TRANSACTIONS OF STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 85 



NECESSITY OF IRRIGATION. 



By WILLIAM THOMAS, 



President of California Water and Forest Association. 



Everybody recognizes the utility of irrigation, but few recognize its 

 absolute necessity as a means of developing the great natural resources of 

 the State. We have a territory to develop as large as that of the republic 

 of France, capable of supporting a population as dense as that of Hol- 

 land, but with an actual population about as large as that of the city of 

 Chicago, and, to be frank even to the extent of being brutal, with one- 

 tenth of its public spirit. I may hurt somebody's feelings, but I affirm 

 that California's arrested development is due to the lack of interest and 

 spirit of its citizens. Nature has done all that it can for us. We must 

 do the rest, and the question now before us is, what can we do ? Does 

 the reader know that the Riverside Colony supports ten thousand 

 people on thirteen thousand acres of land by an almost perfect system 

 of irrigation? That Fresno provides happy homes for twenty-five 

 thousand people on one hundred thousand acres ? That the Sacramento 

 Valley, with millions of acres of the fairest land in the world, has 

 enjoyed no increase in population (except in cities) and no increase in 

 the assessable value of this land during the past ten years ? These 

 examples prove not only the utility, but the actual necessity of irriga- 

 tion, in order to effect the future development of the State as a whole. 

 I have heard it said that the large individual holdings of land arrested 

 the State's development; but if these holdings were cut up into colony 

 lots, the occupants of the subdivisions would starve without irrigation, 

 and most of the large holdings are not irrigated. 



Can we not wake the citizens from their present lethargy ? Can we 

 not induce them to take hold of this serious problem, as a whole, and 

 prevent our State from being ranked as one of the arid States, as it will 

 certainly be ranked within thirty years unless we do something to 

 develop the water resources which lie at our door ready and willing to 

 be utilized ? We can more than double our population in ten years if 

 we do something. If we do nothing our rural population will drift 

 toward the cities, which cannot support them if agriculture proves 

 unsuccessful. Develop the country, and the cities will develop them- 

 selves. The Orient has just been opened to us as a new market for our 

 products, and now is the time for us to do something, and the first thing 

 to do is to develop our water resources. We are now using all the water 



