion that Dean George A. Beecher, of Trinity Cathedral, 

 Omaha, asked to be permitted to serve the sentence. 



Dean Beecher probably exemplifies the life of the 

 lowly Nazarine as nearly as any living man. He is of 

 the West, with a heart pulsating with human sympathy 

 and a brain capable of understanding and appreciating 

 the character and trials of western empire builders. 



To illustrate his life work, he is the sponsor of 

 dozens of refractory boys who have been paroled from 

 Judge Suttoh's juvenile court at his request. They re- 

 port regularly to him and he is thus building up in 

 them the latent principle of honor and making better 

 Americans for the future. 



