IRRIGATION PRINCIPLES. 



47 



subdivided in distribution, and this operation is 

 necessarily continuous throughout each recurring 

 season of utilization. Like the air, that which is not 

 momentarily in use is part of a great undelivered, 

 unapportioned common stock. Some small, but ex- 

 ceedingly small part of it, as a whole, may be trapped 

 in a reservoir or herded between the banks of a 

 canal, in process of delivery. But this is only the 

 segregated part of a great common property of all 

 men, in private possession of the reservoir or canal 

 owners. No system of law or custom of country can 

 change its character and function in the economy of 

 nature, as affecting human existence, or alter the dis- 

 position of mankind in contemplating its utilizations 

 necessary for that existence. 



Of all the uses to which water is put, irrigation is 

 the one in which the interests of individual users are 

 the most interdependent and inseparable. There is 

 a community of interest in every cubic foot that 

 comes into a canal heading and all that escapes at 

 the drainage outlets of the system. The sum of the 

 indirect influences of individual irrigation practice 

 on community welfare, taken with the aggregate of 

 direct effect of each irrigator's practice on the inter- 

 ests of others, is so potent as to make this industry 

 one of the strongest in its tendency towards socialism 

 amongst enlightened and progressive peoples. 



There are two broad principles on which irrigation 

 is found to rest in stability and quietude: the one is 

 socialistic; the other, autocratic. Uncontrolled by 

 extraneous power, they are never found associated 

 quiescently in any system of organization The irri- 



fation communities of Spain especially, but those ot 

 ranee also, and in a less degree those of Italy, 

 exemplify the working of one principle. The govern- 

 mental irrigation establishments or Egypt, Russia 

 and British India present the best examples of the 

 working of the other. 



Italian irrigation, as it came a legacy from feudal 

 times, was once most prominently autocratic in its 

 orderings; but, as told in a previous article, modern 

 civilization forced the introduction of community 

 organization in the face of the most powerful adverse 

 influences, even in Italy, to enable the irrigators to 

 deal on a fair plane with the water-right autocrats, 

 and to peacefully manage their own internal commu- 

 nity affairs. And this history has been repeated, 

 though .with less pronounced examples, in every 

 other irrigation country having an enlightened and 

 progressive agricultural people. It is only with such 

 people as \\\& fellahs of Egypt, the mujiks of Russia, 

 and the ryots of India the lower classes comprising 

 the irrigators in those countries, for centuries bowed 

 to monarchial rule that the extreme autocratic prin- 

 ciple of irrigation administration can stand. Why? 

 Because progressive human nature will not long 

 endure autocratic rule, no matter how justly exer- 

 cised, in the distribution of that which is an actual 

 necessity and is at the same time, by an immutable 

 law of nature, already a common property of those 

 being served. The logical outcome must in the end 

 be local communal administration over every irriga- 

 tion area whose interests distinctly admit of unifica- 

 tion. 



[TO BE CONTINUED.] 



IRRIGATION AND STATE BOUNDARIES. 



A PROBLEM OF THE ARID WEST AND ITS SOLUTION. 



BY ORREN M. DONALDSON. 



OUR Republic is still in its infancy. What we 

 boast to be the foremost civilization of the world 

 is hardly more than the embryo ot "ultimate 

 America." The eastern, and older, States, it is true, 

 have attained a certain fixedness of character; but 

 the country as a whole is as yet only in the process of 

 taking form for its mighty destiny. Especially as 

 pertains to the great West, it is not too late to mod- 

 ify and in large degree reshape our National future. 

 Indeed, it is only within recent years that the western 

 half of the United States has been discovered to pos- 

 sess the possibility of any future worthy of consider- 

 ation. Our fathers thought it a desolate waste, unfit 

 in large extent for human habitation. But under the 

 magic influence of irrigation, this "Great American 

 Desert" promises to become a great American gar- 

 den, the agricultural rival of the East. Its resources 

 of field, pasture, forest and mine are found to be al- 

 most without limit. A few decades hence it will sup- 

 port its full quota of the country's population and 

 contribute its equal share of the nation's wealth. 



But the statesmen of a generation ago foresaw 

 for the West only an ignominious future, and were 

 content to shape their legislation accordingly. 

 No further proof is needed of this poverty of their 

 hopes than that found in the unfortunate method, by 

 which, from time to time, they divided this region for 

 the purposes of government. Ignoring natural boun- 

 daries and with a total disregard for the many and 



marked differences of topography and climate, they 

 drew their lines of division almost wholly on parallels 

 of latitude and meridians of longitude, probably as 

 being the easiest and cheapest means of setting the 

 limits to the unimportant Territories and States, 

 which the meager development of the country was 

 expected to call into existence. 



Such a method of partition is the worst possible in 

 any region. A State ought to be bound together as a 

 political unit by the greatest community of interest, 

 which is impossible where either a too large area or 

 physical barriers divide its territory into sections 

 likely to be pitted against each other in matters of 

 governmental policy. Such conditions, conducive of 

 political discord, exist in almost every State and Ter- 

 ritory of the West. Texas, California and Montana 

 are of so vast dimensions that they must eventually 

 break in pieces of their own weight. Montana, Colo- 

 rado and Wyoming are each cut in two by the "Great 

 Divide" of the Rocky Mountains. The Cascade 

 range separates Washington and Oregon into unequal 

 portions, unlike in character and climate and with 

 little natural common interest; while the Sierra Ne- 

 vadas to the south cut off a large slice of Eastern 

 California, which belongs by right of position to the 

 State of Nevada. An imaginary line separates 

 northern Idaho from eastern Washington, to which it 

 is bound by all the ties of a common and rapidly 

 growing civilization; and similar arbitrary bounda- 



