GARDEN IRRIGATION IN KANSAS. 



BY HON. EDWIN TAYLOR, Edwardsville, Kan. 



Read'bcfore the meeting of the Kansas State Horticultural Society at Topeka, 

 Dec. 27, 1898. 



It may be set down as established that under usual Kansas condi- 

 tions it will not pay to expend artificial water upon grain crops or 

 grass. Wherever grain or grass can be produced profitably by irriga- 

 tion it must be the case that water is easy to get, or that labor is 

 cheap, or that products are dear. Kansas has no mountain streams 

 like Colorado or California, neither is it graded by nature with that 

 two-way slope requisite for applying such streams to crops. In our 

 State water in most instances has to be elevated by machinery from 

 river-beds, from wells or from artificial ponds. The initial cost of 

 water thus produced, varying in its expensiveness according to the 

 height and other incidents of its elevation always reaches a point where 

 corn at twenty -five cents and wheat at fifty cents will not pay the bill. 

 In India and Egypt, grain is economically produced where water is 

 dipped upon it by hand or pumped up with rude buffalo-propelled 

 tread mills. But the labor cost per man, per day, in those countries 

 is in round numbers only one tenth as much -as we must pay. 



Four years ago the Legislature was overrun with people who 

 seemed positive that Western Kansas would be taken by the bow- wows 

 unless those animals were fenced out by ditch water. And it appro- 

 priated $30,000.00 to be expended by a commission for the purpose of 

 ascertaining the truth of that matter. The report of that Commis. 

 sion convinced the Legislature: First, that there are no bow-wows in 

 Western Kansas: and second, that if there are they can be guarded 

 against easier and better with the nutritious herbage of the plains 

 supplemented by sorghum, Kaffir, corn and alfalfa than by any sys- 

 tem of public works whatever. But it was worth all it cost, for the 

 future tranquility of that section to have shown up the unreality of 

 an irrigation mirage which included within its misty illusions alluring 

 but deceptive appearances of practicability in all branches of Agri- 

 culture. The mistake which the Legislature made was that having 

 satisfied itself about the futility of forcing grain and forage in the 

 short grass end of the State, it did not then continue its investiga- 

 tions by spending $30,000.00 to determine to what extent and under 

 what circumstances the gardens and orchards of the east end of the 

 State may be irrigated with profit. I particularize the east end be- 

 cause in a country where its horticultural products only can be irri 

 gated nothing can be more obvious than that the place to begin ex- 



