414 IRRIGATION. 



and Kansas. Over 80,000,000 acres were brought under cultivation 

 during these thirty years in these five States alone. The population 

 of the United States in 18T0 was less than 40,000,000, or about half 

 what it is at present. The most extraordinary increase in cultivated 

 area was from 1875 to 1885. 



This wonderful increase of improved acreage in the North Central 

 Division alone, of over 130,000,000 acres in thirty years (the popula- 

 tion of the whole United States being less than half what it is now), 

 has had an effect upon land values that can never again take place. 

 There is no other area of agricultural land comparable to that of the 

 Mississippi Valley. In arid regions there are vast tracts which ulti- 

 mately may support a larger population, but these can not be brought 

 under cultivation with anything like the rapidity of that practiced on 

 the fertile prairies. Even with millions of dollars available it will 

 not be possible to conserve water for the arid land as rapidly as the 

 increasing population demands new farms. 



At most, water can be conserved for 60,000,000 acres, or possibl} T 

 100,000,000 acres. To do this will require one or more generations. 

 Streams must be carefully measured year after year, reservoirs sur- 

 veyed, foundations examined by diamond drill or excavation, plans and 

 estimates prepared, contracts let and masonry structures built, tunnels 

 dug through the solid rocks, and a thousand operations be successfully 

 performed before water can be had. Then the ditches must be dug, 

 the laterals laid out, the grounds cleared, and the soil plowed and 

 leveled. There can be no greater contrast, so far as time is concerned, 

 than is offered between this necessary long preliminary work and the 

 conditions on the fertile prairies of Iowa, where men have merely to 

 drive the plow and plant the seed. (PI. III.) 



It is now too late to speak of Western competition with Eastern farms. 

 This competition and its disastrous results to the far East has long since 

 taken place. The cultivation of the prairies of Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, 

 and the Dakotas revolutionized agricultural values and put them on a 

 firm basis from which they can no longer be shaken. The Mississippi 

 Valley now sets the standard, since the area of new land in the coun- 

 try which can be brought under cultivation in any one year is almost 

 inconceivably small when compared with that now cultivated. 



The increase of population in the United States is from 2 to 3 per 

 cent per year. The increase of irrigated area has been less than one- 

 tenth of 1 per cent per year of the improved lands of the country. 

 By the most strenuous exertions it will be impossible to increase the 

 area of irrigated lands to 1 per cent of the improved lands of the 

 country, or less than half the rate of increase of population. 



It must not be supposed for a minute that because the increase of 

 irrigated lands will be relatively so small as to be inappreciable 

 in agricultural values their importance is correspondingly limited. 



