THE IKRIGATION AGE. 



145 



GIVE SETTLERS A FREE HAND. 



BY G. L. SHUMWAY, EXECUTIVE CHAIRMAN AMERICAN 

 IRRIGATION FEDERATION. 



Upon the subject of irrigation a wide variety of 

 opinion exists, but without a doubt there is a unity of 

 thought regarding a few fundamentals. 



In irrigated areas there is greater likelihood of com- 

 munities retaining distinctive individualities than in 

 sections where the productive lands have not boundaries 

 established by canal lines. Habits, customs, language, 

 religion, or whatever peculiar attributes possessed by 

 people who occupy an irrigated body of land, will likely 

 cling from generation unto generation without material 

 change. Thus a new area if settled by Scandinavians, 

 will have its Swedish or Norwegian schools, churches, 

 dress and language. Another community will forever 

 remain a miniature Germany, or France. Instead of 



It is most essential for the glory of our country, 

 that each community shall contain a proportionate per- 

 centage of all cosmopolitan elements of our land. We 

 need a mixture of the sterling frugal Teutons, indus- 

 trious Scandinavians, forceful Anglo-Saxons, and ro- 

 mantic Latin races. We need the dash and constructive 

 abilities of American citizenship, likewise Slavonic and 

 Nippon enterprise. All these combined will make of 

 each developing community, a source of pride to foun- 

 ders of National Irrigation, and will eliminate the dan- 

 ger of a midway plaisance aspect of Inter-Mountain 

 lands. 



Without a method of endeavor we will have our 

 mountain valleys filled with "Little Germanys," "Little 

 Tokios," Little Moscows," and miniature streets of 

 "Cairo," each an isolated world with sympathies as far 

 remote from one another as those communities and tribes 

 of central Asia. 



The one central figure which may avert this isola- 



Sugar Beet Pile at Grand Junction, Colo., Factory, on Denver & Rio Grande Railway. 



absorbing the cosmopolitan ideas of Americanism, they 

 will cling to their traditions and customs. 



At best the agricultural mind is bucolic. Com- 

 paratively few of us possess the happy quality of adapt- 

 ing ourselves to new environments instanter. Few of 

 us accustomed to certain methods of agriculture, will 

 alter our ways at the first instruction of science. A 

 farmer from the rainbelt, must have an experimental 

 year or two with irrigation before the full force of dif- 

 ferent methods penetrates his bucolic mind. It takes a 

 corn grower many years to abandon the child of Teo- 

 sinta and adapt himself to climatic and soil conditions 

 of his new pastoral environment. 



All of which not only emphasizes a difficulty to be 

 met in peopling the several million acres now being 

 reclaimed but how to make the inhabitants real Ameri- 

 cans, and what endeavor will be most available toward 

 equipping the new home-makers with attributes neces- 

 sary for success. 



Send $2.50 for The Irrigation Age 

 1 yea.r, a.nd the Primer of Irrigation 



tion of each irrigation area, and its absorption by one 

 *class of character, is the pure and typical American, the 

 man of pluck, of energy, of resource, and, if you please, 

 of speculative tendencies. Whenever opportunity pre- 

 sents to make more than a living, he is there. If re- 

 stricted to a living, he fades away, and herein is where 

 arises criticism of interpretations given "by executives, 

 into whose hands has fallen the duty of this vast and 

 mighty enterprise. A living is the heritage of every citi- 

 zen, and he who can not make a living in these times and 

 anywhere when there is such demand for every kind of 

 labor and its product, is poor indeed. Will a national 

 government ask that men abandon home, and friends, 

 and go into another newer land, and upon a conquest of 

 a virgin prairie, toil for its development for a mere liv- 

 ing ? Is it the policy of theorizing engineers and experts 

 to limit land units under federal projects to such re- 

 stricted areas that it takes all enthusiasm out of settlers ? 

 Such interpretations eliminates a class of citizens most 

 desirable in new countries. Fathers of families, the 

 children nearly grown and capable of doing a man's 

 work, yet not legal entities, such as these, who has to 

 leave each of these children a small farm are denied 

 fulfillment of such noble aspirations. 



