Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 10, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 January 1911 — TYRO GOOD FARMER [ARTICLE]

TYRO GOOD FARMER

Reclamation a Blessing in Results Already Shown.

C. J. Blanchard, Statistician of the Service, Points to Success Won by Former Clerk, School Teacher and Mechanic. Chicago.—“By demonstrating conclusively that representatives of a great variety of occupations can turn farmers and prosper on the new lands opened to cultivation through the irrigation ditches of the United States reclamation projects,” declared C. J. Blanchard, statistician of the service, in passing through the city today on his way to Washington, “these projects have assured the success of the government undertaking in accomplishing its principal purpose. “It was not the object of the reclamation act merely to provide more land for those already ei&aged in farming, but to provide a way for the people in congested cities to get back to the soil and establish homes for themselves where they can achieve financial independence and live more contented lives. “There was some question, of course, how these people, suddenly turning to fanning, would succeed. The results have been most encouraging. “Take the Huntley project in Montana as an example. There is a young man there whom I knew when he was in the government service in Washington as a clerk. He threw up his position/and went out to the Huntley project, later taking his family, when he had built a home. He told me re-

cently that be would not take SIO,OOO for the 40 acres he owned, and the crop of sugar beets he will raise next year, on the basis of this year’s re-' turns, will bring him in more than $3,000. „ . *■ “Near neighbors of his are a former locomotive engineer, a mechanic, a school teacher—there is practically no limit to the variety of callings and professions you find represented. You may say that I hear only of the successes and ask what about the failures. -

“One test of failure would be the cancellation of land on which the people could not make enough to keep up the payments. In all of the thousands of instances where the reclamation service has provided phonies, I do not know of any cancellation of claims where the settler was a bona fide home seeker, coming out onto the land to work and establish himself."