The Richfield recorder. (Richfield, Idaho) 1909-1931, 1909-07-22
IRRIGATION DRAWS THE PEOPLE
Thousands Getting Ready to Join
Rush of Homesteaders.

CHICAGO, ILL.,, July 13-What has
come over the residents of the mid
die west cities and rural districts
alike maiifesting such interest in
farm homes in the far west, north
west, and southwest?
That city dweller welded to urban
life and looking upon everything out
side of it as terra incognito and not
worth while he fails to understand it.
He appreciates the rush of the '49er
to gold fields of California, and he
understands the Black Hill adven-
turer in the early '70's. But as to the
present rush for farm homes in that
vast general section of the United
States which his primary geography
80 years ago dismissed as the "Great
American desert is all at sea.
He isn't awake to the fact that in
the last half dozen years the farmer
has been encroaching upon that
Great American Desert" in a man
ner to make the geographer Of a gen
Grafton ago ashamed of himself. He
has overlooked that today, in the ma
king of preparations for farming in
dozen western states and territories,
his own national government is
spending a gold mine a month in
salaries and wages of the reclamation
service. He is ignorant of the fact
that every year the total value of
crops harvested from reclaimed lands
makes the product of the famous
Comstock mine insignificant by com
parison.
But the nerve racked, brain tired
man Of the cities and the farm rent
er, paying interest upon farm invest
ments in lands valued at 500 to 5000
an acre in the middle west, has been
more awake to the something doing
out west. The old "call of the vest
again has become as potent as it was
in the days of the gold fevers, only
that it is so much less spectacular
since the passing of the prairie
schooner and the substitution of the |
vestibuled railroad train at home
seekers rates.
100000, 900 for Water.
Back to the simple life" in these
last few years has proved something
more than the philosophizing of a |
dreamer. Just as, it suddenly was
discovered that the state wheat crop
was worth hundreds of thousands |
more than the product of its gold
mines, the present day seeker for
western farm lands needs only the
assurance of water on arid lands to
.empt him. And in the last three
years the national government alone
las spent s100,OOO,O0 to the end of
supplying water to 2 million arid
lcres which need only the water to
make gold mines of the soil.
But where the government has
pent s1O0,OO0,OOO toward eradicat-
ng the great American desert pri-
7ate enterprise has spent nearly twice
IS much and brought another 70 900
700 acres of desert into fruitfulness.
Tens of thousands of settlers have
zone westward from the cities and
arms of the central west and tens of
thousands more of them are making
inquiry and taking inventory them
elves, their families, and their cash
esources, with the purpose of fol-
owing.
Twenty years ago the farmer of the
entral west, told of the promise of
rid lands under irrigation, shook his
cad. 1t was the ear of the snide ir- {
igation company which was grow
lg rich establishing few miles of i
lain bitches, tapping them with t
sw lateral stub ends of blind sluices, !
nd selling at robber prices tens of 2
lousands of arid acres which not all S
lie established systems of waterways c
ould dampen in a twelve month. h
Great Task of the Nation. S
But the changes have come over e
le face of things. Legislation of the o
ates has strangled the strangling n
ater companies. Laws covering
ater rights in these states have cal p
d for more careful scrutiny in the q
aiming than have almost any other p
I'D of legislation. The national gov p
nment has driven the cattle baron t
Id his hundreds of miles of barbed :
ire fencing from that former range