THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



Ferine of Blue Lakes, Idaho, had a plan in mind, 

 at one time, of organizing a company of fruit grow- 

 ers and raising a fund through them to send a man 

 to the Argentine Republic and Brazil, where it 

 was thought a fine market could be opened up for 

 America apples. Whether this was ever carried out 

 or not the writer is unable to say, but the fact re- 

 mains that thousands of tons of fine apples rot on 

 the ground every year throughout Idaho, Montana 

 and Washington. Why this condition exists when 

 the people in the middle and eastern states go 

 hungry for fruit of this kind on account of high 

 prices, is a question which has not yet been satis- 

 factorily answered. If the fault lies with the com- 

 mission men, the only salvation for the producer 

 is to organize and ship into the eastern states and 

 sell through local agents in the smaller towns. That 

 is to say, ship in carload or trainload lots and dis- 

 tribute in towns of moderate size throughout the 

 central states, and from there sell either direct to 

 local merchants or to the individual purchaser. If 

 the fault lies with the commission merchant and he 

 is holding up the shipper so that he is not getting 

 the cost of production from the sales, then the com- 

 mission merchant is surely to blame and should be 

 taught a lesson by the adoption of some method as 

 suggested above. There has been general complaint 

 for years that farmers living throughout northern 

 Illinois and Iowa who ship to South Water street, 

 Chicago, do not get fair treatment from the com- 

 mission merchants. This has been a long continued 

 and vigorous protest, but it seems that South Water 

 street is as well filled with produce now as it was in 

 the old days. If the farmers were regularly getting, 

 the worst of it from the commission merchants it 

 would appear that the shipments would fall off and 

 some other market found. THE IRRIGATION AGE in- 

 tends soon to make a general canvas of commission 

 merchants who handle Western fruit and learn the 

 details of the business at least sufficiently well to 

 discuss it and present their side of the case to the 

 producers. It may then be learned where the fault 

 lies and perhaps some suggestion may be offered to 

 remedy present conditions. 



With this, our November number, 

 Twenty- THE IRRIGATION AGE is entering upon 



Nine the twenty-ninth year of its exist- 



Years ence; in other words the November 



Old number is the twenty-ninth birthday 



of this publication, and we are glad 

 to be able to say to our thousands of readers that 

 the beginning of the twenty-ninth year shows better 

 conditions in a business way, than the past several 

 years. The irrigation age was established in 1885 

 by William E. Smythe and a man of the name Brit- 



ton, who conducted it for a time with varied success 

 and who subsequently turned it over to one of their 

 assistants, who in turn sold it to J. E. Forrest, from 

 whom the present publisher purchased it some 

 fourteen years ago. Prior to that time the AGE had 

 not been a success in a financial way, although it 

 had regularly been conducted in a clean manner 

 both in an editorial way and in its news columns. 

 The various ups and downs of the irrigation in- 

 dustry made it impossible to build the paper up 

 to what was planned by its original publisher, 

 namely, a circulation in the hundreds of thousands, 

 and the present publisher has continued along the 

 line of fighting for circulation with a view to bring 

 it up if possible to the fifty thousand mark. He has 

 never been able, in his fourteen years' work, to reach 

 within thirty per cent of that figure, and judging 

 from the growth during the past year, it may not 

 be brought to that figure for many years to come. 

 It is a remarkable fact, however, that the readers 

 or subscribers to THE IRRIGATION AGE have been 

 regularly loyal to it. There are very few discon- 

 tinuances, and when a reader or subscriber is once 

 obtained, the rule is to have them continue, so that 

 we have many thousands of readers in our list who 

 have been reading the paper regularly for over 

 twenty-five years. This in itself speaks well for the 

 editorial conduct of the publication, although from 

 many directions, as is the case with all classes of 

 publications, complaints are heard as to our editorial 

 policy. This was particularly true concerning our 

 attitude on the mistakes of the Reclamation Service 

 and the high handed manner in which the affairs of 

 the Forestry Bureau were conducted. 



Naturally, a large number of our subscribers 

 were connected with one or both of these bureaus, 

 and did not feel that we were entitled to our opinion 

 concerning them or if entitled to it, they apparently 

 concluded that the opinion should not be publically 

 expressed. By maintaining that attitude a large 

 number of subscribers were lost. We were very 

 sorry, of course, to have them withdraw their sup- 

 port from the publication, but this condition did not 

 in any sense change the policy of our editorial col- 

 umns. During the past several years these old read- 

 ers who became disgruntled and withdrew their 

 support, have returned to us, so that today we feel 

 that we have the cream of the active operators under 

 Government Bureaus, and it would appear that our 

 attitude toward these bureaus materially strength- 

 ened us with our general field of subscribers. Dur- 

 ing the fourteen years that this publication has been 

 controlled by the present publisher, he has pur- 

 chased eight other journals, the combined circulation 

 of which has been merged with that of the AGE. The 

 last purchase of importance was that of the National 



