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 before and after the application of irrigation. COUNTIES. 1879. 1889. Fresno $6,354,596 $25,387,173 Los Angeles 16,368,649 84,376,310 Merced 5,208,245 14,146,845 Orange 2,817,700 9,270,767 San Bernardino 2,576,973 23,267,955 San Diego 8,525,253 31,560,918 Stanislaus 6,232,368 15,594,003 Solano 2,651,367 6,966,007 Tulare 5,204,777 24,343,013 ---------- ------------ Total $55,939,928 $234,912,991