The Montgomery advertiser., 1903-08-01

spoke the whole truth when he said that his sole capital was the letter from his Uncle Rufus. He was endowed by nature with an indomitable will and a mssterly intellect, which we cannot demand from | the average man. If we all had them we would be a race of genuises. A will that nothing will swerve from It's purpose Is in itself form of genius.
 A Good Example to Follow. 'T think 1t Is the duty of society not only to play Uncle Rufus, but also to supply the organizing and administrative ability which we cannot expect from the ordinary individual.
 ITO illustrate, believe in farming by irrigation. I know the powers of irriga- | don, but I also know its dangers An ir- rigating company can destroy a settler in two or three days if 1t chooses. It can sell him the land, give him plenty of water | for two or three years, till he gets 1t well | improved. Then at the crucial moment it can withhold the water for a few days, destroy his crop for that season and ruin him. He is unable to meet his payments. The company takes his land. rendered more valuable by the Improvements he has put on It.. sells it over again and makes money by the transaction.
 'T am sorry to say that this is being | done all the time. How can an individual | cope against a powerful company in such a case? There will be no relief from such methods until the Government owns or exercises control over the irrigating works.
 At Amity we are independent of the ir- rigating companies. We have settled our colonists on the benches of the Arkansas, where there is plenty of underhow. An lirrigating company can control the surface water of a river, but 1t cannot control | what is under a mans feet. With their windmills the colonists can keep a litle pond full of water, enough to irrlgate from | five to twenty acres. With more capital gas or garoline engines can be used. They can stop our ditch, but they can't cut off our underflow
 | Advantages of Cooperation.
 At Fort Romie, our California colony, the colonists own and manage their own l irrigation amounting to $1,000 only $30 was outstanding when I was there a few weeks ago.
 How can individual settlers, without helping hand. conduct enterprises like this? Successful farming today more than ever demands capital Those who vocife- rate, Back to the land,' forget that the farmer is not and cannot be merely la- boring man. He must be a capitalists in small way.
 The $50 900 freight bill paid by the busi- ness men of Amity last year shows how the railroads could build up communities of freight payers all along their lines if they really wished 70 do so. I could settle 100000 colonists successfully in the irri- gated regions of Colorado If had the cap ital to do 1t and in ten years every one of them would be taxpayers It takes $500 to the family and after we had figured out this average from our books, I was in | terested to find that it Is considered in the business world that that is just the sum necessary to set a man to digging; that is, that a contractor must have $500 of capi- tai for every shovel that he sets to work" 1 The settlement and labor of the colonists | have so increased the value of the land that the Army is more than protected should payments cease. Land sold to the colonists for $50 or $40 an acre four years ago at Amity Is now worth from $100 to | $20O an acre. One man, who took land from the Army at 80 an acre in 1899, sold one acre to an outsider two years later for $2O0.
 | Increased Land Values. The land at Amity. sold to the colonists for SS1,0O0, has now a market value of $200. 900; that at Romie has increased from .--,O0O to $7500O. and that at Herrick, near Cleveland. from $l4,OO0 to 500, ,00O. The two latter colonies are younger and smaller than Amity. The number of colonists has | doubled in the three colonies within the last year.
 At Amity there are two schoolhouses now, depot a creamery, a newspaper and several stores, besides the Cherry | Tree home. where the Army is bringing up fifty small boys from the slums of New York and Chicago. teaching them to raise prize poultry and preparing them to be | farmers, started in life with land enough to make a living on when they are old enough. With the exception of these chil- dren there is no one at Amity in receipt of charity.
 "The Government could creat taxpay- CTS for itself on a mammoth scale" said Commander Booth Tucker, If it cared to follow the example of New Zealand in the settlement of its lands President Roosevelt has been saying some trench ant things about race suicide. But the whole tendency of our present civiliza- ton is to kill the home. The whole ten dency of the prudent man today. the man who wants to get ahead and save some thing is to avoid marriage and a large | family.
 l Public sentiment increases against those who have families for which they cannot provide. If you come down to the plain, prosaic facts of the case, children are a nuisance in city. Another plain, simple fact as proved in our colonies, is that the hope of becoming property own i CTS, of owning their own homes trans l forms the average man into different creature. It is hard for the average man to get out of rut. But put him in one of our colonies and show him how, within a term of years. he can repay us and own