IRRIGATION. 411 



seized, and in the aggregate over 7,500,000 acres have been Wrought 

 under irrigation, this being a little over 1 per cent of the total area 

 of the remaining vacant lands. 



Not all of this 500,000,000 acres can be irrigated, for some of it is 

 mountainous and covered in part with timber (tig. 3), other portions 

 are rough and broken, and even if all of the floods were conserved in 

 great reservoirs and all of the rivers which could be diverted were 

 turned out from their canyons, there would not be water for more 

 than 60,000,000 acres, or possibly 100,000,000 acres; but this would 

 be a great increase — say, ten times — over the area now utilized. 



In that portion of the United States where the vacant public lands 

 lie, and where farms and homes can not be made without irrigation, 

 there are now living 3,000,000 or 4,000,000 people. If ten times the 

 amount of land were irrigated it is possible that the population would 

 be increased to at least 40,000,000 people, and possibly far more, 

 because of the other industries which would be developed as more 

 land is cultivated. The mineral wealth of the region is very great. 

 Gold, silver, iron, and coal are now produced, the precious metals 

 having special value. The poorer ores are for the most part neg- 

 lected, because of the high cost of transportation, labor, food, and 

 forage. With more land cultivated in scattered areas throughout this 

 country and with greater population better transportation facilities 

 must come, also cheaper food material, making it possible to work 

 some of the low-grade ores. Great deposits which are now practically 

 valueless could then be worked, affording employment for thousands 

 of men and adding to the population and wealth of the country. With 

 a regulated water supply, such as that needed in irrigation, cheap 

 water power can be had, not only for pumping water to the fields, 

 but for various industries connected with the handling and reduction 

 of the ores, and thus, one industry feeding another, the West must 

 develop its wonderful resources with increasing rapidity. 



But the questions may well be asked, Why is this not now taking- 

 place if there are so many people wanting land, and why is it that the 

 settled area has actually diminished in some portions of the West and 

 population has tended to concentrate in the towns? It is because the 

 irrigators and investors in irrigation systems have utilized all the 

 easily available sources of water and have developed agriculture by 

 irrigation nearly to the limit of the capacity of the systems. They 

 have demonstrated that irrigation is not an experiment, but an assured 

 success, highly profitable to the man who cultivates his own land. 

 More than this, they have shown by numerous failures that reclama- 

 tion works on a large scale do not pay financial^ nor yield the satisfac- 

 tory returns that the small works have yielded. There are no longer 

 opportunities for small works, and if the big enterprises can not be 

 made sources of profit, what then is to be done? 



