THE CONQUEST OF ARID AMERICA 



acre for the sinking fund. In other words, he must 

 earn and lay aside the net sum of eight dollars per acre 

 over and above the cost of his living. No one familiar 

 with the productive capacity of irrigated land, and with 

 the markets which fortunately surround nearly every fer- 

 tile valley in the arid region, will doubt that this is easily 

 possible. But by what methods can this result be best 

 assured ? Is the average settler drawn from the urban 

 life of the East able to expend his borrowed capital and 

 direct his untrained energies surely to this end ? Will 

 the investor be willing to trust him to do so ? Both 

 questions may be emphatically answered in the negative. 

 How, then, is the thing to be done ? 



The labor is handled as a unit. While each man is 

 working for himself he does not work by himself. He 

 works in co-operation with his fellows, under the direc- 

 tion of export superintendence, at least until all the 

 farms have been brought successfully through the pre- 

 liminary stage to a paying condition, and until the de- 

 mands of intensive cultivation make it more profitable 

 for each man to devote his time largely to his own 

 place. This is only reducing to a science the method of 

 "swapping work" which already prevails in new coun- 

 tries that is, where there are a number of settlers, they 

 help each other in clearing lands, building houses, and, 

 later, in planting and harvesting crops. They find it 

 profitable to do this, especially in the early years of their 

 settlement, because there are so many things to be dono 

 about a farm which are beyond the strength of a single 

 individual. By helping each other the work of all is 

 dono expeditiously, without cash outlay for hired hands. 

 It is the old story of more economical production and 



sns 



