Irrigation Company, supplying water for about 100,000 acres, in 1911 granted all its settlers a five-year extension of time on both principal and interest, provided the buyer agreed to put sixty per cent of the land in cultivation within three years. On the Kuhn projects a similar plan is being worked out. Accumulated delinquent payments and interest are to be funded, the settler is to be relieved of the foreclosure shadow, is to be given a new contract, a new start and entire freedom from payments for a few years.
The new spirit has completely altered Idaho's attitude toward the settler. He is the man of the hour. A few of the stronger companies have advanced him money to buy stock. Banks and individuals have been buying dairy cattle, selling them to the farmers on easy terms. The state, the counties and the Department of Agriculture are coöperating, sharing the expense of sending out agricultural experts to advise the new farmers right in their fields. Professor Rinehart of the University of Idaho spent a good part of last summer in overalls, directing and helping dairymen to put up inexpensive silos. Marketing organizations are springing up, the merchants are raking together capital to finance plants for the utilization of by-products. Idaho has gone back to the base of its irrigation structure and is building anew from the bottom up. There is in Idaho more than half a million acres of raw land, untouched by the plow, for which irrigation water is ready. Forty acres of this land will support a family; that has been demonstrated many times over. The land is twice as productive as Illinois acres valued at two hundred
dollars; the winters are milder, the growing season is longer than in Illinois. Plowing begins in February. A good part of this land can be bought for fifty dollars an acre; the average price is between sixty-five and seventy-five dollars. Leveled, ditched and seeded, most of this land has a cash rental value of five to fifteen dollars an acre.
The story does not end here. Above American Falls a dam can be built, will be built, that will store three million acre-feet of the Snake's flood water; beyond the western limits of the present irrigated area, in the Bruneau country, lies a tract of more than half a million acres awaiting this stored water. It will come in due time. There is no hurry. Of feasible irrigation projects there is no lack in Idaho. They can wait. The pressing problem now is to put upon the cheap land already supplied with water the settler who will make it productive. He is coming, quietly, steadily, without the booming of the big bass drum. Low-cost irrigated land is a most powerful magnet; its pull never ceases while prices are low and terms easy.
Idaho has fifty-four million acres. Only seven million acres are patented, in private hands. Less than three million acres are under cultivation. The state is far larger than Illinois or Iowa, yet its entire population is less than that of Detroit. Elbow-room, space for expansion, is not wanting, nor is growth restricted to irrigable areas. In southeastern Idaho the Enlarged Home stead Act has given dry-farming a strong impetus. With sufficient capital, modern machinery and an ample area, dry-farming pays. A million acres were taken up in half-sections last year; more millions of acres are still awaiting the plow. In the state's moist forested northern part 300,000 acres of stump land lie unproductive, and the area is growing.
Forty per cent of Idaho's total area is timber land. This timber regulates and equalizes the flow of the mountain streams, protects and preserves the watersheds of the irrigated districts, supplies summer pasture for two million sheep and cattle and offers the sportsman the finest big game shooting in the United States.
Idaho had four hundred and fourteen farms in 1870. Boise was a mining town, capital of a mining state. Though the plodding irrigator has outstripped the prospector today, Idaho is still a most important factor in the mining world. But the mineral wealth, the scenic wealth, the timber wealth of the state's vast central interior is still untouched, locked up.
Idaho has mines, timber and herds; it has short mild winters, long dry summers; Idaho has the cheapest power, the largest bodies of cheap, really cheap, unimproved land with water beyond the Rockies. Idaho has 84,000 square miles, only 26oo miles of railroad and a population of less than five persons per square mile. It has cheap land, abundant water and a long growing season. It has gone through the measles of the boom period.
Why shouldn't Idaho look ahead with a smile?
