THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



and realty values. Right in the midst of these lands, 

 most advantageously interspersed, are mines of gold 

 and silver, copper, lead, iron and coal. The moun- 

 tain streams pour down torrents that create almost 

 unlimited supplies of electricity, light, heat and 

 power. Irrigation is the key that will unlock all the 

 vast possibilities of the Western Empire. These 

 arid soils are not Sahara sands as many suppose. 

 On the contrary, they are as rich as can be found in 

 the world. 



The Denver congress is opportune now when the 

 unequal distribution of population has aggravated 

 the general distress, when eastern merchants are in- 

 directly suffering from the wide-spread misfortune 

 that has overtaken the western farmer through gen- 

 eral drouth and scorching winds. The nation may 

 listen now and be glad to hear of any solution of the 

 conditions that have proven so defective and injuri- 

 ous in the last season. 



NEW YORK TRIBUNE. Seldom has any such as- 

 semblage been more timely than the irrigation con- 

 gress which met at Denver. There is before the 

 whole country an impressive object-lesson, inculcating 

 the need of the very thing this convention is trying 

 to promote. Both East and West have this year suf- 

 fered, and largely still are suffering, from an intense 

 and long-continued drouth. In Kansas corn has 

 wilted and withered in the fields, and in New York 

 and New England parched and shriveled fruit is 

 dropping from the trees in showers. The sum of the 

 losses sustained through lack of rain has not been 

 reckoned, and may never be fully reckoned. But to 

 say that it amounts to many millions of dollars is 

 well within the bounds of soberness and truth. A 

 more effective text could not be chosen by this con- 

 vention for its deliberations. 



It seems to be an established fact that, with the de- 

 struction of forests and other changes incident to in- 

 creasing density of population, the water supply is, 

 in these Eastern and Middle States, becoming less 

 regular and trustworthy. Drouths and floods alter- 

 nate. At times the rivers are almost dry, and at 

 other times they overflow their banks. And both ex- 

 tremes are ruinous. 



These evils are, we confidently believe, largely to 

 be corrected by irrigation, conjoined with tree- 

 planting and forest-conservation ; and this belief is 

 founded not on theory alone, but OQ actual achieve- 

 ments. Vast areas in the West, once sterile as the 

 Sahara, are to-day rich and fruitful, because of the 

 water which, gushing from artesian wells or brought 

 through canals and flumes from distant rivers, 

 trickles in thousands of tiny, artificial channels all 

 over the land. Other vast areas, wind-swept and sun- 

 scorched, have been made beautiful and salubrious 

 by the planting of trees. Nor are similar examples 

 lacking here, where rain does fall, and where trees 

 naturally grow. Farmers here, or some of them, 

 have learned the lesson, and have provided them- 

 selves with the means of watering their land when- 

 ever there is need of it. They may seldom need to 

 do it; but when they do need it, as the Texan 

 cavalier remarked, they need it mighty bad. The 

 result is that in a season like the present their farms 

 are literal oases in a desert of dryness and dust. It 

 is high time all learned this lesson. The loss suffered 

 by the average farmer in this one season amounts to 

 as much as the cost would be of equipping his farm 

 with appliances sufficient to make him practically 

 independent of the weather. 



BOSTON TRANSCRIPT. The Irrigation Congress 

 in session at Denver this week is unique in its prin- 

 ciples and performances. 



This congress is composed of delegates from every 

 State and Territory west of the Missouri river. There 

 have been two other similar irrigation conventions. 

 The first was called by Governor Thomas, of Utah, 

 and met in Salt Lake City in September, 1891. It is- 

 sued a call for the cession of arid lands from the fed- 

 eral government to the several Statesand Territories. 

 That has been done. The second irrigation congress 

 was held in Los Angeles last October, and created 

 commissions to form and formulate a well-defined 

 national irrigation policy. It is upon the reports of 

 these commissions that the present congress is act- 

 ing. 



These earnest men announce that they are prepar- 

 ing the arid public domain to receive the surplus pop- 

 ulation of the East. They boldly claim there is room 

 for sixty million people to subsist in the western 

 half of this country, where now but four million ex- 

 ist. The agency that will make this possible is the 

 proper system of irrigation works constructed under 

 State and national supervision in every common- 

 wealth of the West. 



The federal government within thirty days has 

 ceded one hundred million (100,000,000) acres of sur- 

 veyed arid lands to the States and Territories in 

 which they lie. This congress is discussing methods 

 of reclaiming these lands and how to populate and 

 develop them. Surely these are weighty and worthy 

 issues for any company of men to debate. The mem- 

 bers of the irrigation congress are not shirking their 

 duty, if they are having a good time. They are earn- 

 estly trying to solve a great question, and it speaks 

 well for them that they grapple it so enthusiastically 

 in the hour of darkness and strife and evil foreboding 

 in the West. They are saying in substance, " Fellow- 

 countrymen, lend us your ears to hear the new doc- 

 trine of agriculture. Irrigation is to farming what 

 steam is to manufacturing. Your eastern farmers are 

 a quarter of a century behind the time, complaining 

 of drought and praying for rain. We are masters of 

 the situation, for we make rain when we want it. 1 ' 

 The irrigationists point to the countries of Europe 

 and the Orient which have played the most important 

 part in history Italy, Spain, Egypt, Persia, Asia 

 Minor, India all wholly or in part dependent on ir- 

 rigation. They go on to assert that the hideous mis- 

 nomer, the Great American Desert, has been changed 

 into the triumphant term of the Empire of Arid 

 America by the success of the Greeley colony, the 

 Mormon settlements and the southern California 

 communities, and by the building of cities on arid 

 plains like Denver, Salt Lake and Los Angeles. In 

 these vicinities population is as dense as in the 

 most thickly populated agricultural districts of Eu- 

 rope. It is the aim of this congress to frame resolu- 

 tions for extending the work of reclamation that shall 

 speedily become crystallized into federal and State 

 laws. 



It was of this country, where the irrigation move- 

 ment is in progress, that Daniel Webster said on the 

 floor of the Senate, in 1838, when a post route west 

 from the Missouri was under discussion 



"What do we want of this vast, worthless area, 

 this region of savages and wild beasts, of deserts of 

 shifting sands and whirlwinds of dust, of cactus and 

 prairie dogs? To what use could we ever hope to 

 put great deserts or those endless mountain ranges, 



