108 ANNUAL REPORTS OF DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



are being conducted by this office have demonstrated that with proper 

 instalhition and operation iri'igation b}'^ pumping is feasible in many 

 localities and that a large part of the losses and wastes of irrigation 

 water can be prevented at a cost that will render it profitable to do so. 

 More than TO per cent of the area irrigated in 1909 is under enter- 

 prises managed by the irrigators themselves, and, judging by the 

 trend of the past 15 years, more than 85 per cent of the irrigated 

 lands will be under such enterprises when the projects being con- 

 structed at the present time by the Reclamation Service and Carey 

 Act companies have been turned over to the settlers. Officials of 

 cooperative companies and irrigation districts are constantly facing 

 the complicated problems of organizing and financing enterprises 

 and constructing, operating, and maintaining canal systems, and such 

 advice and assistance as this office is furnishing along these lines is 

 of great importance, especially in those sections where most of the 

 land has been settled and brought under irrigation in the past few 

 years. This work is also of special importance, since tlie directors of 

 such enterprises, by adopting better rules and regulations governing 

 the delivery and measurement of water and the charges for operating 

 and maintaining systems, and by encouraging the use of better 

 methods and practices, w^ill become one of the most powerful factors 

 in bringing about a greater and better development of the irrigated 

 sections. 



DRAINAGE IN\T]STIGATIONS. 

 PEOGBESS IN FARM DUAINAGE. 



Farmers are gradually coming to the realization that poor drainage 

 of their cultivated lands is not an unavoidable condition, a permanent 

 handicap imposed upon them by nature. The truth is being pressed 

 upon them, not only that the condition can be remedied, but that the 

 more intensive methods of cultivation which inevitably must be 

 practiced in this country will ultimately compel them to drain their 

 wet land in order that they may derive the largest returns from every 

 foot of their cultivated areas. 



The department, so far as the means for this work permit, is 

 endeavoring to impress upon the agricultural interests of the country 

 the economy of land drainage. It is attempting, among other things, 

 to discourage the " hit or miss " methods of laying out and construct- 

 ing tile drains, which methods not only are likely to result in total 

 or partial failure in the particular tracts concerned but also tend to 

 destroy confidence in drainage in general. A considerable part of the 

 work along these lines consists in demonstrating to the farmer the im- 

 portance of a careful preliminary study of the controlling drainage 

 factors in the tract he desires to improve, and the necessity of intel- 

 ligent design of the system and rigid superintendence of construction. 



