The Evening statesman. [volume] (Walla Walla, Wash.) 1903-1910, 1907-10-01
TRIP ON MISSISSIPPI
Continued from Page Two>

ties for domestic and social advance
ment, for social and economic leader
shin in the world. Our greatest ma
tional asset is to be found in the chill
dren. They need to be trained to high
ideals of everyday living. and to high
efficiency in their respective vocations;
we can not afford to have them trained
otherwise, and the nation should help
the states TO achieve this end.
The states of the high plains and of
the mountains have a peculiar claim
upon me, because for a number of
| years lived and worked in them, and
| I have that intimate knowledge of
their people that comes under such
conditions.
In those states there is Iced of a
modification of the land laws that
have worked so well in the we'll
watercd fertile regions to the east
word. such as those in which you here
| dwell
ShiuId Favor Settlers.
I
The one object in all our land laws
should always be to favor the actual
settler, the actual home maker, who
comes to dwell on the land and there
to bring up his children to inherit it
after him. The government should
part with its title to the land OILY to
the actual home maker-not to the
profit maker, who does not care to
make home The land should be sold
outright only in quantities sufficient
for decent homes-not in huge areas to
be held for speculative purposes or
used as ranches where those who
do the actual work are merely tenants
or hired hands.
Now in many states where the rain
fall is light it is a simple absurdity
TO expect airy man to live, still less to
bring UP a family. on one hundred and
sixty acres. Where We are able to
| introduce irrigation, the homestead
can be very much less in size-can,
for instance, be forty acres: and there
is nothing that congress has done DUR
ing the past six years more important
than the enactment of the national ir-
rigation law.
But where irrigation is not applic-
able and the land can only be used for
grazing, it may be that you can not
run more than one steer to 10 acres,
iC TO no of
a mathematician in order to see that
where such is the case a home stead of
one hundred and sixty acres will not
go far toward the support of family.
In consequence of this fact, home
steaders do not take up the lands in
the tracts in question. They are left
open for anybody to Craze upon that
wishes to.
them moderately and not with a view
to exhausting their resources, are at
the mercy of those who care nothing
for the future and simply intend to
skin the land in the present.
Fenced Out Settler.
The men who fenced this land We're
sometimes rich men, who, by fencing
it, kept out actual settlers and thereby
worked evil to the country. But in
many cases. whether they were large
men or small men. their Object was not
to keep out actual settlers, but to pro-
tect themselves ana their own indus
try by preventing overgrazing of the
rahge on the part of reckless stock
owners who had no place in the per-
manent development of the country
and who were Indifferent to everything
except the profits of the moment.
In some way or other we must pro-
vide for the use of the public range
under conditions which shall inure