Excerpt from Improvement Era, Vol. 31: October, 1928

Institutions in Utah Show distinctly the influence of irrigation farming. The cities and towns are located on Streams, and the farm ers live in villages rather than on their farms as in the East and Middle West. Irrigation has given a rather intensive system of agriculture and it has also made it possible to produce a greater diversity of vege tables and cereals. These facts, in their turn, have an influence on the entire economic condition of the commonwealth, making it more Stable and giving it a better balance. They also have contributed to the educational progress of the state. The schools have always been better than they would have been if the people had lived farther apart. The accomplishments of irrigation in the past in clade the making possible of establishing a permanent, prosperous commonwealth in the midst of a desert, thousands of miles from civilization; the development of a sturdy manhood and womanhood and the grouping of the tillers of the soil into communities, which have excellent social and economic advantages.

Farming in bygone days was, however, a toil beyond imagina tion. The land had to be cleared of sage and greasewood. Heavy drags were made of tree trunks and poles, and the brush was burned. The plows were made of wood and the shares of iron. Often the land was hard and dry, and water for the season might be late, or the sources of the streams dried up. Rains might not come, and drought would prevent the preparation of the soil. Still there was some thing about the soil that gripped the farmer. He was farm-minded, and never ceased to look forward for the ushering in of a Golden Age the following spring. It might have been too wet or too dry; or the grasshoppers might have eaten up the crops; or the worms taken their substance. But next year the farmer prospered and all was well; for be dealt not with prosaic known things, but with the sunny future; and he left events in the hands of God. He loved the great out-of-doors. He found joy in the fields; and he was happy to see the corn dancing in the breeze.

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.