THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



VOL XV. 



CHICAGO, MARCH, 1900. 



NO. 6. 



THE PROGRESS OF WESTERN RMERICfl. 



Of B ft "^ Discussing the subject of 

 To AH. storage reservoirs and the part 



the National government should bear in 

 their construction, it is often urged that 

 this would be unjust to those who are not 

 benefited by the reservoirs and who are 

 not interested or profited by irrigation. 

 But are not all citizens of this country 

 benefited thereby, at least indirectly? 

 The National Irrigation Association in re- 

 gard to this matter says that the manufac- 

 turers of this country are beginning to re- 

 alize that national irrigation is a subject 

 in which they are directly interested. The 

 problem it not an intricate one. Every 

 merchant is looking for new accessible 

 markets in which to exploit his goods. If 

 irrigation shall reclaim ten or twenty or a 

 hundred million acres of fertile land in the 

 West and people it with as dense a popu- 

 lation as exists in the East, it does not take 

 any remarkable business acumen to see 

 how the manufacturer profits thereby. 



The building of storage reservoirs for 

 the West is as much within the province 

 of the national government as is the 

 building of levees and other protections 

 against the Mississippi floods. The ques- 

 tion is sometimes asked whether those in 

 favor of the storage reservoir policy pro- 

 pose to do away with the levees and ex- 

 pend the money for storage reservoirs. 

 The answer to this is that if there were 



nothing to increase the volume of these 

 rivers they would not overflow in disastrous 

 floods and levees would therefore not be 

 needed. The reports of official engineers 

 are that if storage reservoirs were con- 

 structed at the head waters of these rivers, 

 floods would be done away with, since the 

 surplus water which now runs to waste, 

 causing ruin and disaster, would then be 

 stored up for use in dry season. Millions 

 of acres of desert land could in this way 

 be made available for agricultural pur- 

 poses. With such good results to be an- 

 ticipated from the construction of reser- 

 voirs it is easy to see why there are so 

 many advocates of this policy. 



Tery often a writer gives to 

 the public a true story which 

 is regarded as fiction pure and simple by 

 his readers. Seldom does the author 

 receive the high compliment of having a 

 fictitious tale accepted as a statement of 

 scientific truth. This was what recently 

 happened to a writer in McClure's maga- 

 zine. The story in question was pub- 

 lished in the October, (1899) number and 

 was entitled ' ' The Killing of the Mam- 

 moth" by H. Tuckeman. According to 

 the story the mammoth was found and 

 killed and the remains sent to the Smith- 

 sonian Institute. So well told was the 

 tale that it was accepted by many as the 

 truth and inquiries began to pour in to 



Truth 



and 



Fiction 



