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THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



A SUBJECT OF GREAT IMPORTANCE. 



To the Editor: 



In the face of a state of things through which the 

 people of the states west of the Missouri river have been 

 most shamefully wronged, I have seen no protest, no public 

 declaration of the wrong itself nor the methods of its in- 

 flictions. For this reason and because time presses toward 

 a day of reparation, I ask leave to speak through you and 

 describe what I will call the crime of nineteen-ten. 



For a few years preceding that one, there had been a 

 strong and healthful flow of men and money into Montana, 

 Idaho, Washington, Oregon, California, Utah, Wyoming, 

 Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. Government 

 had expended vast sums in projects to gather and distribute 

 the waters of those arid or semi-arid regions, and private 

 and corporate interests had gone even farther, both in ter- 

 ritory reclaimed and in the cost of reclamation, fostered 

 by state enactments, favored by all the people, and availed 

 of by hundreds of thousands. Waste places had been brought 

 into such productivity as no other country in the known 

 history of the world had ever even approached. The cli- 

 mate of that greater and more important half of the United 

 States favors healthful living and a prolongation of human 

 life, out and way beyond any other on this hemisphere, and 

 the development of its soil-power meant better returns, 

 greater prosperity and more content than the people of the 

 other the eastern half had ever dreamed of or can ever 

 hope for. It was no wonder, therefore, that the movement 

 I have spoken of set in and grew. The people were taking 

 their heritage, and finding it good. 



No work done by any set of men has ever equalled in 

 importance that which was devoted to western irrigation. 

 No other work has had so immediate an effect in benefit- 

 ting so many, nor so incalculable a significance for future 

 generations in an area so vast and of such tremendous possi- 

 bilities. In the course of a very few years, say at the out- 

 side ten, the states of the west waked into full-blooded life 

 and a rising power that in a very few years more would, 

 if unchecked, have put them in the very first position among 

 the possessions of civilized mankind. That position is in- 

 alienably theirs, and can not be withheld, no matter what 

 drawbacks may intervene nor what harm may be wrought 

 in the effort to defer it. But the west itself must take 

 its own destiny into its own hands ; and a new declaration 

 of independence must be made, this time by the west as 

 against the east. Another, though a bloodless, revolution 

 must be fought out, and the right of the west to realize 

 itself and its resources must be established. 



Up to 1909 there was a steady increase in the western 

 tide, and the actual wealth of the nation was growing by 

 billions every year. In the beginning of 1910 it stopped 

 short, and disaster overtook most of those who were leading 

 or directing it. The cause of this sudden and criminal re- 

 tardation of the country's best and most helpful interests lay 

 in the little district east of Broadway and between Cedar 

 street and Exchange place, in the city of New York. The 

 financial district, as that neighborhood is called, or "Wall 

 Street," as it is more generally known, lives through and 

 is dominated by the New York Stock Exchange. The banks 

 or New York are the ultimate depositaries of the banks of 

 the country, and the flow of money to legitimate and neces- 

 sary uses in the west had been more and more heavily 

 diverting bank deposits from the uses of the stock exchange. 

 Early in 1910 a few men, sitting in the center of that enor- 

 mous web, tc-ok quick and vigorous action to reverse this 

 order and bring the country's money once again into the 

 street. It was a simple operation, but swiftly and mercilessly 

 effective. The securities of irrigation projects were abso- 

 lutely forbidden the use of banking money throughout the 

 middle states and the east, either as issues or as collateral ; 

 loans to people who wanted to buy western lands were 

 strictly prohibited ; and no depositor was allowed to check 

 his own funds out of any bank in the Union for the pur- 

 pose of a land purchase without first having to withstand 

 every possible effort of the bank's officers to dissuade him. 

 The result spelled ruin to many an enterprising bond house, 

 and the stoppage of nearly every irrigation project in the 

 whole west, save those in the hands of the federal govern- 

 ment. Irrigation bonds in good projects are probably the 

 best of all securities, because they rest in primary property 

 worth many times their face, and the interest rates are higher 

 than those paid by any other security having anything like 



their safety. They were the blood and the life of the new 

 development that began with the century, and their sale was 

 easy. 



The banks of all the great cities carry funds in the 

 banks of New York. The banks of the smaller towns carry 

 funds in the banks of the great cities. The ramification 

 is complete. New York dominates the banks of other cities. 

 The other cities dominate the banks of the country towns. 

 The country banks carry the money of the people in their 

 own towns, and on the outlying lands. A decree of the 

 banking power of New York therefore reaches to the most 

 remote places, and determines the use of the money of every 

 man, anywhere, who has an account in any bank; and this 

 is especially and strenuously true of all accounts carried in 

 savings banks. Thus it was an easy thing for the banking 

 power of New York, centered in two or three men, to 

 stop at a stroke the progress of the west. 



That is actually what was done. The banks had direct 

 and peremptory word by letter from New York to throw out 

 all land and irrigation securities, and to do it at once. 



Following that letter, a New York bank official made 

 a personal tour of the western states and confirmed it, visit- 

 ing every principal bank, and seeing to it that the country 

 correspondents of each of them got the instruction. The 

 paralysis was almost instantaneous. 



It is not a strange thing, but a monstrous evil one, that 

 the bankers of the United States, whose bank capital will 

 not average five cents on the dollar of the money they hold 

 and control, should have been able to do this colossal in- 

 jury to the whole nation, and particularly to the people 

 of the west. We have no real banking system. We are 

 a bank ridden people,- carrying the burden of an unreasoning 

 tyranny, and working for those who run the Wall street 

 game. The average of ability and of business judgment in 

 the banking interest is immeasurably below that which is 

 necessary to success in any of the country's real lines of busi- 

 ness or industry. Banking in the real sense we never have 

 had. In its place there is an immense pawn brokerage, that 

 gets its profits by loaning the funds of its depositors to 

 the fevered purposes of the stock market in New York. 



Little or no attempt was made to account for or explain 

 this squelching of the west. A few magazines had elaborately 

 wrought out a case in which the growth of the automobile 

 industry was made to appear responsible for the "extrava- 

 gance" of western farmers, and a consequent dimunition of 

 the supply of money flowing eastward. That fooled no one. 

 When the real blow fell, there was no explanation, no reason 

 set forth. It just fell, and that was all there was to it. 

 The metropolitan newspapers, commercial, all, and accord- 

 ingly jealous of any criticism of the banks, took little note 

 of it, except here and there to assault irrigation securities 

 as things overdone and dangerously speculative. The damage 

 was done, and there was neither defense nor recourse. 



If relief is to come through any process other than the 

 mere lapse of time, and the slow motion of events as left 

 to themselves and the overcoming of their own inertia, it 

 must come through an organized movement in the western 

 states, which shall work out a new and real system of bank- 

 ing by the state and county governments. The initiative in 

 that movement will have to be taken by the land associations. 

 Those associations must combine in a general organization 

 and the governors of the states concerned should all be 

 made directors. Banking laws will have to be made over 

 again, and the business taken out of private hands and 

 brought under civil service by the states and the counties. 

 We need no national banks, with dictation from Wall street 

 or from men high up in the federal government, who by 

 the action of a force called "enlightened self-interest" keep 

 step to the Wall street tune. The people of each western 

 state must assume charge of their own money, and be al- 

 lowed to use it for their own purposes, to borrow or to 

 lend as may best advance the work they have to do. Western 

 money for the west, that is. Distinct and absolute control 

 by the west of the funds of the west, for the prosperity of 

 the west. Does anyone presume to say that such a condi- 

 tion can not be brought about? The men of the west know 

 their country and their prosperity means thousands of times 

 more to the nation and the world than all the exchanges 

 and bourses of the world put together. Is it conceivable 

 that they are not capable of managing their own affairs? 

 They are admittedly better in brain, brawn and integrity 

 than the men of the older and less virile parts of the coun- 



