ARTESIAN WATERS IN THE ARID REGION. 599 



should not grow watermelons. The oft-repeated declaration on 

 the part of manufacturers who are bound by trades-union regula- 

 tions that they can not successfully compete with less favorably 

 located factories free from such dominion is exceedingly signifi- 

 cant to the future of glass-making. If it continue, the over-or- 

 ganization of labor promises to defeat its own purpose. The 

 supremacy will pass from the center to the periphery. The scat- 

 tering of the industry will be forwarded by the selfishness and 

 short-sightedness of labor itself, as well as by those technical and 

 physical conditions which have just been pointed out. 



A final glance at the industry shows a manufacture well 

 organized and well developed. It is one full of substantial prom- 

 ise, and full, too, of a power to transform itself greater than it has 

 ever shown before. When the glance extends, as this does, so far 

 back as Jamestown, and includes the long series of disasters 

 which appears to have been the necessary prelude to our present 

 success, the impression grows that, gratifying as this success 

 must be, we have paid a very high price for it. But in this 

 respect glass-making does not differ from the other American 

 industries developed since Columbus. 



ARTESIAN WATERS IN THE ARID REGION. 



By ROBERT T. HILL. 



THE United States Government expends annually over twenty 

 million dollars, mostly in the Eastern half of the country, 

 for the improvement of its rivers, harbors, and other surface wa- 

 ters. The Western half of our domain, which with the exception 

 of the upper coast of the Pacific is known as the arid region, 

 possesses no superabundance of surface waters to improve, but, 

 upon the contrary, the scarcity of water for ordinary domestic 

 and agricultural uses prevents the settlement and utilization of 

 the remaining portion of the public lands. Even the semi-humid 

 or Great Plains region, east of the Rocky Mountain front, has 

 been retarded in development by this scarcity of surface water ; 

 and many settlers, who purchased alleged agricultural lands 

 from the Government in this region, are begging Congress to 

 apportion for the investigation of its underground resources a 

 sum at least as large as that given for the smallest creek upon the 

 River and Harbor Bill. Our national legislators have not been 

 entirely neglectful in the matter, however. The rivers of the 

 arid region have been gauged, and the rainfall ascertained, with 

 the disheartening conclusion that, could every drop of the rain- 

 fall be utilized, it would still be insufficient to water the fertile 



