36 REPORT OF OFFICE OF EXPERIMENT STATIONS. 



Ihere were 11,776,000 acres more included in the projects under way. 

 A considerable amount, perhaps 20 per cent, of these last items can 

 never be profitably irrigated, being too rough, too high, or alkalied 

 and other waste spots, but, making allowance for such lands and 

 for lands which were settled but not irrigated in 1909, and assuming 

 that the enterprises now under way will be the only ones undertaken, 

 settlers will be needed for an area as great as that reclaimed by irri- 

 gation in the last 50 years. The Reclamation Service which has 

 charge of the construction of the Government irrigation works finds 

 itself confronted with the same problem of securing settlers rapidly 

 enough. Director Newell, of that bureau, stated on February, 1912, 

 in the hearing before the House Committee on the Irrigation of 

 Arid Land, that the estimated total area for completed Government 

 projects was 2,937,838 acres, of which amount 711,124 acres were 

 irrigated in 1911, and the service would be prepared to supply water 

 to 1,113,766 acres in 1912. 



AID TO SETTLERS. 



This need of settlers gives rise to very urgent demands for two 

 kinds of information : First, conservative, unbiased information con- 

 cerning the conditions and possibilities of the several sections, to- 

 gether with the cost of obtaining lands and water and preparing 

 and bringing the ^and under cultivation, etc. ; and, second, informa- 

 tion to assist new, as well as old, settlers in adopting the best methods 

 of preparing land and distributing and applying the water. The 

 irrigated lands of the West must be peopled almost entirely from the 

 farming regions of the Mississippi Valley and the cities of the East- 

 ern and North Central States. While many of these may have 

 farmed in humid regions, very few know anything of irrigation 

 fanning, and a considerable number have had no agricultural ex- 

 perience whatever. Many of them also are staking the savings of 

 years upon this venture, wdth little to guide them except the glow- 

 ing advertisements of real-estate men, chambers of commerce, immi- 

 gration commissioners, and others interested in the disposal of lands 

 or the settlement of certain sections or States. The success of these 

 settlers and the prosperity of the communities will depend largely 

 upon the newcomers getting properly located, knowing in advance 

 the problems and difficulties they must encounter, and in being prop- 

 erly started in their new work. 



This office is meeting both of these needs, the first by the series 

 of bulletins upon irrigation in the several States, and the second 

 by the bulletins upon the irrigation of different crops and by plac- 

 ing in each State one or more agents who teach the settlers the best 

 methods of j^reparing the land and applying water, by traveling 



