14 THE IRRIGA TION A GE. 



ulated as to make heavy demands upon eastern farmers to feed the 

 hundreds of thousands of their employes. 



The more general introduction of irrigation practices in eastern 

 humid regions is a good sign for the arid west, for, with a more gen- 

 eral familiarity with the subject, the better it is for that section en- 

 tirely dependant upon it when it, comes to a question of needed legis- 

 lation. In Louisiana the possibilities of irrigation are great, and for 

 an extremely humid state it has already a comparatively large area 

 under water systems, amounting to something over 100,000 acres, 

 while the annual rainfall of the state is double the average for the 

 whole country, being in the neighborhood of 60 inches, yet Louisiana 

 is subject to the most' severe drouths, especially in the spring-time 

 when the crops need moisture. The Mississippi furnishes an unlimited 

 water source for much of the state, and its waters hold in suspension 

 and solution much matter of a fertilizing nature. 



New Jersey is another state which furnishes some excellent object 

 lessons on artificial watering, and in Wisconsin, on land receiving its 

 full share of the rainfall of the humid belt, irrigation of small crops 

 has been shown to produce remarkable returns over and above cost of 

 production and watering. The more this sort of development affects 

 the east, the less novel will be the subject and the less opposition will 

 be put forward by the intelligent people of that section to a policy of 

 general western reclamation. 



The opponents of federal irrigation admit that it is quite proper 

 for the government to appropriate money for the construction of ex- 

 pensive ripraps and levees for floods to destroy from time to time, in 

 addition to causing vast loss to life and private property; yet that it is 

 wholly wrong to build reservoirs to restrain these floods and thus get 

 at the root of the evil, because the water stored in these reservoirs 

 would be used to irrigate parched fields, and thus we would be adding 

 too much to our productive capacity. Fortunately, the adherents to 

 this narrow proposition are not numerous, and the theory is not grow- 

 ing in popularity. 



However wise, just and carefully drawn may be the water laws of 

 a state, they do not afford its residents complete protection, because 

 rivers are bound to flow across state lines, and in such cases only fed- 

 eral control will insure equit}'". 



Forests and storage reservoirs both serve the same purpose, 

 namely, that of keeping the waters from running away from the 

 mountains in spring floods and letting it down gradually during the-, 

 crop season. 



