The Arizona sentinel. [volume] (Arizona City [Yuma], Yuma County, A.T. [Ariz.]) 1872-1911, 1905-10-11
A RAILWAY KINGS VIEWS ON IRRIGATION.
By JAMES j. HILL President OF the Great Northern Railway
at National Irrigation Congress, Portland.

The need of more land space
for the home. builder is created
by the rapid settlement of the
country, and precipitated and
aggravated by the insane policy
of land laws which tend toward
the exhaustion Of the public do
main by the land monopolist and
the speculator.
Except in a few selected spots
where the influence of the rail
road companies as colonizers has
been exercised to secure actual
settlement upon their lands, the
influx of actual settlers is so
small as scarcely to be reckoned
with. Those who go upon gov
eminent land in our day for the
purpose of making homes are a
handful.
Doubtless congress will con-
sent to amend the land laws
by the repeal of those en-
ployed now solely to increase
the holdings of the dishonest
man and TO give rise to such
scandals as have lately thrown
shame upon the American name,
but if the future is to be judged
by the past, this access of wis
dom and of honesty will come
ouly when there is no longer
any hand left that is desired by
the lumber king Or the cattle
baron.
The density of the population
in the whole country from the
Missouri river to the Pacific is
scarcely three to the square
mile. In the irrigated lands of
Utah there are 800 persons to
the square mile supported in "a
comfort that leaves little to be
desired.
Capacity for Millions.
If we leave old world stand
ards and disregard also the most
desirable sections of California,
where there are as. high as 500
persons to the square mile pros
pering on irrigated farms, if we
say $50 persons to the square
mile, a density that will soon be
reached in some of our eastern
states, and assured that 100000
square miles have been made
cultivable by irrigation, we have
a capacity for 100000 people
additional, all supported by land
now regarded as outcast, and all
contributing by the conditions
of their life as much to social ad-
vancement and industrial inn
provement as to the aggregate
of our wealth and the volume of
our trade.
Viewed in another aspect, our
national development must look
to irrigation for succor from
submergence. 1t has been seen
that available land areas are
constantly dwindling. The pop
ulation of the United States has
doubled at the rate of about once
in thirty years.
Desirable as it is that the agri-
cultural element of our popula-
ton should be reinforced, it is
equally obvious to those at all
familiar with the facts Of our
national growth and commerce
that there is no other resource
for the incomer, even if he were
otherwise minded, than the farm.
Until national policies shall have
been reversed there is no oppor-
tunity for any considerable ex-
pansion of markets for our man
ufacturing industries.
Already our workshops are
occupied by those whose pre-
vailing rate of wage will not per
nit their product to come into
competition with the product of
other nations in the markets of
the world. How shall we add
1000, 900 or more annually to
their numbers and dispose of
their product in market where,
to put it mildly, we are not at
present gaining ground and
where the alertness of our rivals
and our own insensibility to the
necessity of cultivating trade
reciprocity threaten to surround