Gloucester County Democrat. (Woodbury, N.J.) 1878-1932, 1897-09-02
TO SAVE ARID LANDS.
NATIONAL IRRIGATION CONGRESS
WILL MEET IN LINCOLN, NEB.

WILL MET lN LitNCOLiNs NED
Seventeen States and Territories VIII Send
Delegates Action VIII Probably BE
Taken to Secure Federal Aid For Re-
claiming Waste Lands.
The national irrigation congress will
hold its sixth annual session at Lincoln,
Neb, on the 28th, 29th and 3Oth of Sep
tember. Seventeen states and territories
will send delegates, among the latter
being the recognized western experts in
irrigation and many well known advo-
Gates of the use of Federal money to re-
claim the vast arid and semiarid lands
which, but for the lack of water, would
now be supporting millions of indus
trious and thrifty people Every effort
is promised to make this session as sat-
isfactory i'll results as the previous ones
have been in laying plans.
1t cannot be said that the irrigation
lists in trying to secure aid from con-
gress have entered upon holiday task,
for the opposition among eastern farm
ers to any scheme for putting more ag-
ricultural land into competition with
what is already growing crops is not
only earnest, but bitter. We have in
hand circular signed ky F. S. Peer Of
Livingston county, N. r., which was
issued after the adjournment of the fifth
annual session of the national irriga-
ton congress, in which the proposal to
reclaim arid lands is denounced as ga
scheme of land speculators and land
grabbers, whose business has gradually
diminished as the land has been taken
up, and who are now signing for new
fields to conquer. Mr.. Peer argues that
the governments old habit of giving
away farms to the immigrant peasantry
of Europe who, men, women and chill
dren of a family together, work l8 hours
a day, dress in rags and go to no ex-
pense for reading matter, schooling or
decent clothes, has so handicapped the
eastern farmer with his 500 land and
greater cost of living that he can barely
make both ends meet Hence he be-
lieves that to increase that area Of
competition is to either compel the east
erner to come down to the foreign level
or to submit to failure and beggary.
That Mr.. Peers views are common on
the other side of the Mississippi argues
that any attempt to get western irriga-
tion taken care of by congress will meet
with serious and protracted opposition
there.
But Is states exclusive of terrific
ries) acting as a unit in congress
means the work of 80 senator's and
enough congressman to WELD power
| full influence. If the irrigation congress
can agree upon plan Of action and get
| the western senators and representatives
to adopt it, the fact of general eastern
hostility need not be deemed insur-
mountable. When the east or part Of
| it wants favors, then will be the time
TO make bargains. For example, the
east demands river and harbor i'm
provement on a great scale, much of it
for merely local convenience. But if the
west should oppose some of the meas
ures that cone up and aid others that
seem worthy. the solidity Of the eastern
phalanx would be broken and votes
gained for our own projects. 1t is not
merely the power of strategy, but the
power of justice, which would work in
favor of the west, for in the beginning
the eastern land itself was given away
by the government, turnpike roads were
built through it at national expense,
the channels of rivers cleared for traffic,
4 and forts maintained to protect the farm
ers from the Indians. In word, the
pioneer American Of the east, also a
foreigner in many cases. had the gov
ernment at his back and got all the help
from it that he needed to obtain land
and to cultivate it. He even got his
seeds by the bounty of congress. Is it
too much, therefore, for the pioneer of
the west, in his search for home, to
ask the government to merely dam up
a few mountain canyons, so that be can
get water in the dry season?-San
( Francisco Chronicle.