East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current, 1904-11-07

The wage earners of the country
and those who would ameliorate the
hard conditions of the laboring man
home of his own will find some in
terest and profit in 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 and North Dakota, besides
large eastern centers
The lamp of hope which he held
out TO the west and to the country at
large in a speech at Great Falls,
Mont, was that the idea should be
fostered that any strong man can
/ from one acre of good ground get
good living for himself and his fam
I lily.
Get an acre and live on it," he
said. Get an acre and live on it.
wish 1 could burn that thought
into the heart of every working man
/ in America. In the west | would
I say. Get an irrigated acre" Mr.
Maxwell declared that if every man
who now works eight hours a day i'm
factory or a smelter could work
/ four hours a day in the factory and
four hours a day on his own acre of
/ irrigated land. he would double his
/ income and he would insure himself.
his wife and his children against
want when the days wage should
stop.
Change Educational System.
"But we must have a different sys-
tenn 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 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 the idea of becoming Million
aires but to end as counter jumpers
and clerks, the making and keeping
of home is taught.
zone more thing should be COUP
led to the school system. Every
child 81 ould be made a gardener and
horticulturist. The winter term
should be devoted half to books and
hale tc work on the benches, and a
summer term should be devoted TO
agriculture. The boys would learn
to build home and the girls to care
for them as wives and mothers.
Eetter than Prohibition Laws.
"The way to close the saloon is 10
tescn the girls to cook. Many
man has gone wrong because 4 wc-
man could not cook. The summer
school should he 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 grad
ually 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 be-
fore he gets what he wants. God in
tended us to make a 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 1t is the lack
of cultivation of the soil. No man
can oppress q sturdy race of farm
ers that own and till the land.
Resources of the Treasure State.
'There are great resources in Mon
tana. but il the people want to de-
velop them On sound and enduring
lines, they must be developed i'm
such way that the mass OF the peo-
pie will be rooted to the soil. Her
mines are wondrous in their pro-
ductiveness, but her greatest wealth
lies in her rich soil.
You have great water power here
at Great Falls, the greatest, I be-
lieve, of any state in the union, and
you may produce here a second Chi
cago, with all its squalor, its slums,
its immortality, its crimes, its star
walton 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 the re-
suit of the unparalleled achievements