The Republican journal., 1904-11-03
Get an Acre and
Live From It. .

GREAT FALLS, MONTANA, Oct. 80.
The wage earners of the country, and
those who would ameliorate the hard
conditions of the laboring man and see
him established in comfort in home
of his own, will find some interest and
profit il the campaign and lecture tour
which is being made throughout the
west by George H. Maxwell, executive
chairman of The National Irrigation
Association. Mr.. Maxwell has spoken
at the principal cities in Montana and
his program takes him also through
Washington, Colorado, New Mexico,
Arizona, Texas, North Dakota, beside
large eastern centerS.
The lamp of hope which he held out
to the west, and to the country at large,
in speech at Great Falls was that the
idea should be fostered that any st<ong
man can from one acre of good ground
get good living for himself and his
family.
Get an acre and live on it, he said.
Get an acre and live on it," | wish l
could burn that thought into the heart
Of every working man in America. In
the west | would say, Get an irrigated
acre Mr.. Maxwell declared that if
every man who now works eight hours
a day in a factory or smelter could
work four hours a day in the factory
and four hours d day on his own acre
If irrigated land, he would double his
2ncome and he would insure himself,
his wife and his children against want
when tie days wages should stop.
CHANGE OUR EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM.
"But we must have different system
Of national education from the present
one. he said, (which trains our children
away from the land. This idea is gaining
ground We have manual training and
domestic science taught in some Of our
schools. That is getting back to the
true system of education where, instead
Of the old folks remaining at home to
die alone while the boys go to the cities
with tie idea of becoming millionaires,
but to end as counter jumpers and
clerks, the making and keeping of a
nome is taught.
-One more thing should be coupled to
She school system. Every child should
be made a gardener and horticulturist
The winter term should be devoted half
to books and half to work on the
benches, and a summer term should be
devoted to agriculture. The boys would
learn to build a home and the girls to
care for them as wives and mothers.
BETTER THAN PROHIBITION LAWS.
The way to close the saloons is to
teach the girls to cook. Many man
has gone wrong because woman cannot
cook. The summer school should be
at the edge of the city where children
could attend it from the kindergarten
to the high school. They could be taught
to raise everything on five acres that
goes to make a home. We are gradually
getting away from the heresy that
money is all in this life and that man
must raise something, sell it and buy
something back again before he gets
what he wants. God intended us to
make d living directly from the land.
The evil of our life is not that the
rich are getting richer or the poor are
getting poorer, but it is the lack of
n wat of tho coil No
Cypress a sturdy race of farmers that
own and till the land
REsOT RCES OF THE TREASURE STATE.
There are great resources in Montana. |
but if the people want to develop them
on sound and enduring lines, they must
be developed in such way that the
mass of the people will be rooted to the |!
soil. Her mines are wondrous in their |
productiyeness, but her greatest wealth |
lies in her rich SOIL
OH have great water power here at |
Great Falls, the greatest, l believe, of |
any State in the Union, and you may |
produce here second Chicago, with all |
its squalor, its slums, its immortality, |
its crimes, its starvation when the days |
wage stops. But you do not want that. |
You want to lay here a foundation, |
broad and deep, for an entirely different |
condition, and the laying of that
foundation has been begun as a result !
of the achievements of a grand old |
man, Senator Paris Gibson, whom the
people of this city in days to come will
revere and honor as one of the greatest |
minds that the west has ever produced. |
FARM ACRE COLONIES BEING ESTAB-
LISHED.
The movement is already begun to
establish farm acre colonies where men
in the east who have little money can
come out onto an acre of land and live
there for a year OF two years and be
taught how to farm. Then thew will |
be colonist farmers worth having and
this will relieve, too, the congested
centers of the east. There are thousands
and hundreds of thousands of such men
in the east, and every live community