THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



595 



who is given the honor of entertaining the congress, but 

 it should be handled during the time of the Chicago 

 meeting, and undoubtedly will. 



Facts 

 About 

 Land 

 Values. 



Within the past month an improved farm 

 of 100 acres in the western part of Cook 

 County has been sold for $80 an acre. 

 There are many other instances of land 

 selling at from $80 to $100 an acre in the 

 dairy belt of Northern Illinois, close to 

 Chicago, the greatest produce market in the West. Any- 

 one seeking a farm today can secure one at these figures 

 in Cook, Lake. Kane, Winnebago. or almost any other 

 county of Illinois, one of the greatest of corn, live stock 

 and dairy states. 



A case is known to the writer in which a farmer, who 

 thirty years ago took a homestead in Iowa, recently sold 

 his land in the Hawkeye State at $150 an acre and bought 

 a place within thirty-five miles of Chicago for $90 an acre. 



The real estate records in almost any daily newspaper 

 will show that improved farms are selling in the best parts 

 of Illinois for from $80 to $125 an acre. This range of 

 prices is lower than that prevailing in some of the newer 

 agricultural districts of the West. The old states have 

 fallen behind the times in farming matters and conse- 

 quently land values are lower in Illinois and Indiana than 

 in some of the irrigated sections of the far Western states. 



Productive capacity and profit yielding govern the 

 price of land, and in recent years reading people have 

 learned that the irrigated farms of Colorado, Utah, Ore- 

 gon, Washington and several other states yield from 50 

 to 300 per cent more than farms in the eastern half of 

 the country. People can afford and are willing to pay 

 more for land on which big crops are assured. Haphazard 

 farming in the old and wealthy states explains the low 

 price of land. Rural life is not on as high a level there 

 as in the new regions. Progressive people in great num- 

 bers have moved West. 



It was Bill Nye who said, during his travels, that the 

 western half of the United States had more rivers and 

 less water, and more cows and less milk than any place in 

 the universe. The late Robert Ingersoll is credited with 

 saying that all the western lands needed was "society and 

 water." The water was there. The inventive genius of 

 man has found the way to use it. Society of the best type 

 has followed. The humorist has found subjects elsewhere. 

 Today western lands are claiming important space in the 

 news columns of the metropolitan press. The wealthy, 

 progressive man wishes irrigated land and naturally he 

 turns to the West for it. 



While there is no compilation of figures showing the 

 employment of private capital in irrigation projects, ex- 

 tensive investigation shows that individuals and land com- 

 panies have led the government, so to speak, in this class 

 of investment. This condition not only prevails through- 

 out the United States, but in almost every country where 

 arid lands are irrigated. 



Forty years ago, about 20,000 acres were under irriga- 

 tion in the United States, and duing the following decade 

 the acreage was increased to 1,000,000. This was increased 

 to 3,631,000 in 1889 and to 9,000,000 in 1902, and the latest 

 reports available show 16.000,000 acres, or 24 per cent of 

 the land under irrigation thoughout the world, which 

 totals approximately 75,000,000 acres. 



In our report of the Eighteenth Na- 

 Were Heney tional Irrigation Congress it will be 

 and Pinchot noted that Francis J. Heney of San 



Accredited Francisco, who delivered a talk before 



Delegates? the Congress on Federal Control, Con- 



servation, etc., took part in the deliber- 

 ations later on, and submitted an amendment to the reso- 

 lution offered by the Committee on Permanent Organiza- 

 tion, substituting the name of B. A. Fowler, of Phoenix, 

 Arizona, for president, in place of Col. R. E. Twitchell, of 

 Xew Mexico. 



It is to be presumed that Mr. Heney was a duly ac- 

 credited delegate to the Eighteenth National Irrigation 

 Congress. It would do no harm, however, to learn defi- 

 nitely that such is the fact, as in case Mr. Heney was not 

 appointed he had no right to take part in the delibera- 

 tions of the congress further than to deliver an address 

 as indicated on the program. 



It is very clear to those who have studied the actions 

 of the different factions of the congress during the past 

 few years that this effort to depose Mr. Twitchell in 

 favor of Mr. Fowler was framed up after the arrival of 

 Gifford Pinchot and Francis J. Heney, and, no doubt, at 

 the instigation and suggestion of Mr. Fowler and his close , 

 friends. The fact of the matter is that Mr. Fowler as 

 president of the congress was purely and simply an acci- 

 dent. He was elected to succeed the editor of this journal 

 as secretary at- the Sacramento meeting, at the sugges- 

 tion of such men as Pinchot, Newell and their cohorts, 

 and had no logical right to the nomination or election as 

 president of the congress; it has been an established 

 rule to select the first vice-president of the congress as 

 president, and this rule has never been changed, so far as 

 our recollections go, excepting in the cases of Hon. 

 Thomas Walsh and Hon. Wm. A. Clarke, of Montana, 

 both of whom as large contributors to the expenses of the 

 congress, were conceded the honor of a second nomina- 

 tion and election. Hence, we say that Mr. Fowler, never 

 having occupied the position of first vice-president, had no 

 right in the first place to aspire to that position. 



It would have been considered preposterous on the 

 part of any former secretary of the congress to go out 

 and work for the office of president, and it certainly would 

 have been impossible for Mr. Fowler to obtain this posi- 

 tion through any other chance than connivance with the 

 powers that were temporarily (perhaps unlawfully) in con- 

 trol of the situation during the closing hours. 



One can readily understand why Heney. being in 

 sympathy with some of Pinchot's views, could be induced 

 to carry out his wishes in a matter of this kind, and there 

 is no question of his right to do so, provided he was a 

 regularly appointed delegate to the congress. It is the 

 opinion of THE IRRIGATION AGE that were he n^t a delegate 

 there is some question as to the constitutionality of the 

 vote in favor of Fowler. This is a matter that would be 

 better determined by men who are acquainted with parlia- 

 mentary rules and procedure. 



Colonel Twitchell is, by odds, the brightest man in 

 irrigation affairs in the southwest. He has never failed 

 to perform his share of the work along irrigation develop- 

 ment lines. He has witten some of the best stuff that has 

 ever appeared concerning prehistoric, present and future 

 irrigation development through the southwest. 



