THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



(Continued from page 607.) 



diet, it should be first. More fruit and less meat 

 will tend to make man better and healthier. Diet 

 influences man and shapes his destiny; meat eaters are 

 not good subjects for revivals. Others besides the Al- 

 mighty regard fruit as the choice food. Lamb said that 

 "a man cannot have a pure mind who refuses apple dump- 

 ling." I would not care to endorse so wide a statement, 

 as it would involve a blanket commendation of cooks. If 

 all cooks were the kind that mother used to be that would 

 be easy, but some cooks are responsible for many crimes. 

 To bad cooking may be chargeable the drab and sombre 

 hue the world takes on for the pessimist and the Calvanist. 

 But there is something twisted in the man who does not 

 like a good apple, especially the Colorado variety. The 

 apple that tempted Adam was a Colorado Jonathan and I 

 cannot blame him that he did eat it. Dr. Hewitt, the dis- 

 tinguished archaeologist, insists that Colorado was the 

 seat of original Eden, which confirms the identity of the 

 apple that figured in the garden where the race was born. 

 The apple still holds the glories that tempted the first 

 three actors in the fall of man. Is there anything finer 

 than the apple blossom, or the odor of the stored fruit, the 

 fragrance of the tree in flower? Earth has no sweeter 

 appeal to eye and smell than the pink and red and white 

 in their setting of fresh, soft green leaves. No artist 

 mingled colors in such perfect harmony. Man is a bungler 

 compared to nature in placing tree and flower and plant. 

 I have seen peach blossoms in the South, the cherry blos- 

 soms of Japan, and the flowering almond in many lands, 

 but none were as beautiful as an apple orchard in May. If 

 the apple tree bore no fruit, it is worth its keep for its 

 fragrance and beauty. Ruskin says that "a blossoming 

 apple tree is the loveliest thing which graces the world 

 today." The senses need feeding as well as the profit 

 account. Apples satisfy four senses, while the birds in 

 their branches give their songs of gladness to the fifth 

 sense. Apple culture is not all beauty and sentiment. The 

 $2 a box they command in the market give a practical 

 sensation that does not detract from the romantic side. 

 The apple may have made trouble for Adam, but it has 

 been the friend and banker for his Colorado descendants. 

 The market returns meet the cold blooded demand for 

 sordid dividends, yielding in gold coin a certain per cent 

 that makes Colorado orchards desired investments at $400 

 to $4,000 per acre. Single apple trees produce more value 

 than an acre of wheat in Dakota or an acre of corn in 

 Iowa, and the product of an acre enough to pay a large 

 part toward an eastern farm. Five thousand carloads is 

 the Colorado apple crop for 1909 and buyers crying for 

 more. Science has decided that apples are the best brain 

 food, that no other fruit contains so much phosphoric acid 

 in digestible shape. These facts should induce any man 

 who considers his own or his country's welfare to join 

 in the apple-a-day club; their motto is "an apple a day, 

 keeps the doctors away." 



Reformers are suggesting apples as a cure for the drink 

 habit; this should start an apple boom over the country, 

 where the crusader is making the map white with dryness. 

 To every mortal, fruit and flowers carry a message of de- 

 light. They arc nature's universal poetry, and awaken the 

 memory of an Eden that is gone and throw across her 

 horizon the hope of the Paradise to come. To own a piece 

 of ground is the hope of every normal man. He dreams 

 of a time when he can hold a title deed to an acre of land 

 and upon that acre plant a tree from whose fruit he may 

 pluck and eat. This love of orchard and garden is the 

 home instinct that flames in every heart, and is the linger- 

 ing hint of man's origin in God's first garden. It is the 

 wisdom to obey this natural impulse to possess the soil. 

 Most men waste enough each year to start them on the 

 road to ownership of a lot, a home, a piece of land. A 

 little sacrifice, a little self-restraint, even the giving up 

 of a bad habit, the omission of the weekly poker game, the 

 daily drink; a little less tobacco will secure a piece of 

 Colorado orchard land, raising the buyer into the ranks 

 of the taxpayer, the home owner, the citizen that has a 

 reserve and is not perpetually haunted by the fear of acci- 

 dent and the coming of the "rainy day" for which no pro- 

 vision is made. Get your acre of Colorado land, and if 

 you want pleasure, plant apples and know the joy which 

 nature ever confers upon her votaries. If you want health. 



plant apples; the work, the air, the sunshine will drive 

 away disease, and keep doctors' fees at a minimum. If 

 you want food, plant apples. There is no diet more per- 

 fect, pleasant or digestible. If you want profit, plant 

 apples. The acre returns in Colorado and the arid moun- 

 tain states is greater than the dollar yield of the golden 

 oranges of California, or the acre crops of any annual 

 product of the soil, the world around. The returns from 

 some of the orchards of the West are like the dream-laden 

 argosies from Golconda. Is there any other crop which so 

 perfectly satisfies the eye of the artist, the pleasures of 

 production and the grasp of avarice? The apple is a good 

 tree to plant in waste places, along roads and streets. 

 Every farm should have its orchard, every lot its apple 

 tree. It would be easy to prove also that we owe the 

 planting of apple trees as a memorial of gratitude to 

 Mother Eve. She it was who had the courage to dare the 

 responsibility of good and evil; it was her nerve that made 

 man a free, moral agent. God loved her for her diso- 

 bedience. As 1 read the story, it was Adam, not Eve, that 

 was driven out of Eden. Eve voluntarily followed Adam, 

 knowing that he needed her wit and love. The poets have 

 found the flowers well loved subjects for their poetry. 

 Scott saw the beauty in the thistle of Scotland, Byron 

 glorified the rose, and Burns the daisy. Wadsworth wrote, 

 "My^ heart with pleasure fills, and dances with the daffo- 

 dils." All praise the primrose and the modest violet; many 

 rhapsodies over the clover's summer sweetness, but its 

 sister, the alfalfa, is a name unknown in the vocabulary of 

 poetry. The apple blossom, too, is forgotten. If my pen 

 was poetic, it would be these two neglected favorites of 

 the humming bird and bee, whose glory I would sing. 

 If I am called in spring time, no flower will be more 

 welcome to my fleeting spirit than apple blossoms; no 

 monument would be finer to mark my place of rest than 

 an apple tree, and when I enter that realm where every 

 month has its fruit, where flowers ever bloom, and 

 woman is always young and fair, I can ask no Heaven 

 more perfect than where the fields are perennial with the 

 purple and green of alfalfa, and the paths are embroiderd 

 with apple trees in blossom and the air fragrant with their 

 perfume. 



FOUNTAIN VALLEY PRODUCTS. 



The exhibit of products from the Fountain Valley 

 shown at the National Irrigation Exposition in connection 

 with the Eighteenth National Irrigation Congress at 

 Pueblo, Colorado, attracted wide attention. 



Messrs. Riddoch and Pyles, of the town of Fountain, 

 collected a fine variety of vegetables and general farm prod- 

 ucts and delivered them in good condition at the show 

 grounds, near the Mineral Palace. 



A practical demonstration of this character will do 

 much to advertise Fountain Valley and the lands under 

 the Fountain Valley Land and Irrigation Company's tract. 



Elsewhere in this issue will be found an advertisement 

 of the Fountain Valley Land and Irrigation Company. 



DEBTS ARE DEBTS. 

 And Tlrcy Must Be Paid, So Decides the Supreme Court of Michigan 



I he Supreme Court of Michigan, in an opinion delivered September 

 2bth, held that International Harvester Company of America is not de- 

 barred from collecting its outstanding debts by any plea that it is a 

 "trust". The circuit judge decided the other way, but his decision was 

 reversed; and the defendants will be compelled to settle their accounts 

 with the company. 



This decision is not only of the utmost importance to all large 

 trading companies, but to the general public. Incidentally it once 

 more brings to view the streak in human nature which deems it de- 

 fensible to steal rides on railway trains, to smuggle personal purchases 

 through the custom house, and to break contracts with large corpora- 

 tion?. 



The facts in the case are that the International Harvester Companv 

 of America, several months ago, began action against some dealers to 

 collect a balance long overdue. There was no equitable defense against 

 the debt, but the defendants hit upon the novel plan of setting up the 

 claim that the company was a "trust", and that this was a bar to the 

 collection of the amount due. Strange to say a lower court sustained 

 this claim, but on appeal the Supreme Court reversed the decision and 

 ruled that the plea that a plaintiff is a "trust" is not a good defense. 



A company selling an article or commodity bears precisely the same 

 relation to the purchaser at the time the obligation falls due that it did 

 at the time the purchase was made. If the decision of the lower court 

 had been sustained it would be impossible for any large company to 

 continue in business except upon a strictly cash-in-advance basis. 



