1094 



THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



Several weeks ago there appeared in one of 

 Causes of the daily papers an editorial headed, "The 

 Poverty and Chief Causes of Poverty," which gave some 

 Their brief but very interesting information upon 



Remedy this subject. It appeared that in a recent 



investigation made in New York City out 

 of 1,600 families only 2 per cent or 32 families were poor 

 due to intemperance, and that desertions, imprisonment and 

 inefficiency caused more cases of poverty than drunken- 

 ness. The two greatest causes of poverty, however, were 

 found to be sickness and unemployment, they accounting 

 for 66 per cent of all the cases investigated. 



When it is considered that while there were these 530 

 families in New York City without work, there were hun- 

 dreds of farmers in the West unable to hire help to har- 

 vest their crops, and who would have been glad to give 

 work to the New York unemployed. 



What is said of New York applies to all large popula- 

 tion centers and it shows that something should be done 

 to educate the laboring classes to the fact that the big 

 cities are dangerous ground for any except the most robust 

 and proficient, and that the country, while offering smaller 

 wages, gives them many things the city cannot give, name- 

 ly health and contentment in God's fresh air and beneficent 

 sunshine. 



Some reforms might even be advocated in the rural 

 situation by suggesting to farmers who employ labor only 

 for part of the year, to hire their help by the year and 

 furnish house, garden, etc., for a hired family so as to give 

 them assurance of steady employment. This would cer- 

 tainly be more desirable than to hire the laborers by the 

 day and discharge them as soon as the work becomes 

 slack; by hiring them by the year with assurance of mak- 

 ing their living most laborers would be glad of the oppor- 

 tunity and become faithful and contented workers. The 

 writer knows of several cases where farmers thus im- 

 ported working families from a large city and settled them 

 on their farms and where the results have proven very 

 satisfactory, the expense for the whole year being but 

 siightly more than formerly when the help was discharged 

 during the winter months. 



Under such conditions it should not be difficult for a 

 farmer of even moderate circumstances to get the services 

 of a city family on his farm, and getting the benefit of the 

 labor of the whole family, which would tend toward a 

 more intense cultivation of the land and consequent better 

 crops. This would tend to relieve the congestion in the 

 cities and build up rural districts which are now lying dor- 

 mant for the want of proper labor to develop them. 



It is truly time that people stop their mad lush into 

 the city when health and happiness are begging them to 

 go into the country to work the soil for abundant returns 

 at harvest time, with many oportunities of acquiring land 

 and becoming well to do farmers in the end. 



Within the last two weeks two dams have 

 The Safety given way in this country, scattering death 

 of Dams and desolation in the wake of the released 



Must Be waters. The breaking of the dam in Austin, 



Looked After Pa., caused the death of several hundred 



people and the destruction of much valuable 

 property. The giving away of the dam in Black River, 

 Wisconsin, while not accompanied by much loss of life, 

 has destroyed a whole city of 2,00ff people, making them 

 all practically homeless and doing damage amounting to 

 several millions of dollars. 



In the case of the catastrophe in Austin, Pa., it ap- 

 pears from the information available at this time that a 

 manufacturing concern using the stored-up waters behind 

 the dam is criminally responsible for the terrible results 

 following the breaking of its dam, since the dam had been 

 officially condemned by expert engineers about a year ago. 

 The repairs needed to make it safe and staunch were esti- 

 mated by the expert to require the expenditure of some- 

 thing like $25,000. This sum of money looked too big to 

 the corporation and hence kept using the dam in its de- 

 fective condition until the awful catastrophe finally oc- 

 curred, almost annihilating the people and buildings of a 

 whole town. 



This is a terrible lesson, but it should be learned and 

 it teaches that dams holding back large bodies of confined 

 water are dangerous and that they must be inspected 

 periodically by competent authority; and, furthermore, 

 laws should be passed either in each state or by Congress 

 compelling immediate attention to the recommendation of 

 such official inspectors, and vesting the state with author- 

 ity in case private corporations fail to make the required 

 repairs, to make such repairs forthwith and charge the cost 

 to the owners of the dam. If such a law had been in effect 

 in Pennsylvania the shocking loss of life and property 

 would have been avoided. 



Some of our California friends are quite ex- 

 The Financial ercised over the attitude assumed by the 

 Situation in San Francisco bankers relative to the irri- 

 the State of gation bond securities. 



California. It is perfectly proper for a bank or 



other financial institution to closely and 

 thoroughly examine into the character of securities offered 

 as collateral for loans, and if such examination discloses 

 the fact that the basic enterprise does not promise success, 

 then it is natural that the banker should reject the prop- 

 osition. But if, on the other hand, such bonds are issued 

 by districts which embrace actual irrigation tracts, which 

 are actually distributing water to actual settlers raising 

 crops, proving that the enterprise is on a paying basis or 

 nearly so, and that no default has been made in the 

 payment of interest, then banks are doing wrong in refus- 

 ing loans on such bonds, especially as there has been re- 

 cently a law passed in California providing for the making 

 of irrigation bonds recognized securities for loans and 

 legal investments of banking, savings, insurance and 

 school funds under certain restrictions. 



These restrictions relate briefly to newly organized 

 districts, in which case a commission is provided which 

 must pass upon the bonds and authorize them as invest- 

 ments. There is, of course, no way to compel the San 

 Francisco bankers to invest even in the best irrigation 

 bonds that were ever placed on the market if they don't 

 want to, but it is certainly a piece of short-sightedness on 

 their part to interfere with the development of the re- 

 sources of the state of California, which will gradually 

 affect the prosperity of the banks adversely. 



Suspicion is pointing to the comparaticely low rate 

 of interest earned by the irrigation bonds as being the 

 principal reason for the action of the San Francisco bank- 

 ers and that industrial bonds paying a higher rate of inter- 

 est are much more attractive fields for them as invest- 

 ments. 



Whether this could be offset by the great perma- 

 nence and security of the irrigation investments is an open 



