THE OMAIIA SUNDAY BEE: AUGUST 13, 1911.
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Million Homes to Cluster About New Oases
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.(Copyright, 1911, by Frank G. Carpenter.)
ASmN'OTON, D. C. (Special Corre
spondence of The Bee.) Three years
ago he was a stenographer at Wash
ington. He was getting $ 1,2 00 a year
and he had one month's annual vaca-
tlon. He had saved 1 1,500 by skimp-
ln ...1J 1 X Hill 1 1 M
,u' BUU """. uul ""e u or
the future. Then he went west on his annual leave
and was present at the opening of some government
Irrigated lands at Huntley, In northern Montana. He
dropped Into the line of homeeeekers and drew an
allotment of forty-six acres, with the right to pay for
It In ten-year installments. ,
He resigned his Washington Job, and, using his
savings, built himself a home. He then cleared
thlrtV-flVA tLOTttm nt aa craVipiiah art A anmil If natm
. . o.f t7 7 , I S :
Ut, An?16 vrbard, "d h9l
m. ., Vui m i,wv tiw.umi yuuiia iuv
some currants, grapes and blackberries. Hte oata
produced sixty-two bushels-per acre and the wheat
thirty bushels. The apple trees grew. The next year
he planted sugar beets on thirty-one acres of this
Und and the crop therefrom brought in $3,100. The
orchard Is rapidly growing and the man already esti
mates himself worth at least $10,000.
That Is the story of one man's experience on the
irrigated tracts of the reclamation service which
Uncle Sam is now parceling out to his children. He
has already sold thousands of acres on such Install
ments and he has water enough in the big reservoirs
lately, built to feed 25,000 farms of forty acres each.
This land has all been reclaimed from the desert, and
it Is only the beginning. It Is the first fruits of the
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reclamation service, which has already spent $60,000,- gatlon farming got forty-one acres from the govern
000 In dams, reservoirs and canals. A million acres ment and tilled it alone, wltb the assistance of his
are now under water, and within the next generation children, the oldest of whom was Just fourteen years.
or bo more man a muiion nomes win nave neen aaaea
to those of our country.
j Some of Uncle Sam's Settlers.
Before I tell you how such farms may be gotten
I want to give some stories about and letters from
Uncle Sam's pioneers. The reclamation bureau at
Washington has a large correspondence from those
who have taken such tracts. It publishes the value
of the lands and telU what may be made from them.
Take the fruit oases of the Pacific northwest. If the
Information did not come from the government I
should not venture to quote it, for the prices seem
to be out of all reason. Irrigated fruit lands owned
by Individuals right near some of the government
tracts sell for from $100 to $2,000 per acre, and
some of the sagebrush nearby is bringing $60 per'
acre and upward. This is In the Yakima valley and
others of that region where dams can be made at the
outlets of mountain lakes, which will eventually give
930,000 acre feet. There Is enough water there to
redeem a half million acres and there are four or
five schemes planned for the Yakima valley alone.
There are excellent orchard lands on nearly all of the
projects, and the men wbo have taken up holdings
are rakldlr trowlni in wealth.
Engineer Blanchard of the reclamation service tells
tne of a man named Silver who planted ten acres of
orchard near Yakima about six years ago. He netted
$2,700 last year from his fruit and the vegetables
which be raised between the rows. In the same re
gion J. O. Shadbolt, a dry goods merchant from Mon
tana, made $16,000 from the fruit raised on forty-one
acres. In 1907 the same orchard yielded a gross of
$29,000 and a net of $20,000, and In the three years
which the man has been fruit raising he has netted
$39,000, or more than $13,000 a year.
The government reports that full-bearing orchards
produce crops of from $300 to $1,200 per acre, and
that $300 Is lees than the average If the trees are
well kept. The lands that have been redeemed there
are being largely planted to fruit, and millions of
trees have been set out In the valley during the last
season or so.
Robert McCormlck, who was a lumberman In Min
nesota, came to this valley ten years ago with 75
tents In his pocket. He worked for a time as a team
He r. and with his savings made his first payment on
twenty-five acres of the government project. His land
was then covered with sage brush. Today It Is all
In crops and Is paying him $2,000 a year above all
his expenses. Last fall he picked seven or eight nun-
flred boxes of apples from a HtUe over an acre, making,
a yield of about $800 for that amount of ground. A
Wisconsin man the same year sold $7,700 worth of
apple from nine acres ot tree-
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Tim tzzntdo&a Jo&ect?
Here are some letters from Huntley, Mont., where
the Irrigation projects embrace a total of 20,000
acres. They are not all completed, but the water has
been put on large tracta, and several good-sized towns
have gone up. This Is a land of grain and alfalfa.
Wheat averages thirty bushels to the
from fifty to seventy bushels and oats from ninety to
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xuv ousneiB. The oats sell for 90 cents a hundred
pounds, and good seed oats bring as much as 2.
There Is a grazing country about, and alfalfa is worth
$5 a ton In the stack. It yields from five to seven
tons an acre from three cuttings, and is uued also
to rcatore the fertility of the noil. A sugar beet
factory has been recently established near Huntley.
nd the farmers are raising beets, getting fourteen
(tons to the acre, which they sell fqr $5 a ton. They
Mn cwtw 4 ft A V...k-1 m ....
rr , OL on,onB or 160 Dn ol PO-
?vn i1"08? any Part 0f vernment land
u jkuwro in ava instance or one farmer who grew $60
worth of cucumbers on one-eighth of an aere never
before touched with the plow.
In connection with cucumbers I Jiave a letter from
Nat Marten of Huntley, who made $4,200 out of dill
pickles, which were raised on lesa than seven acres
of land. He put up 830 barrels of these plokles and
sold them at $13 a barrel. He ears that most of the
cucumbers were Talsed by the neighbors on the above
land. He paid them 1 cent a pound, and this gave a
good profit, as some of them raised nine tons to the
acre. Mr. Marten says he expects to double his out
put next year and to raise most of the cucumbers
himself.
Another Huntley man writes that he came from
Latrobe, Pa., and that without any Drln. n
rirst crop Drought him In $2,400, and he expects
10 produce at least $3,000 worth of stuff this year.
This man says: "It don't take a bis: man to d thi.
i weign only iff2 pounds." His name is W. W. Kes
lar, and his children are ten.
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Not a Bad Place For Children,
A number of these letters show how the babies
thrive. There is one from Hermiston, Ore., written
by E. P. Dodd, saying that his neighbor, Bushnell,
had come there three years ago and landed with a
pair of twins in a double baby buggy. He now has
four boys and a $700 house, and at the end of five
years will have a $2,000 property all paid for. A
young carpenter bought a ghren-up homestead of ten
acres and has It now paid for, and another has planted
twenty acres to alfalfa and grapes.
, One of the Hermiston settlers says that he is
praising 600 bushels of onions per acre without fertili
zation and crops of other vegetables are quoted al
most as large. This Is from the Umatilla project,
where water Is now available for eleven or twelve
thousand acres and where the first settlements were
made about four years ago. The locality has excel-
lent banks and" schools, Hermiston having an $8 000
concreU) building, with 160 pupils. There are
newspapers, churches and fraternity lodges.
Ostriches and Dates.
Do you want to raise ostriches, figs and dates?
There are plenty ot chances to do so on the lands
which Uncle Sam now offers in southern Arizona and
New Mexico. The Roosevelt dam will open up 240.
000 acres which will grow alfalfa, upon which os
triches will thrive. It is the same with the Yuma
project, farther south, and so also of the Irrigation
schemes of southern New Mexico. In these regions
the country is practically frostless, and oranges, lem
ons, grapefruit and olives can be easily grown. The
lands lie several hundred feet above sea level and
the temperature ranges from 20 to 118 degrees above
sero.
In some of the tracts the units are as low as ten
acres, which Is found to be plenty, as crops can be
raised all the year round. Irrigation lands bring
from $60 to $160 per acre, the government tracta
varying in cost, according to the expense Involved
in each project. The government report from Carle-
bad. N. M., states that the finest of grapes can be
raised, bringing a profit of $160 an acre, or lettuce
and peaswlll net $400 per acre, while Bermuda
onions are. yielding $6,000 pounds to the acre and
nwujm, igr i mu a poano.
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pam's desert (arms. Each ot the thirty-four projects
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now being reclaimed has its own special crops, vary-
in. according to climate and eoll. and those who
would settle can receive full information concerning
them by writing to the government officials.
How to Get a Farm.
But how does one get a farm on these fertile
oases? The lands are allotted under much the same
terms as the homestead law, save that the settlers
must pay the actual cost of erecting the dams and
making the irrigation works which put the water
upon the lands. They must also pay a small rental
cost per acre each year for the use of the water. The
payment for the land Is made In ten annual Install
ments, the money all going back to the government.
When the works are paid for the land and the works
will belong to the community, and they will be to a
certain extent under the secretary of the Interior for
the future.. The scheme provides against monopoly.
No one has the right to own more than 160 acres on
any of the Itracts and the units of ownership are
as low as ten acres. In other projects they are forty
and in others eighty.
If the land is taken up under the homestead law,
the settler must live on it for five years before he
can get a title, and this Is so whether the land has
water yet or not. The amounts paid for water vary
with the cost of the Irrigation works (needed to re-
Notes of a Second Century Trial
ERE Is the court record of a trial that took
place in the year of Our Lord 180, before
the Proconsul Saturninus at Carthage. The
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prisoners were a band of Christians,
eight men and four women, who bad
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arrested at Bcllll, - in Numldla, charged with
refusing to swear by the genius of the Roman em
peror. They 'and no stenographers In those days, but
they had court clerks, and the Latin minutes of that
trial are to be found In the archives of Rome, whence
tby have Ut by Prof- AUlll MarcW'
who publishes them in the appendix to his book on
the Christian martyrs. Here is a literal translation
of the record:
Carthage, on the 17th day of July, Presente and
Claudlan. being consuls Speratus, NarUalus and
Clttlnus, Donata, Seconda and Vestia being led into
the hall of audience, the Proconsul Saturnlnas said:
"You can always merit the clemency of our lord the
emperor if you turn to good Intentions."
Seperatus said: "We have never done evil; never
have we lent ourselves to works ot iniquity; we have
never cursed; rather have we given thanks when we
were abused, and withal we have respected our em
peror." Proconsul Saturninus said: "We, too, are re
ligious, and our religion Is simple; we swear by the
genius of our lord tee emperor and we pray for his
health; thla you also ought to do."
Bparatus said: "If thou wilt listen to me quietly
I will tell thee the mystery of simplicity."
Saturninus: "Aa I know that thou are about to
peak evil of sacred things I will not listen to thee.
rather by the genius of the lord our emperor."
Sparatus: "I know not the kingdom of this
world, but I am a servant of that God whom no man
sees nor can see with these eyes. Thief I never was,
and when I was In debt I always paid, for I knowmy
xra, wn or jungs and umperor or au peoples."
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deem them, but In no case are they anytning like
the value of the land when redeemed. It Is estimated
that the cost of reclamaatlon will amount to about
$30 per acre, and In nearly evefy project, as soon as
the water is on the land, it Is worth $100 and upward
per acre. In the case of bearing orchards, as I have
said, It may sell for $1,000 or more.
Our Oases Communities.
The population of these oases promises to be the
highest type of American manhood and womanhood.
The conditions are almoBt Utopian. Each settlement
will be one of well-to-do farmers, who are carrying
on intensive cultivation and making comfortable In
comes, with less work than Is possible In any other
part of the country. The farms, being small, are
close together, and the people have a community of
Interests which leads to co-operation and social or
ganization. They will market their fruits and crops
in common, and will form combinations to get the
best prices and to raise the best products. This Is
already being done In the fruit regions. There will
also be financial combinations of the settlers to estab
lish factories in their various communities.
libraries and School.
The schools which have already been started upon
Speratus said: "It Is an evil conviction to com
mit murder, to bear false witness"
Saturninus said: "Do not be parties to sucH
madness as this.'"
Clttinus said: "We fear none but the Lord, our
God, who 1b in the heavens."
Donata said: "Honor to Caesar as Caesar, but
worship to God."
Vestia said: "I am a Christian."
Seconda said: "What I am I want to remain."
Proconsul Saturninus said to Speratus: "Dust
thou persist in being a Christian?"
Bparatus said: "I am. a Christian." And with
him all the others agreed.
Proconsul Saturninus saldt "Do you want time
to decide?"
Speratus said: "In o righteous a matter there
is nothing to be decided."
Proconsul Saturninus said: "What have you in
that box?"
Sparatus: "The books and the epistles ot Paul, a
righteous man."
Proconsul Saturninus: "You have thirty days'
time; consider well!"
Speratus said again: "I am a Christian." And
all consented.
sentence: "Spe-
Proconsul 8aturnlnus read the
ratus, NarUalus, Clttlnus Donata, Vestia, Seconda
and the others, having confessed that they live ac-
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fugues vi. ecu w wem w iuvuiu w ma uBj 01
the Romans, and persevering In their obstinacy, are
condemned to death."
Speratus said: "Let us give thanks' to God."
Nartzalus said: "Today we are martyrs in para
dise. Thanks be to God!"
DommmiiI Csritvnlniia Mi4 sm A fei m m mm a 1 4
nounce that Bperatus. Nartzalus. Clttlnus, Vetuvius,
a wvuou a ajca-i w uaaauat vsuoiis vuv utai o lisvi UJ ana
Felix. Aquillnus, Letanzlus. Januarlus, Oenerosa,
vesxia uonaia ana neconaa are conaemneo.
"
u All sal4, "Let us give thanks to God,-
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of the West J
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ooiw (map GFxmso oasis
60 WmRACRE, -JTR'S HEZJ
these projects are far above the average of those in
the country districts In other parts of the United
States. In most cases they compare with the schools
of the cities. Most of the oases have what Is known
centralized sraded schools, to which the children
are brought in carriages that go dally from farm to
farm an4 rl 1 oof thorn ftrnnf ram 1a tnltAn in fiAlect-
ing the teachers, and a high school education may
be gotten without leaving the farm.
Among the interesting features of these school
.are the gardens and little farms connected with them
The children Jearn practical agriculture (by raising
plants, fruits and grains, prizes being given for the
best work. The teaching Is all in the spirit of the
farm, and Its aim' is td make the children love the
farm and to have them stay on it. In the past the
country schools have been managed by qlty teachers,
who have taught the children to despise agriculture
and tried to make them leave the farms for the city.
As to the schools already established on the project
at Carlsbad, N. M., 600 children are enrolled. The
graded school building Is of brick, situated in a large
park, and the towu has recently erected a $1,500
high Bchool. Belle Fourche, in South Dakota, has
two graded Bchoola and a high school, while in Stur
gls there is a public graded school with a large at
tendance. Nearby are the University of South Da
kota, the State School of Mines and a state normal
school. In Huntley, In northern Montana, there are
excellent educational facilities, and the same Is true
of the other projects of the lower Yellowstone valley.
The piplls are. taught for nine months in each year,
and the state course of study provides for the teaching
of agriculture In the four highest grades.
In Yakima the best of common school facilities are
to be found in every part of the Irrigated regions. K
There are graded schools and high schools at Ellens-
burg, Sunnyslde and North Yakima, and at the latter
place, in addition to the public schools, there are a
business college, a school of music and art and a
Catholic academy for girls. In all of these projects
nine months of school Is the rule. '
Towns of the Oases.
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Nearly every one of these reclamation projects has. i
several towns which are rapidly springing into being.
In .he Yakima valley they are situated on the gov
ernment lands and in the country adjoining. North
Yakima has over 12,000 people, Sunnyslde has 1.500t
Ellensburg, 6,200 and Prosser, 2,000. In addition
to this there are a number of other towns and villages.
Most of these places have graded streets bordered
with trees kept alive by irrigation. They have gas
and electric lights and good telephone systems. They
publish newspapers. North Yakima has a public li
brary which cost $80,000, a court house worth $125,
000, and the government Is soon to erect a federal
building there at a cost of $250,004.
The chief town In the Umatilla project Is Hermis
ton." which already has 600 people. Including a large
number of farmers who live there and drive to and
from their farms. The place has several big busi
ness blocks, two lumber yards, an $8,000 public school
building, and there are In the county twelve banks,
with total deposits ef upward of $4,000,000. Her
miston has two banks.
On the Klamath irrigation project the chief town
Is Klamath Falls, though there are other settlements
which are rapidly growing. Klamath Falls has four
banks, two newspapers, a high school building which
cost, $40,000 and a number of society lodges. The
cost or redeeming the land here was on the average
$30 per acre and the maintenance charge 75 cents
per acre eacn year.
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a town whtrhV
those of the N u
here are some STr
,' and the edu- Y
ns are among
r."." "w ine capual or tn . town which
nas municipal Improvements eaual tn
"u' iMiueiice ciues or the west. Th
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small towns on the projects themselves(
cationai, rinanclal and social condition
the best In the country. As to Boise. It ha. ir hanks.
with deposits of over $6,000,000 and school buildings
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wuie i cut CBVTiiE. M nrnnapt v nnln. . m . m .
000. Its high schools are anion- Th. v. i the
country, the graduates belna- accredits .11 ,niie
uiai aamic itudcnt. ..r j
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FRANK Qt CARPENTER, '
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