The Irish standard., 1908-06-20
All Parts Of the Country Becoming Interest
ed in the Reclamation Projects in
the Far West.
No Summer Vacation Jaunt, as the Govern
ment Requires an Actual, Continuous
Residence of Years.

pay $1,000 an acre for land and make
money on 1t.
In one place they raise four crops of
Strawberries a season. In another
they gather In five crops Of alfalfa a
year. A single valley turned out $10,-
100000 worth of farm products last
year.
And so 1t goes until even the COM
p1acent New Yorker begins to tingle
with a novel excitement and figures
how many motor trips abroad he could
finance from five-acre farm unit.
The New Yorker is welcome enough,
but the section where the reclamation
sirens are trying to sing their sweet
est song is in the upper Mississippi
Valley.
1t Is estimated that within tho last
few years a quarter Of a million fami-
lies--and that would mean over a mil
lion persons.-have emigrated to Cam
ada from the States along the upper
Mississippi. When Iowa farmlanis
got to be worth from SIS an acre up
to a, considerably higher figure many
| farmers saw chance to make two
| fortunes instead Of one. They sold
| their Iowa farms-that made one for
tune-and went to Canada, where they
got land for perhaps IS an acre, which
| they hope to see climb to something
near the Iowa figure.
These men were good, sound, INTEL
| ligent Americans Of the best type of
citizens, and tho Government was
prize Of a farm unit in one Of the rec
lamation projects to dangle before the
rowing vision Of the Mississippi VAL
ley man, Uncle Sam expects to be able
to snap his fingers triumphantly at
Canadian colonization agents.
But" says the uninitiated what is
n farm unit anyway"
Well. farm unit is a. piece Of ground
as big as the Government thinks you
need to make a good living for your
self and as big a family as would sat-
isfy even Theodore, patron saint of the
storks. The size Of a farm unit de-
pends on the soil, the climate and 9TH
er conditions. Sometimes 1t is 180
acres. Sometimes it is only ten.
| If the Secretary Of Agriculture and
his advisers decide that you can raise
crops worth $4,000 an acre on the land
they are going to offer you, they may
say that you shant have more than
ten or twenty acres Of 1t. What they
want is to get a whole raft of good
Americans on these wonderful farms
and make 'em all rich and happy.
Lots of these irrigated lands are al
ready settled by farmers who own
their automobiles, live in houses cost
ing from $4,000 to $4,000 each, and
send their girls to Eastern boarding
schools and their boys to college. The
smaller the farm unit, the closer live
the neighbors, and valleys which few
years ago raised only sage brush and
were inhabited only by coyotes. rab-
bits and rattlesnakes now have trolley
roads between growing towns.
An odd thing about the settlement
of these new lands is the straight line
in which, as a rule, emigration seems
to have worked Men whose ancestors
settled New England and New York
worked westward through Ohio and
Indiana to Illinois and Iowa. then on
through Nebraska and the Dakotas,
and now are filling up the new lands
Of the great Northwest.
In the same way the new projects
farther south draw mon from Missouri,
Kentucky and Tennessee. The old
Southern states do not send out az
many co1onists as any other part Of
the country, partly because the South
erners do not seem to have the noma-
die instinct of the Northerner ana
partly because they are mighty busy