THE CONQUEST OF ARID AMERICA 



up in quarter-sections that where farms are ten acres 

 in size neighbors will be multiplied by sixteen. Thus 

 in its most elementary aspect the society of the arid re- 

 gion differs materially from that of a country of large 

 farms. Eight or sixteen families upon a quarter-section 

 are much better than no neighbors at all, but irrigation 

 goes further than this in revolutionizing the social side 

 of rural life. 



A very-small-farm unit makes it possible for those who 

 till the soil to live in the town. The farm village, or 

 home centre, is a well-established feature of life in Arid 

 America, and a feature which is destined to enjoy wido 

 and rapid extension. Each four or five thousand acres 

 of cultivated land will sustain a thrifty and beautiful 

 hamlet, where all the people may live close together 

 and enjoy most of the social and educational advantages 

 within the reach of the best eastern town. Their chil- 

 dren will have kindergartens as well as schools, and pub- 

 lic libraries and reading-rooms as well as churches. The 

 farm village, lighted by electricity, furnished with domes- 

 tic water through pipes, served with free postal delivery, 

 and supplied with its own daily newspapers at morning 

 and evening, has already been realized in Arid America. 

 The great cities of the western valleys will not be cities 

 in the old sense, but a long series of beautiful villages, 

 connected by lines of electnc motors, which will move 

 their products and people from place to place. In this 

 scene of intensely cultivated land, rich with its bloom 

 and fruitage, with its spires and roofs, and with its car- 

 pets of green and gold stretching away to the mountains, 

 it will be difficult for the beholder to say where the 

 ends and the country begins. 



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