Imperial Valley press., 1908-02-15
IN THE SANE
 SOUTHWEST
Being Some Rambling Reflections on the Mental Characteristics of Dwellers in the Reclaimed Desert of the Colorado
X Xxx &A x x K SAk7
BY ALLEN KELLY

who could go away and live under rational conditions but deliberately elect to stay in that Bedlam, surely have eaten of rattleweed. Not one in hundered thousand of those bund- les of noise-racked nerves knows, wants to know or would think it of the slightest importance if he did know that thousands of clean-living, clean thinking, healthy, sane, cheery Ameri- cans have come into the desert to make ten blades of grass grow where none grew for ages.
 The men who print papers for those demented people don't tell them any thing of that sort. The New York editor would not give two lines of his space to Imperial Valleys develop ment. He gives pages, day after day to a harlot who stays. tin-horn gam bier, and he really believes that stuff is useful information of the most i'm portant character. He is locoed too. If he were not he either couldn't or wouldn't hold his job he would es- cape from Bedlam, come to the South west and let the desert winds blow the bats out of his belfry.
 There is a doctor up in Redlands, who knows too much about health and disease to hold the superstition that drugs make sick men we'll and is too sincere to play upon the child ish credulity. of patients for his own profit by doping them with chemicals when they need only to eat, drink, breathe and think rationally. The doctor has been on the desert, and he has a theory to account in some measure for the health and sanity of dwellers in Imperial Valley.
 The thin, electric atmosphere of high attitudes is known to promote excita- bility of the nerves and to be unsuit- able to many invalids. Some con- sumptives are barred from the benefits of the dry, pure air of the Rocky Noun tain plateau by their inability to en- dure the stimulation. The Doctor sends his consumptives into the desert below sea level, if they have sense enough to believe that the open air, good food, a little exercise and tran quill mind are the medicines they re- quire, and if they are not incapacitated by temperament and habit for taking the prescription.
 The Doctor says the atmosphere be- low sea level, being denser and con- taining a greater proportion of oxygen than the air above, is conducive to serenity and nerve relaxation. He prescribes Imperial Valley for nerves that are strained and need rest And there we have the sanity of this des- ert people. partly accounted for by the air they breathe. Of course, they had to be pretty level-headed to recog- nize the opportunities offered in this region and to come here and seize them, but there is much in the con- ditions of life to keep them in mental health. There is a deadening, dis heartening monotony of work and liv- ing, of action and of thought, on the old-fashioned farm of the East, on the Kansas prairie and the Nebraska plains. Here are new problems, new and new life for the farmer and his family. The problem is not to eke out a living by back-breaking toll; it is to take best advantage of the opportunity to establish an ideal home in a land of plenty and derive from the soil an income that will sup ply all the reasonable luXuries of life, give the children complete education and insure an odd age free from worry and hard labor.
 These people are doing hard work now, for they are laying the founda- tions of prosperity in an empire of industry, but they are working with the spirit of conquerors, with buoyant hope and confidence in the future, and that is the spirit that keeps the mind and body sound.
 ZACH For your Property, Real
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