102 



generation of power, and the marvelous electrical inventions by 

 which this power is transmitted to remote cities, have given to 

 streams an entirely new and hitherto unthonght of value. In 

 nearly every industrial enterprise, great or small, water is an 

 indispensable factor. It feeds the steam boiler, it cools the jackets 

 of steel furnaces, it is the solvent in most chemical processes, and 

 is turned to use and made an agent in the creation of wealth in a 

 multitude of ways which need not be enumerated. 



Moisture is necessary to plant growth, and in arid lands this mois- 

 ture is supplied largely from streams. Hence in such regions the 

 right to use rivers in irrigation is an indispensable requisite to any 

 large creation of wealth in lands. As population increases and civ- 

 ilization advances, there is not only a more extensive but a more in- 

 tensive use of water. The higher the standard of living and the 

 greater the skill of artisans, the greater is the number of needs of the 

 household and the larger the number of uses to which water may be 

 put. So extended have the demands for water become in arid and in 

 many humid sections that the resources of individuals are entirely 

 inadequate to meet them, and great corporations are formed for ac- 

 quiring water, constructing dams, building storage works, canals, 

 and pipe lines for the conveyance and distribution of water for differ- 

 ent purposes. The future of New York City was menaced a few years 

 ago by legislation which gave to a powerful private corporation the 

 exclusive right to acquire water supplies needed or likely to be needed 

 by that city. 



No field of engineering has made greater advances within the past 

 half century than that connected with the regulation and distribu- 

 tion of water. These are show^n in the lessening losses from seepage 

 and evaporation, in the lessened cost and increasing durability of 

 structures, and in the inventions and devices for the accurate divi- 

 sion and measurement of water. A similar advance has been made 

 with respect to the utilization of Avater supplied from beneath the 

 earth's surface. Large sums of money are being expended in investi- 

 gations to determine the extent and location of underground waters. 

 Skilled engineers are constantly making improvements in the meth- 

 ods of boring wells, building tunnels or galleries to intercept under- 

 ground streams, and in cheapening and simplifying pumps and en- 

 gines for lifting water to the earth's surface. State experiment sta- 

 tions and the Department of Agriculture are studying how economy 

 in the use of water in irrigation may be promoted, and cities find 

 waste in domestic water supplies a serious evil. 



There is nothing in farming where rainfall is ample which cor- 

 responds to the intensity of feeling which marks the struggle for con- 

 trol of streams in arid lands, or the anxiety which besets irrigators 



