EDITORIAL. 633 



be sufficient to reach nine times across the continent and back, or more 

 than twice around the globe. 



These data, however, are now two years old, and in some cases 

 already in need of revision to tiring- them up to date. More recent 

 returns show that in California over 2,000,000 acres are now being 

 irrigated, and other States have shown material increase. The figures 

 given for the length of main canals and ditches represent only a frac- 

 tion of the total length of all irrigating ditches, since many of the 

 branches are three or four times as long as the main canal. The cost 

 also is far below the full expenditures made in reclaiming, there being 

 large numbers of ditches for which there is no official record. More- 

 over, the Census Bureau's figures include only the cost of the irrigation 

 systems themselves, and do not include the expenditures for removing 

 brush, building laterals, and grading land, which precede irrigation. 

 The cost of these items, according to the statistics gathered by this 

 Office, has varied from $5 to $30 an acre, making it certain that the 

 total expenditure in providing for the watering of land irrigated by 

 private capital in this country is over $'200,000,000. 



While irrigation is spreading very rapidly in the semiarid regions 

 and in the rice States, and also to some extent in the humid States, 

 nearly DO per cent of the acreage under irrigation at the time covered 

 by the Census report was in the States and Territories comprising the 

 arid region. From 1889 to 1902 the greatest relative increase was in 

 the rice States, there being a gain of 74 per cent in the number of farms 

 irrigated and 111 per cent in the irrigated area. The cost of irriga- 

 tion systems in the rice States is given as approximately $10,196,000, 

 or twice that of the systems in the semiarid States and Territories. 



The main source of water supply is, of course, from streams, which 

 water 90 per cent of the irrigated country. The other 1 per cent is 

 reported as irrigated from springs and wells, about 70 per cent of the 

 area irrigated by wells being in the arid region. While the average con- 

 struction cost per irrigated acre was $9.81 for all systems and sources 

 of water, the cost was $9.31 for systems supplied from streams, $5.23 

 from springs, and $29.10 from wells. There was great variation, 

 however, in different sections of the country, the expense in the humid 

 States being much in excess of that in the arid and semiarid regions. 



Since L902, the date for which the Census figures on irrigation were 

 collected, the extension of irrigation and settlement of the arid lands 

 under private auspices has gone on more rapidly than ever before. 

 This is true notwithstanding the passage of the National Irrigation 

 Act, providing for the construction of irrigation works with public 

 funds, and the organization of the Reclamation Service. The wide- 

 spread publicity given to the enterprise and the increased faith in the 

 development of the arid country by irrigation have evidently stimu- 



