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Show 4 THM ARG &. orchard culture, we look to see in a few years our fruit industry one of ’ the largest and most magnificent in the State. Another branch of agriculture that is showing great promise is that of dairying. During the four years in question the increased production was about 80 per cent, and the progress made in cheese is even more encouraging. The farmers of this State will never fully appre- ciate the opportunities that are theirs for the production of a cheap and first-class article of butter and cheese. There is no better State “in the Union for dairying, and there is nothing that will bring more wealth to it when properly understood and energetically pushed. So ‘Jong as it is necessary to import large quantities of butter and cheese from the East to supply onr own little market, so long will the work of advertising our agricultural resources be neutralized so far as our dairy interests are concerned. Better food for dairy cows can be obtained here for $4 per ton than can be obtained in New York for $15. There is no better food for dairy cows than lucerne, though it is not yet half appreciated; but it will yet enrich our State and enrich our farmers when its merits as a producer of gilt-edged butter are rightly appreciated. ' 2K 2 * All the cereais do weli, with the exception of corn, in some of the colder counties. Our wheat excels and is sought after by millers in other States. Large crops are raised. Taking the average of the State, in 1895 it was 22.4 bushels per acre, according to Government reports, while the average for the United States was only 12.5 bushels. There is no trouble, with irrigation, in raising an average of 30 bushels per acre. A few years ago “The American Agriculturist” offered a prize of $500 for the largest yield of wheat per acre in the United States. - The prize was secured by a Salt Lake county farmer, named William Gibby,-with a yield exceeding 80 bushels per acre. The venerable pres- ‘ident of the Mormon church has a twenty-acre farm for potatoes. And adjoining Salt ‘duake City, which, he says, “has been the main support of my family for forty-four years. Only once in that time have I had less than 40 bushels of wheat per acre;’’ on one occasion the yield averaged 70 bushels per acre. In regard to potatoes we have Jerry Rusk’s testi- mony that “Utah beats the world Utah will yet be one of the greatest potato bins of the United States. In Washington county figs and almond nuts find a congenial home, and an experiment in growing oranges and lemons is being made. We have in Utah one of the best sugar beet factories in the United States, the farmers of one county receiving in cash each year about $20u,000 for beets sold to the factory. Our sugar beets excel in quality, and in a few years we will doubtless have, in place of one, several large factories doing a profitable business and enriching our farmers. The canaigre root grows wild in southern Utah, and under the stimulus of a bounty recently offered by the State, the business of cultivating this root and extracting the tannin from it will doubtless assume large proportions in the near future. So with silk culture. With women bounty, are generously and a State both of which under their houses to collect the rainwater that falls upon the roof, and they have enough “soft”? water for laundry and other purposes to supply the household during the intervals between the rains. In this country our farming valleys represent the cisterns, our mountains the roofs upon which the storms descend and our canyons the eavetroughs which collect the waters and carry them to the thirsty farms in the valleys below; and when it is remembered that in Utah the proportion of farming valleys to mountains is about the same as the proportion of the cistern to the average roof surface of the house, it will be understood why our valleys never lack for moisture, even though there may be no rains during the summer months. Tke farmers of the East have no such guarantee against drouth. They have no such reserve fund as our farmers have upon which they can draw in time of need. This reserved energy stored up in our mountains is a perpetual guarantee of the stability of our agriculture. No such calamity can come to our farmers as came to the On the whole, there is such diversity of soil in Utah, agriculture, however, wide range of and our men of skill. offered, the climate if there and is in any of agriculture. * * such It is not its sufficient infancy. Its future depends to say, “this thing will work in Utah. ee To those unacquainted with the system of farming pursued in Utah, it may be well to explain that the rainfal l is so deficient in quantity in the farming valleys and the evaporation is so great in our dry atmosphere, that Utah would today be a burning desert, so far as her that surround our fertile valleys did not yield up under the glare of the summer sun the moisture that is precipitated on their summi ts and in their gorges in the form of snow during the winter. Our Hastern friends build cisterns A small furrow, led it out upon the barren desert, where stands the renowned Salt Lake City, now touched The. floral and other mountain herbage, and browse on the quaking aspen ‘and a variety of bushes and shrubs. The herds average Over 2000 head, and the cost of keeping ranges from 50 cents to $1.00 a head. The sheepherder is a product of these mountain ranges, who possesses a glamor of romance to the story-writer. He is an interesting character, and I hope he will remain with us as a distinct and picturesque part of our civilization as long as our mountains stand. if the mountains % in the worthless | * _ Our mountain and desert range is unlimited and furnishes a great variety of feed. The sheep feed on wild wheat, meadow grass, peavine is concerned, I[lli- } made with an old Eastern prairie plow, re| ceived some of the water of City creek and a king looks upon the farmer as an interloper, as the Indian looks upon the pale face as an interloper. The wire fence of civilized agrieulture : interferes with the freedom of the range and the profits of the sheep / man. Sheep raising on the range has been very profitable, not so much _ SO-now because of something the politicians are endeavor ing to explain. agriculture Ohio, The conquest of arid America began in | Utah, in 1847, when irrigation was crowned other former affording summer and the latter winter pasturage. In Utah the sheep industry is not a part of agriculture, so-called. The sheep oe yet | queen of the great West. - Utah was the home of the mountain sheep. It is now the home of the sheep king, with herds aggregating over two million. These sheep have a range of over 40,000,000 acres of mountain and desert lands, the * of is Irrigation State of the Union a greater diversity of farm and orchard products; and in a diversity of soil and climate and products rests the stability r York, itself out.”” There can be no advance made without organized effort. We must know exactly, or as near as the best engineering skill can tell, just how much water flows through our irrigating streams and how much Jand it is capable of irrigating, and when that limit has been ascertained the State should interfere and declare that there shall be no further appropriation of water from that stream. This is in the interest of legitimate corporations, and it is to corporations, operating under an effective State supervision, that we must look for any immediate and decided advance in the matter of irrigation. Let it work itself out, and in a few years there will be fastened upon the State, upon the agriculture of the State, a power that will make real progress in agriculture impossible for ages to come. The combined wisdom of our practical irrigators and skilled engineers, aided with the advice of the best legal minds, should be crystallized into such a law as will protect the farmer against spoliation at the hands of unlicensed corporations, and insure to Utah such an agriculture as will be the glory of the agriculture of the United States. JAMES DRYDEN. Os a of New upon the solution of the problem of irrigation and water storage—for in its practical aspect it is yet an unsolved problem. If we are to make any great advance in agriculture, if our agriculture is to be great and rich, this problem must be grappled with by our men of capital * that it is doubtful States the assistance of the fabric, as it is entitled to be. * of the * Our silk. industry is liable to become an important feature of our industrial ae farmers nois, Michigan and Indiana last year, where in the one item of hay alone the farmers lost through drouth over $80,000,000. In those States the hay crop did not average half a ton per acre, while in Utah, thanks to our mountain reserve fund, our hay crop averaged three tons per acre, and that, too, when their methods of farming are infinitely _ superior to ours. seed sage to land that had the and was transformed into a dead sands of ages gave succulent green grasses and the way of of vegetation. plain paradise, the germ the lain for centuries, entire vegetable the enemy kingdom, yielded abundant cereals for the food of man and beast. Since then modern irrigating systems have been established throughout all the Western States and Territories, and Utah celebrates the semi-centennial of colonization with the satisfaction of seeing thousands of thankful people, residing JOEL in the once SHOMAKER. arid area, bowing in reverence to the pioneers of American | irrigation. ’ ® & In the early days of Utah history irrigation was regarded as the foundation of all wealth, and the mountain reservoirs of nature were most carefully and systematically guarded. The honored Governor— Brigham Young—advised his constituents to construct co-operative canals, open individual ditches and apply water to the land, in order that native fruits and cereals might be produced in sufficient quantities to supply the demand for home consumption and have enough surplus to feed the strangers crossing the continent and sojourning in the valley. The precious treasure vaults of silver and gold were left with seals unbroken until the waters of the mountains were appropriated and distributed upon the fields of the agricultural husbandman. Natural streams were protected, bubbling springs developed and the era of reclamation, the results of which constitute one of the most wonderful strides of civilization, began to dawn upon the beautiful valleys of Zion. @ % ce The first few years of irrigation in Utah was but the formative period of a system which has become famous in all the civilized world. Labor |