THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



605 



APPLES AND ALFALFA 



The following address on "Apples and Alfalfa" was 

 delivered by Alva Adams at the National Farm Land 

 congress in Chicago, November 19, 1909. 



I take this subject as a text from which to preach a 

 sermon upon rural life. "Back to the land" means inde- 

 pendence and self respect for the individual and safety to 

 the nation. 



Every idle jobless man that shuffles along a city 

 street becomes a menace to free government and a liability 

 to the community. Every home builder, every man who 

 by honest toil, provides for his family, is a positive asset, 

 a true ashler in the fabric of the republic, for of such is 

 the kingdom of liberty. To those who seek a new home 

 who would have their industry a guarantee for inde- 

 pendence, I would make bright and fair the road that leads 

 to Colorado. A land over which bends the bluest, clearest 

 sky under which the flag of our country floats. There the 

 air is sweetest, the sun is brightest. There men can live 

 longer, have fewer annoyances and more natural delights. 

 It is man's playground and God's hospital for His afflicted 

 children. It is to be the seat of homes, schools, prosperity. 

 There is gold in her trees gold in her hills gold in her 

 soil. There are a hundred gates to her temple of resources 

 here eggs are not in one basket, but in many. So diversi- 

 fied are her assets that the bent of every honest, indus- 

 trious man can be gratified. It is the state of destiny the 

 land of opportunity. 



In some Eastern states there are more people than 

 land. In Colorado there is more land than people. A 

 sensible migration will help both. I will keep to the 

 agricultural possibilities and not parade the other mani- 

 fold resources of Colorado. The certain and oppulent 

 production of her irrigated fields and orchards should be 

 attractive to those who have played the hazard of alternate 

 drought and flood. Irrigation is the ideal method of agri- 

 culture. Next September the National Irrigation congress 

 will hold its session at Pueblo. That convention will dem- 

 onstrate the part that irrigation is doing and will do in 

 horticultural and agricultural production. This exhibit 

 will be a revelation to all who are interested in the food 

 problem of the age. 



The men who dug the first irrigation ditch in arid 

 America was the Columbus of a new empire, not an empire 

 of conquest of battle, fleets and armies, but an empire of 

 homes. Was Brigham Young the father and prophet of 

 irrigation in America? If so, he will be remembered for 

 that work long after the church he founded in the wilder- 

 ness shall have faded from the minds of men. Mormonism 

 claims a larger percentage increase of converts in the past 

 few years than any other church in America. The leaders 

 of the Mormon church combine the material with the 

 spiritual. Other churches promise a mansion in the next 

 world; the Mormon not only meets this inducement, but 

 he provides a home in this world also. Wise in human 

 nature, the Mormon missionary recognizes the universal 

 hunger for land and a home. They go to the landless, 

 and homeless, and promise a piece of land where a home 

 may be built, where apples and alfalfa and plenty may be 

 produced; children reared and a family altar raised. This 

 is an appeal of irresistible force. Any religion can make 

 proselytes that offers with their faith land and a home to 

 those whose environments forbids the possession of either. 

 Were I bound to a hopeless struggle for existence, to a 

 peon's toil without hope or outcome, I would accept any 

 religion that offered me a vine and fig tree beneath whose 

 shade I might sit and from whose fruit I might eat. Now 

 and then a great spirit like Savanarola or Bruno will wel- 

 come the ax or the fagot rather than yield one line of their 

 faith, but unfortunately the mass of mortals are first con- 

 cerned as to bread and butter, and apple pie in this world. 

 With this insured, they will take some chances as to the 

 mansions, the fruit and pastures of Paradise. . 



I hold no brief either for or against the Mormon 

 church and refer to its marvelous growth to illustrate the 

 influence of land and home upon individual destiny. As 

 to spiritual creed alone, it might have long since disap- 

 peared but it will continue to prosper as long as it can 



provide material homes and work to those who embrace 

 the faith. While the church can place its members upon 

 an acre of land with the plow, the hoe and the water to 

 cultivate it, converts will come and all the denunci- 

 ation of protestantism, all the anathema of Catholi- 

 cism or even the senate and courts of the United 

 States cannot destroy it. They were first to drive out the 

 myth of the American desert, and make it a mirage on the 

 map of the West. They were the first to plant alfalfa and 

 apples and peaches in arid America, and today our minds 

 turn to these irrigation pioneers when we consider the 

 Gunnison tunnel and the other government projects that 

 are transforming the West. In days to come the arid 

 mountain regions will prove to be the lands God loved, 

 the best instead of the land He forgot. Colorado is spirit- 

 ually free, and has no special religion to offer save that 

 of fellowship and brotherhood to those who come to help 

 us build and ideal commonwealth. 



The prototype of the clover fields that wintered the 

 flocks and herds of Abraham are seen in the alfalfa fields 

 of Colorado and other arid states. They are not alone 

 material assets, but upon the landscape they are spots of 

 beauty, their vivid color when viewed from our hills seem 

 like brilliant emeralds upon the breast of the desert. These 

 crops are permanent in the ledger of man's resources. 

 Commerce may fade and fleets may sink, empires and cities 

 may become one with Ninevah and Tyre, but the apple 

 and the alfalfa of an irrigated field will bear its fruit and 

 fodder as long as the sun shines, water runs and man 

 works. Around the broken graven granite gods of for- 

 gotten religions the Egyptian peasant of the twentieth 

 century guides his wooden plow and gathers harvests from 

 the fields the Pharoah tilled. Religions may disappear, 

 learning may be forgotten, the palaces that Caesar builds 

 will crumble, anarchy may upset courts, laws, institutions, 

 but the irrigated land, it abideth forever. 



Alfalfa is not a transient grass, its roots may not take 

 hold on the center of specific gravity, but they do have 

 a keener sense for hidden water than the magic water 

 finding hazel rod of my boyhood. 



Recently, when telling of an old Colorado pioneer, 

 who had followed an alfalfa tap root 90 feet, Judge Bell 

 remarked that he knew it to be true, and that in his section 

 the alfalfa grew so high that it blossomed above the 

 clouds, and the bees that gathered honey from their 

 flowers, swarmed in heaven. While alfalfa roots may not 

 go down to the hot belt, or its bloom to the skies, its 

 tenacity of life, its wealth of use, its ability to thrive in 

 dry countries, makes it God's best gift to the semi-arid 

 lands. It is among grasses what the camel is among 

 animals. It survives and blesses where the other varieties 

 perish. As bluegrass has made Kentucky famous, so will 

 alfalfa become the pride and glory, as it will be the profit 

 and redemption of our western arid empire. Every year 

 the possibilities of alfalfa are being widened. American 

 scientists are studying the plant, varieties are being 

 brought from every arid land by selection and mixing, new 

 qualities are being developed, new varieties grown. In 

 connection the soil and condition of every section are be- 

 ing studied. The day will come when there will be no 

 grassless land in our country, any more than there is a 

 great American desert between the Rocky mountains and 

 the Missouri river. Alfalfa is to make conquest of the 

 desert, nor is it alone a plant of the desert; it will flourish 

 everywhere. 



The best investment made by the United States since 

 the Louisiana purchase, has been the $42,000,000 spent in 

 conserving water. For the part Roosevelt took in starting 

 these enterprises, he . will be remembered long after his 

 other virtues and peculiarities are forgotten. By conserva- 

 tism, dead land equal in productive area to a great state 

 has been reclaimed. In other sections floods and marshe? 

 hold fallow and useless other vast regions that should 

 produce. To make the wet the dry lands and make dry 

 the wet lands are problems for our engineers and econo- 

 mists. 



Nations that suffer from low water and from floods in 

 alternate seasons will by future scientists be classed with 

 the stupid nations. Nature supplies us with ample water, 

 if we have not the sense to apportion it properly, we have 

 no call to curse the gods. Those who will not dam the 

 waters have no right to damn the Creator. In effecting 



