368 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



involves also an element of clannishness ; as, when two such com- 

 panies fall to fighting over the same supply of water. In fact, as 

 I have already observed, this necessity of irrigation will make the 

 deepest of all the differences in personal character and habits of 

 thought between the East and the West. Nobody will doubt that 

 the institution of property in land has an important influence on 

 character. Why not, then, property in water ? And while this 

 may be said to exist in the East, it is rarely thought of, while in 

 the far West it is the thing most thought of and talked about. It 

 is the main factor in human sustenance. 



The result is bound to be that East and West will take differ- 

 ent views of life. Hence they are likely not to understand each 

 other. At present this makes the less trouble, from the fact that 

 the East can so easily outvote the West. I mean, of course, the 

 arid West. I think it a safe proposition that, when the country 

 is all settled to a density everywhere corresponding with its fer- 

 tility, the arid lands will outvote the regions needing no irriga- 

 tion. And long before that time they will hold the balance of 

 power. 



Already the irrigants have secured from the non-irrigants the 

 concession of an appropriation for surveys, and the appointment 

 of a senatorial committee, which is now on its travels, studying 

 the advisability of a great system of irrigating reservoirs to be 

 built, or at least surveyed, at national expense ; and in the latter 

 case the demand will doubtless be for such disposal of the affected 

 public lands as will make it worth some private citizens' while to 

 construct the reservoirs. 



The desert-land act was intended to be a step in that direction. 

 Under that law, the man who irrigates a square mile (six hundred 

 and forty acres) of desert land within three years after filing his 

 entry, may buy it at one dollar and twenty-five cents an acre. 

 It must be land not capable of producing crops without irrigat- 

 ing, and twenty-five cents per acre must be paid at the date of 

 entry. By the operation of this law, and by purchase of adjoin- 

 ing railroad lands, a single firm has acquired the ownership of 

 four hundred thousand acres of as good land as ever lay out of 

 doors. The owners have carried over it the most gigantic system 

 of irrigation on this continent. They have divided up the waters 

 of Kern River, and spread them out into a great artificial delta. 

 They have now begun to sell their lands in small lots of ten, 

 twenty, forty acres, and so on. I attended one of their auction- 

 sales, and saw land, which ten years ago was uninhabitable desert, 

 knocked down at fifty, a hundred, and even a hundred and fifty 

 dollars an acre. The water rate is extra, and is so much per inch 

 used. An inch is the amount that will run through an orifice an 

 inch square in the course of a year, under a four-inch pressure. 



