THE ART OF IRRIGATION. 



145 



A score of the best writers will be invited 

 to co operate in the preparation of this 

 literature. The same literature will be 

 used by all branch associations and one 

 Board of Editors will suffice. This board 

 will be sufficiently eminent to furnish an 

 absolute guarantee as to the character of 

 the statements put forth. 



Such work as this must be above all 

 suspicion of personal or local interest. It 

 must be organized and carried out as a 

 matter of the highest public spirit. 



While The Homeseekers Association is 

 not a money making enterprise it does 

 aim to be self-supporting. Its income 

 from memberships must equal its expenses 

 for printing, postage and office assistance; 

 the officers and directors giving their time 

 free. The membership fee is one dollar 

 and the annual dues one dollar after the 

 first year, subject to change by the Board 

 of Directors. The membership fee is pay- 



able at the time the application is made 

 and entitles the holder to any information 

 at the disposal of the Association, and to 

 any printed matter the Association may 

 publish. A paid membership in the Na- 

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 charge to any local branch upon the or- 

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 ized upon application of ten. members to 

 the National Association. 



The series of public lectures contem- 

 plated will be explained hereafter. 



During the past eighteen months the 

 association has received many thousands 

 of letters from all parts of the United 

 States, Canada, Mexico, South America, 

 European countries, Australia and India, 

 and these along with a vast mass of statis- 

 tics and information is being arranged and 

 classified and will be placed at the dis- 

 posal of members. 



THE ART OF IRRIGATION. 



CHAPTER XVII. THE AMOUNT OF WATER REQUIRED. 



BY T. S. VAN DYKE. 



THE amount of water needed for an 

 acre of a given crop is commonly called 

 the "duty of water." It is the most im- 

 portant branch of the whole subject and 

 success or failure for the irrigator will 

 depend greatly upon his comprehension of 

 it. There are many who understand bet- 

 ter than I those features of irrigation so 

 far treated. The only advantage I have 

 over them is that they are too lazy to write 

 while I am not. But on the duty of water 

 be careful how you criticise me. For 

 many years it has been part of my business 

 as promoter and builder of some very large 

 irrigation works, where the water was 

 very expensive on account of the high- 

 line aqueducts necessary to reach high 

 land, to prove to the land owners that 

 they could pay what the water was worth. 

 Proving to them what an inch of water 

 under four inch pressure would accomplish 

 was the only way to do it and the only way 

 to prove that was to understand what I was 

 talking about and be prepared to stand a 

 rigid cross-examination on it at public 



meetings or at the private button hole. 

 Becoming interested in the subject it be- 

 came a labor of love and I have probably 

 measured more heads and substracted the 

 tail end waste, have watched more people 

 irrigate and asked more questions, have 

 examined more books of the water com- 

 panies and lavished more beer and cigars 

 on secretaries and ditch-tenders to get 

 them to show me their water accounts 

 with the different customers than any man 

 living. I know that no one else in Cali- 

 fornia has done so and outside of Califor- 

 nia full information on the subject is im- 

 possible. You cannot place the slightest 

 reliance upon what the majority even of 

 the best irrigators tell you about the duty 

 of water. The most of them do not care 

 and of the few that do hardly one secures 

 or keeps any data and mere memory is of 

 very little use. 



ESTIMATED DUTY OF WATER. 



The duty of water is commonly esti- 

 mated by the miner's inch or the cubic 



