Arizona republican., 1907-06-20

though MT Chambers had got s31.42
 per acre for his extra hard work in
 ringing, cultivating etc. on the other
 hand, MT. Black was able to care for
 more acres. So there you are and the
 reader can take his choice as to meth
 eds and results. Possibly if all the de-
 tails were known as to how much each
 man paid his oickers and how many
 were employed. and many other small
 points, very little difference would be
 found in the balance sheet. Perhaps
 the different soils require a different
 cultivation. for strawberry culture. like
 everything else, has to be understood
 to be success. But the main point is
 that neither man lost any money and
 nobody would hesitate to accept any
 check either might choose to write on
 the bank
 But the strawberry is only one of a
 hundred things that may be grown
 here to good profit. and the next wit
 ness will be c. T. Thompson, who may be properly referred to as "Onion" Thompson. MT. Thompson is young man who came here from Georgia two years ago with his wife. with the idea that he might do something as tiller of the soil. He bought forty acres in the Wilson district east of town, put in crop of grain last year and very nearly starved to death. He learned by sad experience that to make a sue cess of raising grain one must have a large acreage, do things on d large scale and have all the irrigation water he wants at the right time of the year. He was three or four years too early for grain farming, for the fig water supply is not quite here yet, and was then two years further off. Anyhow. he did not have the resources to un- dertake such large operations. How ever. he has found out that by little head work the small farmer can per haps make more money than the big one and risk a great deal less. He wasn't an expert gardener and did not pretend to krow much about truck farming. Still, he thought he could find wa: out, and planted four and a quarter acres to onions last spring. ne got a few agricultural reports and read up or the subject of onions. He also noticed q few remarks about cab bage, the fruit from which the Ger mans make sauer kraut. and just as an experiment he put a quarter of an acre into cabbage.
 MT. Shompson. like the other men mentioned. also keeps books and his books show that this season he has NETTED s2OO per acre on his four and q qusrter acres of onions, and taken fin SIIc fnr l,f
 haze. He says his cabbge patch cost nm about SIG. so he is s10O to the good on that, or at the rate of $4OO Der acre NET. He has therefore cleaned up clear of expenses. $500 on four and a half acres of ground These are Just few timely examples Of course the question will at once be raised that If everybody raises strawberries and onions and cabbage the market will be ruined There is nothing to it. though there might be if the Salt River Valley was located in the Mississippi valley. with dozen states just like it all around. But it isn't. on the contrary. three fourths of the territory is and always will be given over to mining and stock interests. These mines are booming and what the mining camps now are, is only a smeH part of what they will become in a few years. for the mining industry in it's sphere is Just as great as the agricultural in dustry. perhaps greater. With a thou sand strawberry and onioyn men raising things for the market the first fruitage may not bring quite So high a price, though the people in the mining camps who can't get this sort of produce carly at an- price, will want a deal of It and all the year round they like to live as well as the people in the val Ieys. With the railroads making a straight shoot through Pinal. Yavapai Gila and Cochise counties. all full of p"pulous mining camps, such produce will he laid down there the same day r. IS shipped. And where d man now ships a crate or two at high prices. and pot luck. there will be whole re- frigerator carloads going daily And the western Arizona desert now claim ing attention will be another market. at least until reclamation shall make an aericultural section of Grace valley and the Colorado bottoms. Then over and beyond that, is Los Angeles, which Arizona may be able to supply with some things, even against the competi. tion Of the famous Golden State and the rich fruitage of her southern val leys. Beside strawberries and onions and cabbage, asparagus has proved a world beatcr here ard it is the aspar- agus growers turn next to come for ward. The same may be said of black berries. raspberries and dozens of small fruits, to say nothing about the grape and orchard products This story is alread- too long to permit of