and Cfee (Zotfiteini Maimt
nnnritKSSIVE FARMER-VOL. XX. NO. 25.
THE COTTON PLANT-VOL. XXII. NO. 24.
RALEIGH, N. C AUGUST 1, 1905.
Weekly $1 a Year.
CIRCULATION STATEMENT.
The sworn and proved average weekly circulation of.
The Progressive Farmer and Cotton Plant for the year
ending December 31, 1904, was 10,509 copies.
For the six months ending June 30, 1905, the sworn
and proved average weekly circulation was 12,288
copies.
The Progressive Farmer and Cotton Plant has
1. A larger circulation than any other North Caro
lina weekly, and
2. A larger circulation than any other farm weekly
published between Philadelphia and Dallas.
ACROSS THE CONTINENT.
XI. After-Thoughts of the Trip.
"And now this is the las' row o' stumps," as
Uncle "Remus told the Little Boy. With this
batch of miscellaneous after-thoughts, ends the
account of my trip West, and I am glad that so
many of my readers have seemed to think these
letters worth while.
Irrigation is the most important subject that
I have failed to touch upon at all. How I have
escaped it I hardly know, for to write of the West
without discussing irrigation is like writing of
. -rw . ',1 A A? . lltA
l Shakespeare's "Hamlet ' witnout mentioning iuc
I mad Dane. Beyond the Kockies they dream
about irrigation just as the Oklahoma people
dream about Statehood. Irrigation is their shib
boleth and battle cry.
Xor is this strange. In Colorado they have
amended the old nursery rhyme to make it read
''Little drops of water
On little grains of sand
Make a mighty difference
In the price of Western land."
All of which is easily proved by statistics any
where. Much land in Colorado which twenty-five
years ago was worth only $1.25 per acre, has been
irrigated and now commands $300 to $600 per
acre. About Eiverside, California,, where land is
worth $400 per acre, was a sheep ranch thirty
years ago, and the man who sold it for $9 an
acre thought lie had caught a sucker. Artesian
wells and irrigation have made the change.
A Colorado man told me that when a dry sea
son comes they plant onions and Irish potatoes,
and the potatoes grow so large and the onions
prow so strong that they bring tears to the eyes
of the that, thev have moisture
enough! In spite of this discovery, however, I
notice that the people are still at work trying to
harness everv mountain stream big canals run
ninjr from the rivers into small ditches, and
smaller ditches into yet smaller ditches, and still
smaller ditches into drainage rows in the fields,
much like the old adage that
"Big fleas have little fleas
Upon their backs to bite 'em,
And little fleas have lesser fleas,
And so ad infinitum."
The United States Governoment, as everybody
aovrsf is now extensively engaged in the irriga
tion business, and about Nampa, Idaho, we found
work in progress on a system of reservoirs to
cost $11,000,000. These are expected to reclaim
400,000 acres of land, increasing the price from
$20 and $40 to $200 per acre. Each farmer will
be given ten years time in which to pay for the
actual cost of getting the water to his farm, and
the government will then withdraw from the field
entirely, leaving the water rights the permanent
property of the farmer. Heavy crops of alfalfa,
corn, sugar beets, etc., etc., are grown on the
irrigated lands. And all this, reminds me that
Horticulturist Hume is of the opinion that our
truckers in the Carolinas could use irrigation to
splendid advantage and the . tests which have
been made so far corroborate his opinion. More
of our people should look into the matter.
It would be rather strange if the West should
ever lose all trace of the wild and wooly, for
Nature herself is so eccentric and freakish be
yond the Mississippi. Not only has she piled the
Rocky Mountains in colossal confusion, and blis
tered wide-sweeping deserts, and nurtured sky
scraping trees, and opened giant geysers, but
she also shows a fondness for cyclones and
drouths and floods entirely foreign to the demure
Mother Nature we Easterners know. Usually
they raise enormous com crops in Kansas and I
saw a Kansan in St. Louis last year who in a
bountiful year had burnt corn in his stove, it
being cheaper than coal. But after several years
of plenty, Nature may go off into a tantrum,
bring on drouth, and the people actually suffer
want. The ghastliest -freak of Western Nature
I saw was cyclone-swept Snyder, the stricken
Oklahoma town. In Portland I saw a man who had
spent five " years building a home in Texas and
had a nice house, farm, and orchard until a cy
clone swept everything into the next county. Out
in Western Kansas we passed through a fine
wheat country, but the rains had almost drowned
the corn. Fifteen years ago, we were told, it nev
er rained here : the land was as arid as the des
ert Along -the western border of the Dakotas,
too, where it seldom rained until five years ago,
there has been enough rain three years in sue
cession to make good crops.
Not only does the farmer escape cyclones and
drouths in the South, but land is so much cheaper
with us. It looks to me as if the South ought
now to be a most attractive field for the immi
grant of small means anxious to build a home
of his own. And now that practically all the gov
prnment land in the West has been taken up,
whv should it not be the natural thing for im
migration to turn Southward?
The West is a land of magnificent opportuni
;p of course, but so is the South, and my con
viction is that we have the finest people, the best
men and women, in the South that are to be
anywhere. It is a good atmosphere in
which to be born and in which to grow- up. We
i. flnA old-fashioned ideals of honor,
and a reverence for gentle and sacred things,
that the bustling North and the breezy West seem
to me to lack.
For one thing, take our regard for women. An '
Oregon young man who3e mother was a Texan
spoke to me about this difference between the
West and the South. "In Portland' he said, "not '"
one man in a thousand will let a woman go before -
him in getting on a street car; not one in a
thousand will take off his hat if a woman comes
into the elevator; while as for giving up one's --:
seat to a woman in a street car, I have done this
when it made me so conspicuous I almost felt
ashamed of myself."
But let me not do an injustice to the Western
men. it is not ail tneir iauit not oy any means.
The Western woman seems to have been trying
so aggressively to prove herself the "equal" of
man by breaking into his sphere that he does not
think of her as belonging to any higher sphere.
Down South the women don't vote not because ,
the men don't think them good enough, buV be
cause we think them too good. And the expe
rience of Utah and Colorado and Wyoming and
other States where woman suffrage obtains only .,.
goes to show the striking fitness of the toast a
man once proposed in one of these States : "Here's
to woman once our superior, now our equal I"
So after a Southerner has been out West he is
moved to thank God for the Southern woman and
the Southern Sabbath! And our observance of
Sundayis only an evidence of our old-fashioned
Puritan faith in God and the Bible. There is no
doubt but that at times we have interpreted both
with a rigid and unlovely coldness that has been
harmful; but the austerest Puritanism is ever to
be preferred to any sort of easy Epicureanism
that nevertheless leaves man rudderless on a sea
of doubt.
In a former letter I mentioned the Westerner's
lack of regard for Sunday, and reported, some
specific illustrations. In San Francisco Sunday
closing is entirely optional with the merchant or
shon keeper. Saloons "are full blast; the market
stalls are liberally patronized; the sound of car
penters building wakes you on Sunday morning;
picnic parties march through the streets with
brass bands;, and at night the theatres probably
draw larger crowds than the churches.
Church spires not only are not so prominent
in the outlines of Western towns as in the South,
but of the churches a large proportion are of the
freak sort Christian Science and Universalist
churches, not to mention the Mormons, whose
missionary zeal has already been noticed. Some
body has represented a thorough-going Atheist
as saying: "I can believe anything provided it is
not in the Bible." So it is that many people who
think it credulity to accept Biblical stories as
true, are yet ready to credit the wildest stories
of unsavory spiritualists and "mediums." I was
very much impressed by the large number of
fakirs of this sort who advertise in the San
Francisco papers.
(Continued on Page 9.)
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