THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



391 



William Hanley spent twelve years 

 A Pioneer in the heart of tule swamp land dig- 

 Who Would ging the Blitzen canal to drain and 

 Stop All irrigate 65,000 acres of land in Har- 



Pioneering. ney County, Ore. While keeping 

 his long vigils on the dredge, hauled 

 250 miles from Nevada, Hanley evolved some ideas. 

 He accepted his lot as a pioneer cheerfully, but he 

 decided the world would be better if the lot of the 

 pioneers of this and the next generation is made 

 easier. 



Some of his ideas are worth while ; some seem 

 to us, who have had just a taste of pioneering like 

 a dream too good to be true, or perhaps even too 

 good for the pioneer of the future. We are still 

 enough of an old-fashioned individualist to believe 

 that the better man is evolved from him for whom 

 all things are not provided. We believe we prefer 

 the self-made to the government-made man. 



Perhaps the elimination by the government of 

 some of the hard work and jolts of pioneering will 

 make possible the development of even better self- 

 made men than those of today. At least, William 

 Hanley, who can claim honestly to be self-made, 

 so contends, and he wants to go to the United 

 States Senate to preach his doctrines and try to 

 put them into operation. He meets the contention 

 of excessive governmental paternalism by declaring 

 his theories represent the true basis of economy. 

 But let us have his own words: 



"The pioneer days are over; they should be. 

 The digging of drainage canals and irrigation 

 ditches, and the clearing of land should not be the 

 work of the individual. We have gotten past that 

 time now. It is too much to expect a man to spend 

 his lifetime at such work. We should prepare the 

 land for our farmers. We ought not to expect a 

 man to get out and grub stumps and dig ditches and 

 do the preliminary work. The farmer should have 

 the land turned over to him ready for seeding. It 

 may be necessary to keep him off the land for two 

 years, so the soil elements may be fitted for pro- 

 ducing crops. The government has paid too little 

 attention to our sources of food supply. The far- 

 mer is the man who feeds us and we should help 

 him not rob him every chance we have. When 

 we dig ditches and drain the land and pull the 

 stumps and sweeten the ground, we are not giving 

 the farmer something; we are giving ourselves 

 something helping ourselves. 



"We must get down to the true basis of econ- 

 omy. iThe work of farming is the most important 

 of all our industries. To do this work economically 

 is not the work of individuals but of municipalities, 



states and nations, with modern machinery and 

 plenty of capital and on a large scale. 



"Our homestead laws have been absurd and 

 outrageous. Think of asking a man to go out on 

 raw land, covered with brush and trees, or practi- 

 cally a desert, making him stay there ! He has to 

 go away and work to get enough money to buy 

 some beans and prunes to live on. Then he goes 

 home to his cabin and raises his babies on prune 

 juice. That is not the way to treat the real pro- 

 ducers. The time has gone by for such crude and 

 wasteful ways. Those ways were unjust, short- 

 sighted and expensive. 



"This is an age of machinery. No man ought 

 to be permitted to break his back over stumps, or 

 gather rheumatism down in a ditch. It is not neces- 

 sary. There was a day when it was necessary, but 

 it is not now. What is not necessary is wasteful 

 and what is wasteful is wrong. We must not waste 

 our men as we have in the past. We have the 

 means of saving time and energy and muscle and 

 money and human beings and we must do it." 



The National Implement and Vehicle 

 Farmers Association is doing a good work. 



Warned It is sending to farmers throughout 



Against the land an urgent warning against 



Speculation speculation in his produce and an 



equally urgent plea for preparedness 

 in meeting conditions next year. 



These are extraordinary times. Hardly any 

 organization is in better position to advise the 

 farmer. Its members have foreign correspondents 

 in all the lands at war and in those other lands, 

 that must turn to America for supplies, which 

 Europe previously furnished. They also have repre- 

 sentatives, salesmen and banking connections in 

 every corner of the United States, who keep them 

 informed of conditions. And out of the information, 

 foreign and domestic, which the association has re- 

 ceived, it has evolved these suggestions which it 

 is asking commercial clubs and other organizations 

 to promulgate among the farmers : 



(1) Urge the farmer who has harvested his 

 grain not to speculate on the fluctuation of future 

 prices. 



(2) Recommend to the farmer of the South 

 to diversify his crops. Experience has shown that 

 a one-crop country cannot continue to bring pros- 

 perity to its farmers. The great wheat states of 

 the Dakotas are diversifying. Our cotton states 

 should do likewise. 



(3) Preach preparedness for the 1915 harvest. 

 Care in seed selection, proper tillage and cultiva- 

 tion will bring increased crops to meet the increased 



