IRRIGATION BY PUMPING. 



225 



gation on quite high lands. It frequently 

 nets $15 to $40 an acre above all expenses, 

 and needs but little attention except at 

 harvest three to six times a year; the 

 average net income officially reported by 

 Fiuney county, irrigated and unirrigated, 

 being $21.45 per acre per annum. The 

 plains need pumps and people in the val- 

 leys and cattle on the high lands. 



The plan of the Alfalfa Irrigation and 

 Land Company of Topeka may be cited as 

 presenting the writer's ideal of the cor- 

 rect ' ' Way Out " for the Great Plains. 



comers (each tract to have its own pumping 

 plant) and into sugar beets and alfalfa for 

 hogs and cattle. Thus will the present un- 

 fortunate land owners realize upon the pro- 

 ductive value of their investments instead 

 of paying taxes and getting no returns. 



Capital will do the developing, but each 

 irrigator will be independent. 



The handsome profits on alfalfa have 

 brought forth from the conservatives the 

 cry that the supply must soon be greater 

 than the demand, and prices and profits 

 must go down. 



L. L. DUTY'S CABBAGE PATCH. IRRIGATED. 



WHAT IS BEING DONE. 



Lands are being secured from non-resi- 

 dents, to whom they are without value, in 

 exchange for capital stock, the higher 

 lands at nominal figures, for their pas- 

 turage value can not exceed $1 or $2 per 

 acre, and the valley lands at figures de- 

 pending upon local demand. The high 

 lands are to be consolidated and fenced as 

 large pastures with an occasional quarter 

 of alfalfa. The valley lands are to be 

 pump irrigated and put into small or- 

 chards and vegetable gardens for new- 



A company that feeds its own alfalfa to 

 its own cattle and hogs and gets a hun- 

 dred pounds of best beef for the Lords of 

 London from each ton of alfalfa, can 

 regulate its own demand and supply and 

 obtain spring instead of fall prices. In 

 the corn belts of Eastern Kansas the cat- 

 tle are "finished" for the Kansas City 

 and Chicago markets, which handle five 

 million cattle and ten million hogs an- 

 nually. 



The era of the dry farming lottery is 

 passing. Crops are no longer scratched 



