gineer
of irrigation shall select proper sites for nine six-inch or sixteen
four and one half inch wells. An election shall then be held to vote
bonds of the township. If they carry, the supervisors shall have these
wells sunk, and shall rent the water to such farmers as wish it, at a
sum in no case exceeding a _pro-rata_ share of seven per cent. of the
value of the bonds, the title to the water to go with the title to the
land so long as the rent is paid.

The details of the bill are carefully worked out, and it would seem that
this plan is feasible. It will enable the present owners to retain their
land, and to water it at reasonable cost, while those benefited will
bear the expense.

But the great danger is that what is known as private enterprise, which
in the West has been as a rule simply the legal twin of highway robbery,
will seize the situation which this irrigation problem so temptingly
presents. Some of the investment companies are already becoming aware of
the possibilities, and are taking advantage of the farmers by buying
their land at a nominal price, and it is not improbable that speculators
within a year will appropriate ("convey" the wise it call) vast
stretches in the Jim Valley, crowding out the present owners and keeping
the land comparatively idle for years. This is the peculiar peril of the
Dakotas, and the Farmers' Alliance would do well to spend some of their
superfluous energy on a co-operative plan of introducing irrigation,
else they will be at the mercy of a greedy crowd of embryo Jay Goulds.
There is, indeed, no reason why the nation, if it can appropriate money
for river and harbor bills, should not appropriate so small a sum as
$5,000,000 to an enterprise of such moment as this, and if the
Republican party had a dying glimmer of their olden shrewdness, they
would have tightened their relaxing hold on the affections of the
Dakotans by a measure of this kind. But so cumbersome is our present
system of republican government, that it would take too long in this
case to set governmental aid in motion. So, as it is, the Dakotas are
between the devil of drouth and the deep sea of further capitalistic
oppression, their only hope of a fair solution lying in the township
scheme.

Before parting with this theme, as indicative of what might be done with
the drouth belt of the Dakotas, the following table deserves a
comparative glance. It consists of the tax lists of several California
counties be