THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



261 



starving people, leaving the treasury 

 department to settle for the food later on, 

 for the famine is so widespread and disas- 

 trous that private charity can do but little 

 to relieve the distress. While any effort 

 of charitable people of this country to aid 

 " srarving India" is praiseworthy, the 

 Washington Times cautions such benevo- 

 lent persons not to persist in collecting 

 American corn or maize to send to India, 

 for even if the grain is not damaged by 

 the long voyage through tho tropics, it is 

 refused by the natives as food. 



Orientals are so unlike the western peo- 

 ple that it is hard to understand the atti- 

 tude they take, but it is said by English 

 dwellers in the East that they have been 

 known to die of starvation rather than eat 

 food that they were unfamiliar with. 

 Death does not have the terror for the 

 Oriental that it has for us, and he prefers 

 to die from a familiar cause, such as 

 famine, than to live by eating an unfamiliar 

 food such as corn or millet. So if it is 

 really desired to help their distress and 

 help it at once, charitable people should 

 send money, to India as that can be cabled 

 and so reach them at once and be invested 

 in rice a food they are familiar with. 



The irrigation surveys and 

 investigations have been 

 so great and the demand 

 from all parts of the country for authentic 

 information regarding the water supply 

 has been so persistent that the original 

 appropriation made by the last congress 

 to the Geological Survey was long ago 

 exhausted. Owing to the praiseworthy 

 efforts of such friends of the irrigation 

 movement as Senators Carter, Bard and 

 Perkins and Congressmen Needham and 

 Kahn, Congress has finally been per- 

 suaded to make a deficiency appropriation 

 of $20,000 immediately available for car- 

 rying on this work until June 30, 1900. 

 Speaking of this appropriation Mr. F. H. 

 Xewell, Hydrographer of the Geological 

 Survey, says: ' : I am particularly grati- 

 fied at this action of Congress, not so 

 much in allowing the appropriation, 



Congress 

 is Generous 



though we need that badly, but in so 

 declaring its temper in regard to the 

 work. This work we are doing meets 

 more than the western demand, and it is a 

 good sign for the West that it does. All 

 through the East there is a demand for 

 water gauging and stream measurement 

 by the government, for basing estimates 

 in erecting manufacturing plants pro- 

 posing to utilize water power. All this 

 work which we have been doing in stream 

 measurement, surveys of reservoir sites 

 and underground water flows in the West 

 has been stopped for lack of funds, but I 

 have now telegraphed to continue with it 

 and it will go on at least until the 1st of 

 July." 



Irrigation 

 in 



Congress. 



The fact that the govern- 

 ment has not as yet appro- 

 priated any money for the 

 construction cf storage reservoirs, does not 

 prove, as some assert, that no progress is 

 being made along this line and that the 

 West had best give up the effort to obtain 

 aid in this very necessary work. "Irriga- 

 tion," says Guy Mitchell, " receives more 

 recognition than is generally credited to 

 it. Great undertakings are not accom- 

 plished in a single year of agitation and 

 some of the most beneficial measures ever 

 enacted were before congress for a long 

 period of years. The records of congress 

 show that until the last two years, almost 

 nothing has been attempted in the way of 

 introduction of bills,urging the matter be- 

 fore committees or any other direct work 

 done to accomplish the construction of 

 storage reservoirs." Such being the case, 

 the fact that congress is sufficiently alive 

 to the importance of the irrigation subject 

 to appropriate considerable sums regularly 

 for investigation, stream measurements, 

 etc , is a very encouraging sign and an 

 omen of future good. Mr. Mitchell fur- 

 ther says: "The present agricultural bill 

 carries $35,000 for irrigation investigations 

 by the Department of Agriculture and ap- 

 propriations have been regularly made by 

 Congress for such work since 1890. The 



