THE ECONOMY IN TRANSITION, 1890-1920 Talk about aspiring to be gods and possess the power to create worlds, we do not show enough ability to create a hoe or rake, plow or wagon. We have faded in these home industries . . . —WILLIAM B. PRESTON, 1894
1 he above quotation from Mormon bishop William Preston is in direct contrast to what Ray Stannard Baker, the muckraking journalist, wrote a decade later describing Cache Valley. Baker's prose, printed in a national magazine, described Cache Valley in glowing words. Such an impression of high cultivation, fruitfulness, and civilized habitation does this valley give that the visitor realizes with difficulty that only a comparatively few years ago it was a barren and apparently uninhabitable desert. A marvel of irrigation! The principal roads and the villages are adorned with stately rows of Lombardy poplars, where no trees ever grew before, distantly recalled the beautiful country of southern France, and there are cottonwoods, poplars, balm of GUead, and many other trees, and 157
