50 



THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



when I told them to allow no one to 

 touch the land with water unless it was 

 first graded and to allow nothing planted 

 in it until it was wet at least twelve feet 

 below the top. No colony projectors 

 can afford to ignore these and many 

 other principles and the first settlers 

 should not be allowed to touch the soil 

 except under the eye of some one who 

 knows how to do it. For whatever is 

 wrong will surely be charged up against 

 land or climate and generally both and 

 " hoodooed " it may take years to over- 

 come it. 



Irrigation is one of the things that can 

 be learned almost entirely from a book. 

 It requires no training of the muscles 

 and almost none of the eye. It depends 

 upon certain principles and when you 

 once learn them you can hardly fail in 

 the details. It is like directions for fol- 

 lowing a road into a new country, con- 

 sisting almost entirely of warnings. 

 When you heed them your feet will do 

 the rest. When you have studied these 

 principles thoroughly you will find irri- 

 gation by far the most satisfactory w r ay 

 of working the soil, and considering the 

 difference in the value of the product, 

 much the cheapest. 



We are entering the era of irrigation. 

 Not only in the west but in the east it 

 is going to make farming once more 

 respectable and popular by making it 

 profitable, convenient and certain. Only 

 in this way can we relieve the cities of 

 the congestion that is the danger of the 

 republic. You may talk more money as 

 you will, but we do not know that it will 

 raise the price of the farmer's products 

 against the competition of the whole 

 world. But we know that irrigation 

 will increase production in spite of all 

 the cheap labor in the world. And we 

 know that without it production has 

 about reached its limit, east, west, north 

 and south. Fertilizers can do little more 

 without water and with water there will 

 be little need of fertilizers for many prod- 

 ucts, because irrigating water is often a 

 fertilizer itself, and any water enables 

 plant roots to decompose the coarser 

 parts of any soil. Lands that are too 

 dry cannot be restored with mere fertil- 

 izers and most all the land left for the 

 settler in America is of that class. Semi- 

 arid land will be a curse rather than a 

 blessing to the hopeful man who leaves 



the town and will only spread wider the 

 idea that there is nothing in farming. 



Our ancestors came from the rainy 

 lands of Europe and settled on the rainy 

 side of America. They have done nobly, 

 but the rainfall is their limit. The last 

 acre available for the increase of our 

 country's wealth on the rainfall alone 

 is about gone. On the rainfall alone 

 who dare say that the future of our coun- 

 try will be an improvement on the 

 present? And who dare say that with 

 irrigation it will not? With irrigation, 

 division and subdivision are the rule. 

 Without it bulging out one's neighbor 

 and throwing the two farms into one is 

 too often the rule. 



Felling a forest and digging out the 

 stump or awaiting their slow decay, to 

 see a crop drowned this year with too 

 much rain, the next dried out with too 

 much sun is the modern way of cultivat- 

 ing the soil. Finding land ready for 

 the plow and leading out upon it streams 

 that flow from perpetual snow so as to 

 have water and sunshine always on 

 tap was the first and by far the better 

 way. The cradle of civilization was 

 rocked beside the irrigating ditch, and 

 there architecture, sculpture, poetry and 

 letters reached their highest develope- 

 ment, flourishing for ages before the 

 axe preceeded the plow in any part of 

 the world. For centuries the conquerers, 

 statesmen, philosophers, artists, writers 

 and teachers of the world were born only 

 in the lands where water and sunshine 

 were both under control. Those in 

 which dependence was directly on the 

 fickle clouds produced only the savage 

 and the viking. Irrigation in the past 

 has supported the largest populations of 

 the world. Even today the unirrigated 

 portions can nowhere compare with the 

 irrigated sections in the value and amount 

 of produce to the acre, in the number of 

 persons to the square mile living in 

 comfort and even luxury, and the solid- 

 ity and refinements of the settlements 

 which resemble more the suburban resid- 

 ence parts of large cities than farming 

 communities. 



It is not rash to say that some of us 

 may yet see the future millionaire endow 

 some mighty waterworks first and leave 

 the future income to the college which 

 is less needed than the water. It is 

 easy to be generous on other's money, 



