Imperial Valley press., 1908-08-01

printed hlS paragIapnS, anu nODOuy kicked They were used to that sort lof thing and considered it a part of ! the game Later l learned that it
 was tolerablv safe to call almost any | politician in that country thief, de. | faulter, perjurer, forger, liar, horse ! thief or murderer. He wouldn't make much of a row, because he was afraid you had the proof to back up the charge. He might hire a greaser to shoot you through a window with buckshot or on a dark night if he thought you really had his record from Texas. Missouri, Arkansas, or whatever place he got out of just ahead of a sheriff. Before the campaign was over-it lasted about a year after election be- cause the other side said our fellows stole lot of their votes, and I guess they did-the Judge was packing two guns in expectation of being attacked
 by sort of tin-horn bad man, who
 had been hired to kill him. They shot each other up one night, and the bad man got the worst of it; a forty five through his upper arm from elbow to shoulder No prosecution.
 The town put itself on war footing about once a month and each side kept to it's own side of the street for a few days waiting for the battle to open up. At such times an eX-guer- rilla used to bring all of his artillery to my office and camp on the door step. He admired the strategic pos ition of the office and said it was a
 beautiful place from which to shell the street" if trouble broke loose.
 When the situation became really menacing. the judge mobilized the re- serves-sent out to the range for
 three Texans to drop casually into town. That pacified the town pronto
 The word that the "Tejanos' had come. passed along in 'dobe town sent all the paisanos into strict se- clusion or out to the mesquite timber, and peace rustled her wings over the Rio Grande.
 Inclination to complete the picture of frontier politics is strong, but the outline sketch is enough for the pur- pose of contrast with conditions in Imperial Valley. The frontiersman of that other country were adventurers, discards from the political hands play ca back in the states, drifters from everywhere, many of them fugitives from justice, all but an insignificant minority men of the predatory type
 seeking opportunity to acquire wealth without labor. They found land peo- i pied by less adventurous race, a l simple, unprogressive population, ig- inorant, fairly industrious but easy to corrupt and control. They came, not | to build. to develop, to found an em- pire of industry, but to exploit what had been built by others, to acquire by superior craft the wealth accumulated by toll, to take away the land from those who had reclaimed it long years
 ago. The poor, ignorant paisano was clay ready to the hand of the political
 plotter, and he was moulded into grotesque shape on the wheel of chi canery and graft.
 The conditions, the convenient ma terial from which to fashion an ire sponsible venal electorate and the character of the men who came to
 open up the country-as they would open an oyster-account for the vir- ulent prevalence of politics" in the frontier community 1 have described.
 Pioneering in the Imperial Valley is the antithesis of all that. An absolute ly barren, uninhabited desert offered no temptations to mere cupidity. Nothing could be gained from it but by work, constructive work and in vestment of capital The men who came here were engineers farmers, builders, workers and dreamers. The only. wealth of the land was the brain and muscle of its pioneers, and that could not be staked on the high card nor taken away by force or fraud. There is no lure to the political free boOter and the adyenturer in the hard work of digging canals. %eveling land and making a farm out of a desert
 waste They will come later, when wealth and leisure have succeeded barreness and tOil and there is loot in sight
 At the present stage of social and economic development, the hard-work- ing straight-thinking settlers of lmper- ial Valley-the highest type of Amer ican farmers and builders of common in public buslness and attend to their political duties when the time to act arrives, but they have no time for pet Cy politics and no ear for the clack- Ing of politicians tongues. They are serious, self-respecting peaceable peo- pie who do not wear guns and never
 ink of shooting up the town or mak- ing wild west shows of themselves; but it would be more dangerous to publish an eXpurgated imitation of the Arizona Kicker here than it was to print the Judges insulting and scurri- lous personal assaults in the tough act couutV Of thp .eOutb western bOrder