IRRIGATION AND COMMERCIAL 

 EXPANSION. 



BY JOEL SHOMAKER. 



An era of unprecedented prosperity has dawned upon the irri- 

 gated realm of the United States the trans- Mississippi division of 

 North America. The oriental trade, the Alaskan demands and the 

 ever increasing avenues of domestic commerce have made requisitions 

 on the producers of Arid America that compel greater expansion of 

 the fields of labor. Over 500,000,000 of the Asiatic inhabitants are 

 looking to the ships of America for flour, fruits, vegetables and 

 general farm products, and the irrigated states are expected to 

 supply the majority of this permanent order. While men may differ 

 on political theories concerning national policies of governing new 

 territories, the real, active commercial expansion is an enforced 

 condition, which must be grasped at once by the tillers of the soil 

 and those engaged in shipping. 



The great northwest, comprising the states of Washington, 

 Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Utah, Wyoming, Nebraska, Dakotas, 

 Minnesota, Iowa and even to the east of the Mississippi, lies at the 

 gateway of this vast Pacific commerce, and the irrigated farms 

 constitute the basis of individual prosperity which will contribute to 

 the national wealth and independence. This area has the natural 

 facilities; mountains of perpetual glaciers, reservoirs of abundant 

 waters, rivers of never ceasing flow, carrying soil moisture and plant 

 food to millions of acres, which when properly cultivated, yield pro- 

 fusely of the cereals, grasses and fruits required to supply this new 

 world of humanity. 



A short time since I visited Tacoma harbor, the open gateway to 

 the commercial ports of the oriental isles, and witnessed the actual 

 transactions of this new era of financial expansion. The Northern 

 Pacific railway with its seventy miles of side tracks, crowded with 

 trainloads of farm products, was delivering to more than a score of 

 large ocean vessels, carrying one thousand tons or more each, the 

 food for millions, to be conveyed across the waters. At this port 

 over one-half the imports and exports of Puget Sound, the inland 

 arm of the Pacific northwest, are loaded or unloaded. The exports 

 for last year, from the Puget Sound ports aggregated over sixteen 

 millions of dollars, while the imports reached about six millions, the 

 trade being chiefly with the irrigated districts of the northwest. 



While the northwest is particularly favored by location, for the 

 Pacific and Alaskan trade, the southwest portion of Arid America, 



