The Kennewick courier-reporter. [volume] (Kennewick, Wash.) 1914-1938, 1919-03-13
Editor Courier-R Reporter:

Editor Courier Reporter:
In common with many others, I
bought scrap of paper. Mine cost
sixty dollars an acre for five acres.
1t is signed by the land department
/ of the Northern Pacific Railway Co.,
or its successors.
The only guarantee that now holds
is, it perpetually binds, for. there is a
cut-throat mortgage on that land that
cannot be Jared loose as long as time
lasts.
Recently an assessment was made
on all lands subject to irrigation. If
not paid by a certain date the lands
go into the hands of receiver, and
will perhaps cost fifteen percent to re-
deem.
Knowing these things / willingly
voted to take over the ditch and to is
sue bonds, for the prosperity of every
man, woman and child in the valley
depends on getting an ample supply
of water to produce a maximum of
any kind of crops that the farmer may
elect to grow.
Without regard to past, present or
future ownership of lands, I would
vote every day in the year to compel
every acre of land that can be served
by gravity from this ditch to bear a
proportionate share of cost and all
future maintenance of this canal. Be
cause a man wants to shirk is no rea-
son why his land should be allowed to.
If the owner does not like it, let him
stop squealing and get from under as
there is price that will move every
acre in the valley, as some will find
out when they hear from Prosser.
was here in the boom days of Ken
newick, when there were hardly
enough livery rigs to get men out on
the land who were tumbling over each
other, paying from one hundred to
several hundred dollars for any kind
of raw land. When at the same time
one-legged man could walk out and
back, before breakfast, to where he
could buy a far better class of soil
for from five to ten dollars per acre,
and could even homestead and desert
claim land near town. At this time
under the hallucination of the Palouse
project, hundreds of persons took up
claims and homesteads in Franklin
county. Why was it that Kennewick
lands werc selling at hundreds of dol
lars per acre when other lands, on
either side equally as good went beg
ging as a free gift? Because the
financial resources of the Northern
Pacific Railway Co. were backing an
irrigation project that was already q
going concern.
Occular demonstrations were given
the entire length of the canal of deliv-
cry of the life-giving fluid to the
thirsty soil. Real estate orators
made the most of this point, driving
out with load of would-bc suckers.
With monarch of-all-yop-survey air
and a gesture and vocabulary that
Billy Sunday might envy, they WOULD
tell their hearers that Kennewick had
Wenatchee, Yakima, Hood River and,
Charleston skinned to death; then
drive back to their Offices and skin
the suckers to the limit. Up and
down the valley were men who had
secured large holdings of land at prices
far below the present annual taxes on
the same lands, and on the strength
of this canal have unloaded part or all
of their lands on the public at several
thousand per cent profit, when they.
know that without that ditch they
could not run fast enough to give small
tracts away and compel anyone to live
on them.
We have here man-madc phenom-
ena, known as the Haxton drainage
ditch-a strip of no-mans land twenty
five feet wide, bought by the county
lIOul pIlNdte OWicIS, ILL CuS Sii1iiS
length of section five. A casual OBJ
server will ask himself which way
does the blame thing drain, anyway
About six months of the year it looks
as if it was sucking water out of the
Columbia and spreading it out on every
side of the S., p. & S. depot, where
duck hunters delight to break corpora
ton and game laws. This remarkable
engineering feat is costing me twenty
three dollars per acre! paid sixty
dollars per acre to put water on my
land, which till last season / never
fully got, and then am assessed TWEEN
ty-three per acre to get water off that
I never put there, for anyone knows
that there never was enough water