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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



man ; but when he had to yield to the 

 inevitable he turned to work, and work 

 has become his salvation. 



There is no better illustration in the 

 world of the fact that work is our salva- 

 tion than the Indian. Where he has 

 abundance of money, where he is cared 

 for as in an orphan asylum, where he is 

 paternalized, where he is treated, as many 

 would have him treated, as a baby in 

 arms, he does not grow, he does not 

 flourish, he does not become a man. But 

 where he is made, like the New England 

 fathers, to struggle for his own living, 

 and finds that he cannot live unless he is 

 forced to struggle, he comes through and 

 makes a man of himself. 



THE CHANGE THAT HAS COME OVER IDAHO 



Now we start at the northern bound- 

 ary again, at Idaho. There is a State 

 which a few years ago was thought to be 

 an almost worthless piece of land, good 

 for forests and with a few minerals. I 

 was on a piece of land along the Snake 

 River, in Idaho, two years ago which 

 raised 575 bushels of potatoes to the acre. 



We have there the highest dam in the 

 world, the Arrow Rock Dam, built by 

 our own people. The government is now 

 projecting an enterprise to water, per- 

 haps, several hundred thousand acres of 

 Idaho land. The undertaking will in- 

 volve the moving of a city, the town of 

 American Falls, taking that town up on 

 wheels and carrying it a mile or two 

 back, so that we can flood the land where 

 it now stands. 



Seven years ago I visited the Minidoka 

 project, in that State, and found the peo- 

 ple discontented. Today they are, I sup- 

 pose, among the happiest farmers and the 

 most contented people in our country. 

 Here I saw a town where there never 

 had been a fire lighted, houses with fire- 

 places and with chimneys, and some 

 houses without fireplaces and without 

 chimneys. No fires were necessary be- 

 cause at the dam above the town the 

 water had been stored to irrigate the 

 land, and at the dam electric power was 

 generated for use as heat, light, and for 

 cooking. The women churned with elec- 

 tricity and the sewing-machines were run 

 with electricity. I suppose they had a 

 sort of paddling machine for the naughty 



children that they ran by electricity. It 

 was an electric city. 



THE ELECTRIC AGE ON THE EARM 



And that is not an impossibility in any 

 section of our country. One of the things 

 that women can do (and women do love 

 a precise and definite job) is to try to 

 make the life of the woman on the farm 

 more happy. There is no one group of 

 people deserving more sympathy, more 

 of support, more positive aid, than the 

 woman who lives on the isolated farm ; 

 and for her electricity, if it can be 

 brought to her house, is invaluable. 



For the woman farmer in Maryland, 

 Virginia, and Pennsylvania electricity is 

 just as necessary and just as possible. 

 Why can't we take our coal at the mouth 

 of the mine or down in the mine, turn it 

 into electricity, and send that power by 

 wire over every farm of the country? 

 We do it where we have water power, 

 and you can generate electricity with nat- 

 ural gas and with coal. 



We are a wasteful people, for we do 

 not know the possibilities in our re- 

 sources ; but some time the engineering 

 mind will get to work upon such practical 

 problems as this, and then life will be- 

 come less complex and the woman on the 

 farm will have more time to herself to 

 think of the things that she ought to have 

 some chance to think of. 



Idaho is a rich State and is growing 

 rapidly. It has a bed of phosphates, 

 practically inexhaustible, to fertilize that 

 whole Western country; and it has for- 

 ests, mines, a fine State university, and 

 an excellent school system. 



WHAT THE MORMONS HAVE DONE FOR 

 UTAH 



Crossing the border you come down 

 into Utah. 



Never speak disrespectfully of the 

 Mormon Church. It has as law-abiding, 

 steady, hard-working, kindly a group of 

 people in Utah as will be found any- 

 where this round globe over. Brigham 

 Young may not have been a prophet of 

 Almighty God, but he worked a miracle 

 when he crossed from the Missouri River 

 over that desert, leading his band of a 

 few hundred followers with their push- 

 carts, going out into that unknown waste, 



