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Show K Little Progress. Not very much, but a little progress has' jWeen made in Congress, touching the matter ff irrigation for such of the arid west as can Up brought unde,r cultivation. What has Been done awakens the hope that it will Brove an entering wedge that more will be pcomplished by and by. The auspices are pt all bad. Public land is becoming scarce r settlers, the population of the country is ""ppidly increasing. A good many of the I ' . necessary food products are advancii)gfjl? most; to the danger point in prices. The wisest ass of a Congressman, who indignantly in-dignantly asks why the public money of the whole Republic should be given to make some men who own desert lands rich by turning water upon them, is beginning to tremble, now when he receives the monthly bill from his butcher. Some men are controlled con-trolled best through their fears. When we come down to the real analysis of things, we discover that after all the generations of men wear out their lives for board and clothes. We hear of millionaires, now and hen we see one of those curiosities, but the rule is the same with them they work merely for board and clothes. Certainly, not one of them brought anything into the world, not one of them can take anything out. Then, if necessary, men can get along with very few clothes, but not a mother son of them can long dispense with food, and an advance of only a little in the prices of food is a serious matter for millions. When Congressmen begin to realize that the export of food from this country will not continue much longer, that the question of feeding -ur own people will soon begin to be a serious one, before some babies now in our country's cradles become old men and women, they will begin to think of the possible advantages of irrigation, not only of the arid west but of the east, which ' is now swept alternately by floods and droughts. When they begin to realize what irrigation might do for their own states, they will think more kindly of the demand of the west, and of the argument that when a government causes three blades of grass to grow where before there was but a desert, it is helping the whole people quite as much as when it builds a levee, to prevent an overflow over-flow in a certain region, or dredges a harbor channel, that bigger argosies of commerce may sail in and out. There will be much imbecile provincialism provincial-ism yet to be overcome, much sectional prejudice to be overcome before the right will prevail, but a little start has been made, and we may hope for progress now in the way of redeeming the desert. |