THE PROGRESS OF WESTERN AMERICA. 



43 



THE IRRIGATION CAUSE IN 

 NEBRASKA. 



'"THE Nebraska State Irrigation Conven- 

 1 tion, at Sidney, was largely attended 

 and a pronounced success. There was 

 the greatest enthusiasm in the irriga- 

 tion cause, and this meeting will give irri- 

 gation in Nebraska a great impetus. The 

 papers and discussions were of unusual 

 interest. The first resolution was by Mr. 

 W. W. Mason, of Douglas, and favored 

 the holding of the Trans-Mississippi In- 

 dustrial Exposition in 1898 in Omaha. It 

 was adopted. The report of the Commit- 

 tee on Resolutions on various subjects was 

 adopted, as follows: Establishment of ir- 

 rigation reservoirs by the Government; the 

 offering of premiums by the State for the 

 wind-mill and other machinery for raising 

 water from wells for irrigation purposes; 

 early adjudication by the Government of 

 matters relative to the waters of inter-state 

 rivers; amending the laws regarding the 

 building of irrigation ditches across Gov- 

 ernment lands; requesting Senators Thurs- 

 ton and Allen to enter their names in the 

 United States Supreme Court as attorneys 

 in the Wright Irrigation Law case, in be- 

 half of the State of Nebraska; inquiring 

 concerning the expenditures of moneys 

 heretofore appropriated by the Govern- 

 ment to advance the cause of irrigation, 

 and calling upon the next Legislature to 

 appropriate money necessary to sink three 

 test artesian wells. 



Officers elected were as follows: Presi- 

 dent, A. G. Wolfenbarger, of Lincoln; sec- 

 retary, James L. Mclntosh, of Sidney; 

 vice-president- at-large, H. E. Babcock, of 

 Ord; treasurer, R. S. Oberfelder, of Sid- 

 ney; state lecturer, I. A. Fort, of North 

 Platte. 



The next annual meeting will be held at 

 Lexington, in October. 



HOW TO IRRIGATE IN ILLINOIS. 



DR. Clarke Gapen's address before the 

 Illinois Horticultural Society con- 

 tained many necessary points for new be- 

 ginners in irrigation in Illinois and the 

 central Western States generally. Ex- 

 tracts are made here and there: 



If you had to sell one-fourth or one- 

 third of your land to establish a good irri- 

 gation plant, you would be the richer in 

 the outcome. 



A soil to which is given all the water it 

 can use, will produce four times an average 

 product. 



With ordinary water irrigation land pre- 

 viously yielding ten bushels of wheat per 

 acre, under irrigation yields sixty bushels 

 per acre; and lands which were worth from 

 $2 to $10 per acre increase in value to $30C 

 per acre. 



It makes but little difference what kind 

 of water is used, just so it is wet. It does 

 not need to be clean water. 



Irrigation in the humid regions will un- 

 doubtedly be individual rather than co- 

 operative in character. What then are the 

 means by which an individual, or at moat 

 two or three individuals, acting together, 

 may secure to themselves an irrigant plant? 

 In a very few cases this may be done by 

 building a dam across a stream and divert- 

 ing the waters into a channel, which will 

 be carried around on the higher ground 

 and utilized by those owning the land far- 

 ther down the stream, as is done in Colo- 

 rado. But, in the main, I take it, irrigation 

 in the humid regions will be used by hor- 

 ticulturists and garden or truck farmers, 

 and in this case only tracts of from ten to 

 forty acres wiil be irrigated. In these 

 cases the water will have to be raised, 

 probably by some form of pumping ma- 

 chinery. 



By means of improved and comparatively 

 inexpensive pumping machinery it is now 

 found possible to deliver water at a very 

 small cost. 



The wind-mill would not have a sufficient 

 capacity to deliver the amount of water 

 needed if the water was wholly used dur- 

 ing the time the pumping was going on. 

 A reservoir with a capacity of several mill- 

 ion gallons may be constructed at a com- 

 paratively small expense, and into this 

 reservoir the wind'-mill pumps throughout 

 the year, filling it up and affording a sup- 

 ply which will be drawn off during the 

 irrigation season. 



Probably, however, the most economical 

 method of delivering water is by means of 

 the centrifugal pump. This pump will 

 raise water to a height not exceeding 50 

 feet, at a cost not to exceed 20 to 30 cents, 

 per million gallons. 



Piping for the pumping of water is not 

 costly. 



While, as I have before intimated, it is 

 in horticultural and truck gardening that 



