The Billings gazette. [volume] (Billings, Mont.) 1896-1919, 1902-01-17
A HoMESEEkERS PROBLEM.

look for them where crops cannot be
grown by the aid of rainfall alone.
The homestead of the future must be
irrigated. The immigrant working
alone cannot accomplish this. The
land which could be watered by small
bitches has all been filed upon. The
day of Individual effort has passed.
Success in the future requires the
organization of irrigation
Hitherto the American peoples &C.
cupation of their continent has pro-
ceeded chiefly by Individual effort.
The settler went forth into the forest
or upon the prairie and with his own
hand carved out his fortune. He CO.
-, operated with his neighbors to secure
justice, punish crime, and relieve dis
tress, but of economic cooperation
there was little. Each man or family
industrially stood or fell practically
alone. Even in the arid region this
method prevailed. Settlers diverted
streams" as Professor Mead says, las
they shot wild game, without ques-
ton of their right, or appreciation of
the need of laws to protect this right"
AS a result, the economic growth of
the arid region, where alone any large
tracts of public land now remain, has
far outrun it's institutional develop
ment. In only three states are there
records to show either settlers or in
vestors how much of the water supply
is already subject to private control.
From many streams more bitches
have been built than the natural
flow will steadily supply. Hence con-
tinual litigation, and often armed con-
flict, between rival interests, to which
water means prosperity and it's lack
ruin. These conflicts often extend,
to whole states, as in the contest now
pending in the courts between Kansas
and Colorado over the Arkansas
rivers waters. "g...
The real trouble is not lack Of
water. There is enough water to fertil-
ize hundreds of millions of acres, if
only it could be brought to them and
the surplus of the wet season stored
for the dry seasons need. But neither
the settlers nor the states have the
means to do this. In California 43
per cent, in Colorado 60 per cent, in
Wyoming 81 per cent, in Idaho, Mon
tana and Utah SO per cent, in Nevada
88 per cent and in Arizona 80 per
cent of the area is national land, af-
fording no e to the state. Hence
to the state, as an agency for indus
trial promotion, these lands are not a
benefit, but a burden. They must be
policed at the expense of those under
private ownership. Under these con-
ditions it is evidently impossible for
either men individually or for the
state as a whole to settle and improve
these vast areas. Only the nation
can form and set in motion the CO.
operative machinery necessary.
Thus the problem before modern
American homesteaders and before
the nation whose highest interests de-
mand that the great majority of it's
people shall not be tenants but pro-
prietors, is one of cooperation upon
a scale hitherto unknown. The Amer
lean people have hitherto succeeded
greatly by individual effort. For the
reduction of their arid region they
must learn to cooperate industrially
as they have never before. The foun-
dation and the materials for countless
future homes must be provided by CO.
operative ehort. 1t is the duty of
congress to begin to provide the laws
and to formulate the institutions un-
der which this cooperation can be
effected.
Our present legal systems will not
do, for they regard land as the pri-
mary factor, while in the arid region
water as well as land must be regard
ed. To neglect this duty, to refuse to
extend the nations strong hand in aid
to u arid empire, is to deny to pres
ent thousands and future millions of
our people that opportunity for homes
of their own which is the essential
basis of a contented and stalwart cit
izenship.
Ii the southern members of con-
gress are really in earnest in their
efforts to secure legislation enabling
former confederate soldiers to enter
national soldiers homes, they would
better call off the various kinds of
danes who are petitioning the Ken
lucky legislature to suppress uncle
TOm GabinN chnuc in that a4a4o