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IRRIGATION SCHEMES 
 
 OF THE WEST. 
 
 .r A.' 
 
 GE.BERT M, TUCKER, Esq., 
 
 Editor of the Countrjr Gentleman. 
 
 Jiead before tlie annual meeting of the New York State Farmers' Congress at 
 
 Albany, in February, 1900, and published in the annual report 
 
 of the New York State Agricultural Society 
 
 for the same year. 
 
 ALBANY: 
 
 JAMBS B. LTON. STATE PHINTBB. 
 
 1901. 
 
a 
 
 SQIS 
 
 C^ LX<^^H 
 
 The fact that innumei-able bills having for their object the 
 iffigfation of western lands at the expense of the government are 
 now before Congress, is responsible for the republication of this 
 paper, which presents strong and convincing arguments against 
 the government's carrying but any such line of policy. As a 
 United States legislator you will be called on to consider these 
 unjust and abominable measures, and you are asked to peruse 
 this article carefully and to weigh the arguments presented in an 
 impartial and unprejudiced manner before casting your vote. 
 
THE IRRIGATION SCHEMES OF THE WEST. 
 
 When a dog is about to lie for a nap, you will notice that he 
 is very apt first to go through a perfectly useless and seemingly 
 unmeaning performance hardly in character with his wonderful 
 sagacity which so closely approximates the intelligence of man. 
 h He turns round and round two or three times in a little circle, 
 ^ his head about touching his tail. Why does he do it? Simply 
 
 because his savage ancestors, thousands of years ago, living in 
 forests uudergrown with brush and weeds, notieed that they 
 were more comfortable in their hours of repose if they first con- 
 structed in this manner a rough nest or bed. The turning round 
 was to level the plant growth and smooth it down into a sort of 
 mattress. What was at first a perfectly reasonable and com- 
 mendable procedure, taken under the guidance of something very; 
 closely resembling intelligent thought, came in time to be in- 
 stinctive — that is to say, it was and is performed under an un- 
 thinking impulse; and the instinct became ultimately so fixed in 
 the race, so runs in the doggish blood, one may say, that it domi- 
 nates the actions of the remote descendants of those early canine 
 creatures to-day. The dog continues to perform, without neces- 
 sity, sense or purpose, on a soft carpet or a smooth wooden floor, 
 the operation which his far away ancestors performed, with very 
 good reason, in the rank undergrowth of their native forests. 
 The practice goes right on, centuries after changing circumr 
 stances have utterly destroyed its original value. 
 
 Similar occurrences of the persistence of superannuated prac- 
 tices are very frequent through the whole domain of animal life; 
 and man is not exempt. Many ideas and beliefs, once sound, con- 
 
tinue to influence human life long after they have entirely lost alB 
 application and fitness to a later enyironment, and have there- 
 fore become at least useless, in many cases positively detrimental 
 to prosperity. Such ideas and beliefs, inherited from past genera- 
 tions and still cherished, without reflection or consideration of 
 altered circumstances, dictate to a lamentable extent the policy 
 that governs in our time the management of the public domain, 
 still the property of the people. 
 
 Time was, say a couple of centuries ago, or even not quite so 
 far back as that, if you like, when every foot of extension of the 
 civilized occupation of this country back into the wild interior, 
 every increase in population not positively vicious, was in many 
 ways a real and solid gain to the people of the American prov- 
 inces. Occupying as our forefathers did but a narrow strip of 
 land along the Atlantic coast, with only inchoate manufacturesy 
 very slow and uncertain communication between different sec- 
 tions, and agriculture not much more than adequate to provide 
 for very modest living, the one thing that was wanted before all 
 otjiers was development of the nation. The father of a large 
 family of stalwart sons and daughters was most distinctly a pub- 
 lic benefactor. As the children moved westward, bringing into 
 cultivation acre after acre of new soil, and thus supplying better 
 and better the needs of a growing population and enlarging the 
 material resources of the common stock, they were laying broad 
 and deep the foundations of the future greatness of the nation, 
 and every pioneer deserved a godspeed from all well wishers for 
 mankind. If any central authority had at that period exercised 
 effective control over the unoccupied lands that stretched off, 
 seemingly without limit, to the west, it could not possibly have 
 done a better thing for all concerned than to facilitate by every 
 means within its power the taking up of these lands as fast as 
 possible by anybody who could be induced to occupy and culti- 
 vate them. Pioneering and homesteading were philanthrapic oc- 
 cupations of the very first order of necessity and merit. 
 
 But it must never be forgotten that the circumstances of the 
 seventeenth century in this country were radically different from 
 
those that surround us at the dawn of the twentieth; and that 
 many lines of public policy once eminently laudable have become 
 obnoxious and dangerous as times change. When a baby weighs 
 ten pounds, it has just one alternative before it — grow, or die; 
 when in after years the ten pounds has become two hundred, the 
 condition of affairs is changed; further increase is suggestive 
 rather of dropsy than of growth. The behavior most suitable to 
 the infant nation, just stretching its unformed limbs and not yet 
 quite certain what sort of creature it will grow to be, becomes in 
 the highest degree absurd and detrimental when maturity has 
 been attained, and the former infant has reached the understand- 
 ing and the enjoyment of the powers of manhood. Of this ob- 
 vious fact, in its relation to a rational management of the public 
 domain, sight has largely and most unfortunately been lost by 
 the American people. We go on hurrahing for every increase 
 that successive censuses show in our population, with very little 
 consideration of the quality of the people that have been added — 
 in our agricultural area, with very little consideration of its actual 
 value to the nation — ^and above all, in our production of crops, 
 without any consideration at all of the profit of growing them or 
 the real financial condition of the men who are feeding half the 
 world. We go on turning roundi and round like the dog, merely 
 because our ancestors did so and we take it for granted that that 
 must be the proper thing. To sum it all up in a nutshell: Time 
 was when every enlargement of our agricultural area conduced to 
 the general welfare; such enlargement does not conduce to the 
 general welfare now — quite the reverse. All the same, we go on 
 tranquilly permitting if not actively encouraging such enlarge- 
 ment, and felicitating ourselves on that which is really, though 
 insidiously, bringing upon us a train of appalling evils. 
 
 Before endeavoring to indicate definitely what some of these 
 evils are, and the ponderousness of the weight that they are 
 throwing upon our financial prosperity, let me make a plain state- 
 ment of the speed and energy with which the government is dissi- 
 pating and worse than dissipating our priceless heritage of culti- 
 
Table lands, the property of the nation at large, and transform- 
 ing what ought to be a blessing into a veritable curse. 
 
 According to the reports of the General Land Oflfice down to Jul j 
 1, 1899, the latest available, the average rate of alienation of our 
 public lands for the decade last preceding that date "was nearly 
 11,500,000 acres per annum, which is approximately 1,006,000 
 acres per month, over 31,000 acres per day, about 1,300 acres per 
 hour, more than 21 acres per minute, or say one acre every three^ 
 eeconds, day and night, Sundays and holidays all included. Let 
 us try to picture to, ourselves what these figures mean. They 
 mean that more than 17,000 square miles, an area considerably 
 larger than one-third of the State of New York, is given away, 
 practically given away, every year of our lives; nearly 1,500 square 
 miles, considerably more than the State of Rhode Island, every 
 month that passes; more than two square miles, every hour. 
 Imagine yourselves standing at the boundary, if there were suck 
 a boundary, between the land now "the property of individuals and 
 that which still belongs to the nation at large, and seeing that 
 boundary moving before your eyes into the government posses- 
 sions at such a rate of epeed that the latter were steadily shrink- 
 ing, hour after hour, day after day, year after year, at the rate- 
 of 21 acres per minute! Such is the rapidity with which we are 
 energetically squandering our most inestimable possession. Our 
 property bums our pocket, as they say of a spendthrift's money^ 
 and it seems that we shall never rest easy until we have dissipated 
 the whole. 
 
 Now, of course, you will say at once: " Well, well, but we are 
 not giving the land away; the national treasury gets something- 
 for it; and besides, we are developing the country. What in the 
 came. of common sense is land good for, arable land, if not for 
 civilized man to cultivate? AA'eare giving homes to the home- 
 less of all the world. There is no grander chapter in the history 
 of mankind than the filling up of our great western territory with 
 industrious, intelligent, free and happy people." 
 
 Let us consider these points. 
 
The return that the government receives from the average of 
 all its agricultural land parted v^ith, year after year, comes to so 
 little more than enough to pay for the actual expenses of market- 
 ing it, that this return may be left out of the question. And 
 then, it must be borne in mind that with the rapid increase of 
 population in this and other countries and the consequent con- 
 stant increase in the demand for food, it is perfectly certain that 
 these wild lands of ours will be worth very much more, will 
 actually command a much higher value in cash, if held and sold 
 only on business principles, during the time of , each successive 
 generation than during the time of that which last preceded it. 
 We are forcing upon a market already fearfully oversupplied the 
 property for which the future is positively certain to bring a 
 vastly increased demand at vastly higher prices than can now be 
 secured for it. For all practical purposes, the lands are given 
 away. 
 
 But we are furnishing homes to the homeless, and developing 
 the country ! A great many birds have been caught , with that 
 chaff. A farm is primarily a factory, only incidentally — ^^and acci- 
 dentally — a home; keep that distinction very clearly and sharply 
 in mind, I pray you. Of course the owner may live on the prem- 
 ises; so may the owner of a cotton mill. But in every respect in 
 which the occupancy of new farms at the far west affects the 
 interests of the present owners of the property out of which they 
 are carved, the people of the United States, each new farm is to be 
 considered entirely as a new factory, entering directly into com- 
 petition with those now established. 
 
 And as to developing the country: The long life of the passion 
 for accomplishing that very indefinite feat is a straight case of the 
 dog's turning round before he lies down because his ancestors 
 discovered that the practice, under the circumstances then sur- 
 rounding them, conduced to their well being. A century ago, no 
 doubt, the country needed development; but, great heavens! what 
 is the haste to develop it further just now? Are we not numer- 
 ous enough, strong enough, as a people? Could any nation on 
 earth dream of invading our territory? What in the world are 
 
we gaining, what can we possibly gain, by this frantic, breath- 
 less haste to develop, to fill up our whole country with people, 
 any and every land of people, foreigners very largely, the off- 
 scourings of the earth in no small part? Whoever has leaned on 
 the forward rail of a westbound Atlantic steamer and watched 
 for a while the immigrants on the steerage deck below, as I have 
 done many times, must pray earnestly for the day when America 
 shall most definitely go out of the business of offering an asylum 
 to the downtrodden of every clime. What does it profit us? For 
 my own part, I think the development, the filling up, is going on 
 far too rapidly to be a healthy process; and I am very sure that 
 the not inconsiderable fraction that comes to us yearly from 
 abroad is isomething that we could very, very well manage to dis- 
 pense with. I 
 
 And now for what is after all the one main point of practical 
 interest. How are we injured — ^we, the farmers of the Elastern 
 States, and the classes that depend directly upon the farmers of 
 the Eastern States for prosperity — in what way, definitely and 
 exactly, are we injured by the liberality of the government in 
 giving away its wild lands, our wild lands, as fast as possible, to 
 anybody and everybody that will take them? 
 
 In the first place, of course one thinks naturally of the competi- 
 tion of the products of the new farms, in the markets of the world. 
 I am inclined myself to the opinion that the injury in this direction 
 is rather less than might be supposed, and that it is in fact very 
 far from being the darkest element of the problem. The growth 
 of population must of itself take care of the increased production, 
 in part. The new farmers need an infinity of things that they 
 cannot possibly produce. That helps manufactures; manufac- 
 tures require workmen; workmen must eat; and thus the estab- 
 Hslied farmers of the older regions will find a certain increase in 
 the demand for their products, making up, in part, for the new 
 supply thrown upon the market by their increasing competitors. 
 And then again, the price of breadstuffs is very largely governed 
 by the yield of crops abroad and the occurrences of every kind 
 that take place in foreign countries. Wheat viay bring a high 
 price, though the American crop be immense; it may go begging, 
 though our fields yield the scantiest return. Still, of course, it is 
 
patent that on the whole every new State in an agricultural region 
 will for a long time export a considerable surplus of foodstuffs of 
 some sort, and thus act distinctly, to a certain extent, in bearing 
 4own the market price. Most assuredly, after making all allow- 
 ances, the competition of the new regions in selling just what we 
 .want to sell, is a danger and an injury that must be taken Into the 
 account. But that is only the beginning. 
 
 A second channel of mischief is the absorption by the free lands 
 of the men and women who ought to supply, and in the normal 
 condition of things would supply, an abundance of labor, at 
 moderate wages, for established farmers. The demand for trust- 
 worthy farm help, at prices, that farmers can afford to pay, is left 
 largely unsatisfied — to the injury of the farming interest, and 
 perhaps most of all to the overburdening of the wife of the small 
 farmer with tasks of which hired servants should greatly relieve 
 her — by the facility with which the persons who ought to supply 
 it can go west and become farmers on their own account, your 
 property and mine being freely offered them ,for that purpose. 
 Why should anybody work for you, except perhaps at extrava- 
 gant compensation, when the government is willing' and anxious 
 to make him a landed proprietor himself, without money and 
 without price? 
 
 Nor is it farm labor alone that is drawn away from its natural 
 homes by. the recklessness of Uncle Sam in giving everybody a 
 farm. A class of people better off financially go west also and 
 take their money with them, the class among whom the farmer 
 iooks for tenants if he wishes to let his property, for purchasers 
 if he wishes to sell. Why should a man of some means hire your 
 farm or buy it, if he can get one of his own for noithing, grow up 
 with the country, and presently land in . Congress and go to mak- 
 ing laws for you and the rest of us ? 
 
 Now notice, please, how these three wrongs converge to drain 
 the very lifeblood of the established farmer who has bought his 
 farm and paid for it, or (still worse) owes something on it. The 
 value of his crops is reduced by unfair and illegitimate competi- 
 tion; the supply of labor that he needs is minimized and therefore 
 its price enhanced; and the class among whom he ought to be able 
 to find tenants or purchasers is immensely restricted. The same 
 malign influences act, of course, on all his brother farmers. Their 
 
10 
 
 profits, like hie, are immensely diminished, and many of them, 
 like him, are offering their farms to anybody who will pay a good 
 rent or buy at, a reasonable value. Thus an unnaturaland in- 
 tensely pernicious competition is set up — set up by oar own goT- 
 ernment, mind you, for which we pay — between .farmers of the 
 older States, for the disposal of their property. So, of course, the 
 value shrinks; the farmer, falls out of the rank in the social scale 
 that he ought to hold, because his property has so little money 
 value; for, say what you will, a man's standing in society is regu- 
 lated very largely by his supposed financial means. And if he 
 wants to borrow money on his, farm, he finds not only that it will 
 be valued far below what would be normally a reasonable sum, 
 but also that lenders are rather loth to advance money on farm 
 eecurity at all, because the sale of such property is slow and uncer- 
 tain. 
 
 It is maddening to think of. The American farmer ought to be 
 the most independent being. on earth, and one of the most envied. 
 Of all property in this country, a farm ought to be the most 
 desired and the quickest in , demand. There should be a dozen 
 would-be purchasers or tenants bidding against each other for 
 every farm that there is supposed to be, a chance to get. Farm 
 mortgages should be the most sought for of all investments, and 
 the interest should be reduced, by competition of lenders, to about 
 half of what now has to be paid, while the amount that can easily 
 be borrowed should be about twice what it is now. It is all very 
 well to blame the farmers of. the older States for bad manage- 
 ment when they fail to make money, andi hoot at the idea that 
 "farming don't pay." The marvel is that it pays as well as it 
 does; the glory of the eastern farmer is that he can make head- 
 way at all, with this horrible burden on his back. 
 
 Now consider the equities of the case. This is no sort of a sec- 
 tional plea, no setting up of one part of the country or one class of 
 our people as entitled to any kind of special favor from the gov- 
 ernment or special protection from competition. Not a bit of it* 
 nothing like it. The simple fact is just this: The public lands 
 belong to the people at large, and it is distinctly opposed to the 
 interest of the people at large that any more of them should be 
 brought into cultivation, because our great basal industry,. the in- 
 dustry on which all other American industries depend, is agrlcul- 
 
11 
 
 ture, and agriculture is , depressed, its profits reduced, by every 
 increase of our cultivated area. 
 
 Finally, what is to be done about it? It is too late now to 
 hope for repeal of the homestead laws and similar out-of-date 
 legislation in time to do much good. Ten years ago next October, 
 when the journal with which I have the honor of being connected 
 began the first regular attack that has ever been made on our 
 outgrown and now suicidal national policy of dealing with the 
 public domain, a very large area of arable land was still the prop- 
 erty of the nation, and the work of giving it away, to the un- 
 speakable injury of the owners, might well have been arrested. 
 But I am sorry to say that it was then, as it very largely still is,. 
 quite impossible to rouse the class most directly interested, the 
 farmers of the older States, to any sort of energetic action for 
 the protection of their own well-being. Farmers' organizations, 
 as a rule, have devoted themselves to all sorts of rainbow chasing, 
 or have frittered away their energies on matters deserving enough, 
 perhaps, but of very trifling consequence in comparison with the 
 Immense importance of attacking the one great evil. Very few in- 
 dividual farmers could be induced to call up the matter in granges 
 or similar bodies, or even to Interview their own representatives 
 in Congress and urge them to action. Considerably more than a^ 
 hundred millions of acres — just think of it, a hundred millions of 
 acres — have been given away since then, with hardly an audible 
 protest from the class who were daily robbed and impoverished 
 by the operation, until now it is almost within bounds to say 
 that there hardly remains a desirable homestead in any State- 
 washed by the Mississippi or its affluents; and they are scarce 
 anywhere. As the last Year Book of the Department of Agricul- 
 ture says, " all the best parts of the public domain have been 
 appropriated, and comparatively very little good agricultural land 
 remains open to settlement." One might think we were within, 
 sight of the beginning of the end of the mischief, and might hope 
 now for a slow improvement, the supply of wild land being nearly 
 exhausted, while our population is increasing by leaps and 
 bounds. 
 
 Lay not that flattering unction to your soul. We are merely 
 
 - entering upon a second stage in the work of spoliation. Animated 
 
 by an intensely selfish and narrow desire for the so-called devel- 
 
12 
 
 opment of their own States and Territories at the expense of the 
 great body of the nation, the people of the far west are raising 
 in increasing volume, year by year, a demand for the irrigation of 
 the immense area of arid lands now the property of the United 
 states, that at least a hundred million acres more may be brought 
 into the market to compete with your property and postpone to 
 the indefinite future the time when the possessor of a good farm 
 shall be, as he ought to be, an object of general envy. The demand 
 for this outrageous robbery of the people takes two forms. The 
 plot at first was to induce Congress to irrigate this vast area at 
 the national expense — at your cost and mine — that it might be 
 Tendered attractive to new competitors in our own industry and 
 divided among them. This scheme of open robbery, however, was 
 a little too barefaced to be very dangerous. Nobody could help 
 seeing that it was just like asking Congress to build factories 
 and give them to any impecunious but enterprising applicant that 
 came along — ^imagine what our manufacturers now in business 
 "would say to that! This plan therefore is not, just at present, 
 pressed very actively, though still rearing its horrid front, in 
 some form, during every session. 
 
 But another scheme has been devised, to which it is hoped there 
 ^ill be less objection. It is simply for the national government 
 to give, give out and out, all our arid lands to the States and 
 Territories in which they happen to lie, in order that the local 
 authorities may do the irrigating themselves. Just think of it. 
 These lands are the property of all the people,- just as much the 
 property of the farmer in the northeast corner of Maine or at the 
 extremity of the Florida peninsula, as of the people who live 
 around them; five-sixths of all our population are east of the 
 Mississippi and Missouri; and yet it is seriously proposed— yes 
 vehemently urged— that their ownership in the lands referred to 
 be taken from them by force and given to the handful of people 
 in the newer regions, these people themselves being chiefly the 
 beneficiaries of the previous injustice of the government under 
 that miserable old homestead law, that the property may be used 
 directly and actively to the injury of the present owners. It is 
 difficult to speak with patience of a proposed iniquity like that. 
 If some of our Montana friends who are doing their best to bring 
 it about were owners of valuable lots in Boston, which thev pre- 
 
13 
 
 ferred to keep vacant until a growing demand should bring an 
 increase in their selling value, and the Bostonians living round 
 these lots should endeavor to seize them, under color of develop^ 
 ing {Boston and providing homes for the homeless, one can im- 
 agine the indignation of the owners and the opinion they would 
 express of the conscienceless rapacity of the plotters. The shoe 
 is on the other foot; it is not their ox that is gored; and the 
 plotting and scheming goes bravely on. 
 
 This brings us directly to the answer to the question — no mat- 
 ter about the past; what is now to be done? Just exactly this. 
 Let every man of you resolve to exert himself in all proper ways 
 (and there are many) to kill every bill that comes before this 
 present session of Congress and every future session for the irri- 
 gation under any pretense of the arid lands, or for the giving of 
 them away to the States in which they lie. You can accomplish 
 infinitely more than you perhaps suppose, if you will use your 
 power. The editorial pages of the Country Qentlemwn, will keep 
 you constantly informed of eyery one of these miserable bills as it 
 comes up, giving definitely the number on the calendar, the name 
 of the introducer, and the committee to which it is referred. Let 
 every man who hears me sit down then, immediately, and write 
 a personal letter to his Senators or to his Representative, accord- 
 ing as the bill makes its appearance in the Senate or in the House, 
 and also to the chairman of the committee having it under con- 
 sideration, invoking his active opposition. Let him ask all his 
 neighbors to do the same. Let him see that his grange, or any sort 
 of agricultural union with which he may be affiliated, adopts ring- 
 ing resolutions of protest, and that the secretary sends copies to 
 the Representative and the Senators. God helps those who help 
 themselves, if the farmers of the East permit the far-western 
 schemers to pursue their course of determined spoliation, enrich- 
 ing themselves, indirectly perhaps, but not the less really, at your 
 expense and mine, the farmers of the East must expect conditions 
 increasingly unfavorable, year after year, decade after decade, for 
 themselves and for their children; must expect that increasingly 
 severe and unintermitted toil will yield increasingly meagre re- 
 turns; and must expect themselves to descend gradually but 
 steadily in the social scale till there shall be none so poor to do 
 them reverence. In time, no doubt, a century or two perhaps. 
 
14 
 
 conditions must change again, as our increasing population makes 
 larger and larger demands for food, while the supply of land on 
 which it can be raised becomes proportionally smaller. But there 
 is no earthly need to postpone the beginning of this recovery to 
 an indefinite epoch in the uncertain future. Let the farmers of 
 the East put forth but a mere fraction of the power which they 
 most properly hold, if they would only use it, oyer our national 
 legislation, to stop this tremendous and tremendously cruel and 
 •unjust competition by the beneficiaries of our own government, 
 and especially to strike at this hydra of an irrigation scheme in 
 all its phases whenever it appears, and the possible prosperity of 
 the vague future may be realized within our own time, in a solid 
 financial return for that form of labor which most deserves the 
 triple boon of a bright and hopeful youth, a contented mind at 
 maturity, and a competence with honor in declining years. Not, 
 of course, that any legislation, or the absence of any legislation, 
 can of itself make all farmers prosperous, any more than any 
 legislation, or the absence of any legislation, can of itself make 
 all men honest and prevent cheating. But although legislation is 
 often impotent for good, it is always, if unwise or unjust, almost 
 omnipotent for evil; and at the present time unwise and unjust 
 legislation creates the one only cloud in the otherwise bright sky 
 of American husbandry. To prevent the enactment of unwise and 
 unjust laws, having for their sole purpose the enrichment of a 
 comparatively restricted section of the country at the expense of 
 all the rest — ^this is the one paramount duty of the hour.