Martinsburg independent. [volume] (Martinsburg, W. Va.) 1875-1900, 1890-04-19
The Bonanza Farmers and the Flooding
Tillers of the Soil.

last week the Hon. Roswell p.
Flower, Of New York, spoke in OPP
position to appropriations by Con
gress for the irrigation of the arid
lands OF Montana, Wyoming, Colo
RADIO, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah,
Nevada, Idaho, Washington, Oregon
and California. Mr. Flower declared
that he was totally opposed to the
general government spending one
dollar IN irrigation works, for which
some FORTY or fifty bills have been
introduced. He based his opposi-
zion on the ground that the under
taking of such works w9s no part of
She business of the government;
chat it was of doubtful constitution
ality; that the lands so irrigated
would be absorbed by spectators
and syndicates, to the injury of the
individual farmer, as they have been
in Italy; that of the aggregate valu.
alton OF property in the United
States only &c per cent. was repre-
sented by the States in question,
whilst all the other States represent
ed 95.4 per cent; that it was these
latter States which would have to be
taxed to build up and improve
particular section Of country with
which they have only remote inter
est, and that such appropriations
would be the initial step to a gigan-
tic system OF improvements in new
field which must necessarily result
IN benefiting few capitalists to
whom the government owes nothing,
to the injury of farmers settled in
other localities, comprising forty
four per cent. of our population, to
whom the government owes the pros
perity of the Union. He quoted
Major Powell to show that indiyid-
aal farmers could not make living
on the arid lands and could not
undertake to irrlgate them, and that
20 render them valuable aggregated
capital or cooperative labor would
be necessary. He also quoted from
the report of the committee of the
Senate upon the relations of capital
and labor, which strongly points out
she way in which the Western far
mer is being crushed out by the bo-
nanza farmers and labor demoralized.
"We are" says the Senate report,
in the midst of nothing less than an
agricultural revolution. AS if by
magic bonanza farms have sprung
up in the West. Farms of thousands
of acres are getting to be quite CON-
mon. There is one estate of $50 900
acres, covering an area Of SAT square
miles. These huge farms are simply
big food factories, with the temper
airy good of the factory system, the
cheapening Of its products, whether
shoes or grain, but with the perma-
nent evils of the factory system re-
producing themselves IN agriculture.
These food factories are worked
exhaustively, being mere specula-
tions, from which capital hopes soon
TO retire, and in which, therefore, it
has no regard for the future fertility
Of the land. The hired men have
no hold of the land they work, nor
does the land hold them. Instead of
g settled, free farmer population,
building up homes, developing vii
lagos and towns, laying the founda-
ton for a sound society, we have
gangs of hired laborers, drawn from
3 distance, herded on the ground
during the busy season and then
turned loose to shift for themselves;
men trained in alternate hard toll
and loaing, making no homes, fur
nishing the recruits for those bodies
Of tramps which of late years, in
dull times, the West has found roam
ing around with constant danger to
society. If this system continues
and develops it will turn out a class
Of agricultural laborers wholly new
to our country, incipient paupers
and criminals where we looked to
see n hardy yeomanry. The pros
Rect IS of an indefinite continuance
Of this state of things and of vast
increase Of it,
hI. -hOOuy JcSLlneQ before the
committee that the number of farms
of thousand acres and upwards has
Increased during the past ten years
more than hundred per cent. that
he had examined various farms in
the West, running from 10000 to
100000 acres, upon which there were
1rom ten TO two hundred and fifty
iaborers employed, but not a women
or child or fixed inhabitant upon the
territory OF one of them; that these
men appeared when they were want
ed and disappeared when the want
was sSone, and that while the small
Dakota farmers cannot make living
with wheat at fifty cents per bushei,
the bonanza farmer is able to raise