44 



THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



looked upon as the market for the mining districts 

 throughout the great Southwest. It seems to me that 

 the people here have but a faint conception of the 

 markets which will be created by the development of 

 mines at present unheard of. New Mexico has the 

 mineral wealth to develop and the field is open to 

 the world. New Mexico also has the soil which wedded 

 with water will produce sufficient to supply the present 

 and the future demand for agricultural products. 



"The class of people these irrigation projects bring 

 to a locality is well illustrated by the Twin Falls tract 

 in Idaho. There 270,000 acres have been reclaimed 

 within two years and thousands of good live farmers 

 have located in that region from every State in the 

 Union. Some of the men now located in this irrigation 

 area sold their dairy farms back in Illinois at $100 an 

 acre and bought this new land with the water rights 

 for about $35 per acre. The Twin Falls land under 

 irrigation will produce under proper cultivation as 

 much in one year as the high priced farms back east 

 can in five years. In Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Mis- 

 souri, Iowa and the other great farming States of the 

 Middle West $6 or $7 net a year per acre is consid- 

 ered a good proposition, but out here in the West the 

 irrigated land will produce from three to five times that 

 much and in some instances ten times as much and 

 on cheaper land at that. I know of three different 

 farms on this Twin Falls tract that paid out absolutely 

 with their first crops, even after accounting for the 

 expense of clearing away the sage brush and breaking 

 up the ground. What is being achieved in Idaho can 

 be accomplished in New Mexico." 



REAL RESULTS FROM IMMIGRATION ADVER- 

 TISING. 



BY E. C. ROHBABACHER, OF SPOKANE, WASHINGTON. 



There is, perhaps, nothing that is at once more 

 indefinite and more positive, if you will permit that 

 paradox, than the results obtained from advertising, 

 and I believe that this is particularly true of the re- 

 sults derived from advertising for immigration. Yet 

 it is possible to check up on the results of this char- 

 acter of advertising to a certain extent, and the man- 

 ager who keeps a close record of tangible returns can 

 demonstrate beyond question that the "real" results 

 of a properly conducted publicity campaign for set- 

 tlers are enormous and more than sufficient to justify 

 all that is expended. 



The careful manager will keep a record, however, 

 more to afford a basis of comparing the relative effi- 

 ciency of various mediums and ideas than to produce 

 convincing evidence that advertising pays. To the ad- 

 vertising man whose experience qualifies him to occupy 

 a position as manager, the fact that good advertising 

 pays has long since become an axiom. It is his con- 

 cern merely to see that he gets the best advertising 

 possible that he makes his dollars buy all they will 

 pay for. He realizes that the great volume of results 

 can never be traced, that what is visible indicates the 

 tendency, and that the more general and less specific 

 the campaign the greater the ratio of actual to trace- 

 able results. 



Evidence of real results from immigration ad- 

 vertising are manifest in the great westward move- 

 ment of population. Hundreds of thousands of people 



in every field of industry and endeavor have broken 

 away from home associations in the congested East 

 to find new homes in the less populous and less de- 

 veloped West within the past few years, and it is a 

 conspicuous fact that those parts of the country that 

 have been most active in advertising their resources 

 are the localities that have received the largest num- 

 ber of settlers. The gateways of the middle West have 

 been dividing points for this great tide of emigration. 

 One stream has flooded the Canadian northwest with 

 American brains and brawn ; another, cleaving to Uncle 

 Sam, has sought its destiny in the great southwest and 

 California, while yet another and smaller has made 

 its way to the Pacific northwest, where it has been 

 absorbed. The greatest of these has responded to the 

 greatest call. 



Here are results from advertising for immigration 

 that are commanding the attention of the civilized 

 world. Here are results that are so eloquent as to 

 stir the fountain heads of emigration to a counter 

 activity unprecedented in history. Imagine Boston or- 

 ganizing a publicity movement to keep her citizens at 

 home, raising $100,000 for a defensive campaign of ad- 

 vertising! Imagine the state of (Virginia bidding for 

 farmers to populate her rapidly thinning rural dis- 

 tricts ! Think of Iowa actually falling off in popula- 

 tion in the past five years ! Of Minnesota losing rural 

 population ! Of more than half the towns and cities 

 of the State of New York losing inhabitants ! 



Study the census reports. There you will find 

 testimony of real results that are becoming a matter of 

 concern to the older commonwealths. There you will 

 find evidence that advertising for immigration pays. 



I think it is a fair assumption that everyone who 

 is here today is here as a direct or indirect result of 

 publicity. No one ever came here without first read- 

 ing or hearing of the country. Those who were born 

 here owe to some form of publicity, personal, organized, 

 or accidental, the fact that their forbears were here 

 before them. 



And how many of those who have come do you 

 suppose it would be possible to trace to direct advertis- 

 ing? Comparatively few, no doubt. Even in the Can- 

 adian northwest, that great northjand that has been 

 built up almost entirely by immigration advertising, 

 and which has expatriated more American citizens 

 than constitute our standing army- even there it is 

 possible the records of publicity returns take account 

 of a very small percentage of the actual settlers, ex- 

 cepting as they attribute all immigration, as may right- 

 ly be done, to advertising. 



In Spokane, where we keep the closest possible 

 check, we have had approximately 5,000 direct inquiries 

 within the past six months. We have answered them 

 and have followed them up. We have received hun- 

 dreds of letters, from intending settlers, telling when 

 they would arrive and revealing facts concerning their 

 circumstances, and I have personally met many of 

 these who have redeemed their words. Others, and 

 they are many, are thoroughly determined to come, and 

 are only waiting until they can dispose of property 

 and business interests to do so. The great majority 

 of these are farmers the people we need if we are 

 to build prosperous towns and cities. 



These results are gratifying and they convince us 

 that we are doing good ; but the unidentified results are 



