Salt Lake Telegram | 1902-02-04 | Page 4 | The Irrigation Conference

THE TUE IOA I IRRIGATION TION CONFERENCE VeIs Yells Is has bas acted wisely in calling together to gether geher the irrigators of Utah to discuss the question ques tion of the general irrigation of arid lands perhaps lands perhaps the tile most vital ita I to the future prosperity of what Providence evidently meant to be the most fertile and productive n- n portion of the American continent 1 His Excellency clearly appreciates the the- truth that thit it itis itis 1 is only through the tile representations of citizens with practical experience in the premises that we can canto hope to impress a national legislature a majority of f whose hose members are as indifferent to as they are ignorant of the su subject It is hard to draw men away from false idols whether the same be religious religious' economic or tura tural The benighted people of the East sit around on sugar barrels in the cross roads store and wait for the Almighty to send rain Sometimes it comes and again often it does not Then there is a drought and the farmers go to meeting and pray like sixty for a shower when a little labor would leave have irrigated their farms and saved sayed all trouble It is strange how ilow few there are in the East who know that the cradle of human civilization was in regions where agriculture was solely dependent upon irrigation or that irrigation was the rule until the world fell under the domination of Europeans who had cultivated the ground but hut little if any However the unscientific I wait-for-rain wait farmers of the Atlantic slope suspect the value of irrigation and their representatives in Congress assembled are afraid of it afraid it-afraid afraid that it might result in a few hundred thousand new producers producers producers pro pro- of f grain fruit vegetables and hay haJ whose I wares would uld come in fresh competition with the cobblestone farms of New Kew England So if ever we get the Government to extend its ai aid adequately to the project of gener general l irrigation rr gation it will be at the end of a hard fight and Governor Wells Wells' plan to hold an irrigation conference is sensibly sensibly sen sen- si sibly ly in the line of preparation for it j