THE IKRIGATION AGE. 



135 



EDITORIAL NOTES. 



BY G. L. SHUMWAT. 



The Farm Life Uplift Commission has reported, 

 and, as predicted, the amount of information collected 

 which is of practical use is not emphasized by the amount 

 given out. As stated, the indorsements are for those 

 things for which the commission was created. The 

 purpose of its creation was political and it has fulfilled 

 its mission. 



The indorsement of postal savings banks was an- 

 ticipated in these columns and elsewhere. But let me 

 say here that I' do not strenuously object to postal sav- 

 ings banks if they come into being through the enact- 

 ment of a bill embodying Senator Carter's ideas, but if 

 along the lines of Mr. Meyers' opinions, it will place 

 monetary matters in the hands of fewer people. 



The main objection to Senator Carter's plan lies 

 not in the plan itself, but in its practical operation when 

 coupled with the asset currency law. Under that law 

 all bonds that are a basis for currency must pass in- 

 spection and obtain the official 0. K. of a monetary 

 commission. To become a federal depositary a bank 

 must first find satisfactory bonds to deposit in the 

 United States treasury. Those bonds must be acquired 

 either from the people or from bondholders in the 

 money centers. 



The commission can discriminate. In fact, it 

 must discriminate, and quite likely the kind of bonds 

 industrials and transportation bonds with which its 

 members are familiar, will be favored. While irriga- 

 tion bonds; which are probably the best and safest kind 

 of bonds in existence, are as likely to be rejected, be- 

 cause the commission lacks information along irriga- 

 tion lines. Every seed sown, every improvement made, 

 every furrow plowed, every mortgage filed, in a com- 

 munity embraced in an irrigation district, adds to the 

 strength of that district's bonds, yet they are likely to 

 be the first in the list to be blue-penciled.' So if the 

 outer circles must send to the industrial centers for 

 their bonds it will drain local communities of just the 

 amount of its available life blood. 



But this is a digression. I started in to scold, and 

 I fear that the continued irritations will cause me to 

 degenerate into a chronic scold. From the hundred- 

 and-some-odd-thousand letters received one is given 

 conspicuous notice. It is an unfortunate faculty of Mr. 

 Roosevelt to seize an exception and hold it up as the 

 rule. In this letter, one man asserts that he counted 

 seven snakes in the wall of a neighbor's well, and ap- 

 parently this illustrates the carelessness of country peo- 

 ple as to sanitary matters. 



This "snake story" evidently impressed the com- 

 mission also. If its members were "Beard"-less, as boys, 

 or were of that class of women whose sympathetic souls 

 melt with pity when they go slumming, one would not 

 be surprised. These supposedly sensible men were evi- 

 dently shimming also, and because of such an isolated 

 case (if indeed it existed) their scintillating imagina- 

 tions painted serpents galore invading the Edens of our 

 farming communities. It would be singular (if it were 

 not plural) this tendency of the closing administration 

 for wildly extravagant illustrations. 



My earliest childhood was upon a farm where the 

 pink petals of peach and apple blossoms fell into my 

 cradle. The stretching fields of corn, grains and 

 meadow of sweet scented hay were my associates of 

 youth and early manhood. I exchanged work with 

 neighbors for miles around, and took my turn with 

 the downrow and the tail of the straw carrier. The 

 labor was hard and the hours were long, but the food 

 was good and clean. Once in a while an old toad would 

 drop into our open wells, but was immediately discov- 

 ered and the well drawn dry and cleaned, but I never 

 yet saw or heard of a snake in a well until unearthed 

 bv this slumming commission. 



I have wandered all over the great west. I have 

 lived in dugouts and cabins, but everywhere in the 

 rural world has cleanliness been one of the dominating 

 features. When the high winds roared the wise old 

 country women found comfort in the thought that it 

 made the country healthier. Seldom would a woman 

 of the farms think for one moment of mingling the 

 garments of her flock indiscriminately with others as 

 is now done in many laundries. No, her proud mo- 

 ments are when, white and clean, washed by her own 

 hands, a laden line hangs under the light of the sun, 

 the snow white flag of cleanliness, and a refutation of 

 this seemingly wanton insult by inference at least. 



To continue this joke of a report the commission 

 solemnly warns the farmers of the great agricultural 

 states, where waterfalls are not of frequent occurrence, 

 that the monopolization of water power will overwhelm 

 them with some dire calamity. Power from most of 

 the streams in the greater part of the agricultural states 

 is impossible to any great extent, but the few old mills 

 that are so operated appear to me to have converted a 

 waste energy into useful channels, and the perpetrators 

 of the deed are entitled to medals, or some such recog- 

 nition. 



Farm life commissions and conservation commis- 

 sions are all right in a way if they would get down 

 to business and not draw so heavily upon their vivid 

 imaginations. The rural population needs actual, prac- 



