310 THE IRRIGA Tl ON A GE. 



scramble for it at once. The combination must be a very fine one to 

 make the world rush for it fast enough to save it if interest is on its trail. 

 And men who have shown great genius in building a work through great 

 difficulties may sit paralyzed when it comes to realizing on it. They 

 don't know enough about land, or irrigation, to show any one else, or to 

 convince any one that they believe what they are talking about. They 

 have built perhaps a work that may some day be useful but not today, 

 something that the government or state should have built or somebody 

 wishing to tie up money for a child. The principles of hydraulics, all 

 that is found in books can be mastered by any one who is a good student 

 and has his mind in training in six months. In two years he can get on 

 his finger's end all that is necessary to know in that way and master all 

 the avenues to the pigeon hole knowledge which forms the greater part 

 of it. But no one in any such time can master the far more difficult prob- 

 lems of how to make works pay, how to lay them out from the start so 

 that they will be built no faster than needed, so that there will be no 

 squandering of the assets leaving aa empty shell for capital to look at, 

 above all to keep from building that most easy of all things, something 

 the world don't want. To meet the infinite questions arising takes years 

 of experience in similar work, knowledge of irrigation, land, cultivation 

 of the soil, water law, land law, colonization and selling land and a hun- 

 dred other things. At the head of a company should be a thorough busi- 

 ness man Who knows how to say no as well as the head of the soundest 

 bank. Such is rarely the case and any child of shoddy who has had a 

 sudden lift from fortune thinks himself, or his son in-law under his nomi- 

 nal supervision, fully able to manage it. Some influential person who i s 

 not afraid of the spade and the hoe should be at hand to take charge of 

 all the first development if done by the company as it should be. For 

 there is no way to get work out of men like working with them and 

 showing that you know what you are talking about. The same person 

 should stand over every new settler with a club and see that he does not 

 make a sorry mess of irrigation. 



Some works have been crippled by trying to dispense with engineers 

 because the work seems so simple that they are not needed. What is 

 known as a "practical man" as distinguished from an engineer may often 

 build a very good ditch, many a carpenter can build as good a flume alone 

 as with the help of any engineer, and many a pipe-man may Jay out a 

 pipe line well enough and lay the pipe in good order with no supervision 

 Nevertheless it is not good policy to rely on such people. They do not 

 feel the responsibility, do not do the thinking, have not the ambition, and 

 cannot have the breadth of knowledge necessary to handle with safety a 

 work of any magnitude. There are indeed almost no problems in build- 

 ing our modern irrigation works that can be called "engineering prob- 

 lems." Nevertheless there are a great many questions, dependent one 

 upon another, and requiring proper solucion to keep the whole chain from 

 being weak. To expect a specialist in any one branch to manage all 



