The Billings gazette. [volume] (Billings, Mont.) 1896-1919, 1904-10-04
HE WOULD TEACH AGRICULTURE
Explains How Great Results Can Be Obtained From
Workings Of National Irrigation and
Benefits Made General.

man consumes-the land-the earth.
the fact is overlooked that man must
draw his sustenance from the earth.
When we think Of Mother Earth it is
more than passing name.
"Ninety-nine out of every hundred
of our laboring people today are like
children who are sent to an asylum
and fed on condensed milk. They get
the shadow, but not the substance.
Then get the man onto the land. |
do not mean to have him come out
here and take up 160 or 800 or GAO
acres of land. l mean that we should
be endeavorlng to bring about con-
dition of small landholding, of garden
ing, if you will, rather than farming.
Ruskin says:
Since we live in an epoch OF
change and too, probably, OF revolu-
tion, and thoughts which are not to be
put aside are in the minds of all men
capable of thought, am obliged to
affirm the one principle which can
and in the end will close all epochs
OF revolution-that each man shall
possess the ground he can use, and
no more
nm W g n
Japan based, more than upon any
thing else? Upon the fact that her
people are rooted to the soil; that
3O,OO0,OO0 of her people live upon
tiny pieces of land, which they own
and from which they extract their
living, and they live on land the ag-
gregate acreage Of which is only
10000 square miles, tract OF land
but 1877 miles square.
The Remedy Proposed.
81 see before me one or your
prominent citizens who was present
at the Missoula national irrigation
congress and the gentleman who also
made a motion there to hold the next
irrigation congress in Chicago, to go
into the very heart of the east and
what was then the 'enemy's coun-
try to carry on a fight which was to
bring us a national irrigation policy
into effect. How little faith some OF
us had few years ago. How many
of us thought it would be possible in
this brief time to put $25,0OO,O00 into
national irrigation work? Yet we re-
alize that the national irrigation act
cannot within reasonable time re-
claim the west, and we must look for
a broader policy.
But before we consider the ques-
ton of additional irrigated acres, it
were as we'll, perhaps, to look at the
question of their settlement, and of
the settlement of all our public lands.
would you have in Billings a
population of hundred thousand? |
believe it is possible not only to make
Billings city of hundred thousand
people, but that it is possible to irri-
gate million acres tributary to it.
1t all can be done. You have 10000
acres of land Immediately in the vic
Unity fof Billings. Suppose that you
had upon every five, 10, 20, 40, 80 or
even 16O acres of that land a family,
what would your city be?
"You have the land, you have the
water, you have the climate and the
sunshine everything but the men,
You could sustain a million people in
The territory tributary to Billings and
now be crowded"
Mr.. Maxwell here discussed the
public school System of the country.
insisting that the whole tendency of
he much vaSnted educational scheme
was to taiA people away from the
and and i3still in their minds fa'se
lesire to better their positions in life
" enteritg the professions, already
,vercrowded. instead Of training them
70 make success OF the work tor
Which they are ost fitted. !Tc a..
,ocated system Of public instruction
" which hoys and girls should be