THE IRRIGATION AGL\ 



171 



who have interest in arid sections of the 

 country. Philadelphia Enquirer. 



Governor Roosevelt's suggestions ap- 

 peared sound and sensible, but every one 

 of them turned on the postulate of govern- 

 ment control. And the more the problem 

 is studied, the more clearly it will be seen 

 that this is the only way to treat it that 

 promises satisfactory results. The area 

 that must be dealt with is too great to be 

 bounded by state lines, and any practical 

 plan must ignore them. But this brings 

 up the greatest problem in the whole 

 scheme of western irrigation. Phila- 

 delphia Public Ledger. 



A hundred million acres of good land 

 are unfit for cultivation, and, in fact, for 

 habitation, because the rainfall is not suf- 

 ficient to insure crops. The national in- 

 terest that is being manifested in reclaim- 

 ing this big stretch of arid land shows that 

 work along the right line is progressing 

 rapidly. The expense of putting this land 

 into a profitable agricultural condition of 

 course is very great, but if Uncle Sam gets 

 back of it, and the right men engineer it, 

 there will be but little difficulty in creating 

 a desirable territory for new homes for in- 

 dustrious farmers. Drovers' Journal, 

 Chicago. 



As long as fertile, well watered land 

 with virgin soil remained to be exploited, 

 naturally but little interest could be ex- 

 cited over leagues of arid waste known in 

 the earlier geographies as "the great 

 American desert." Now that the public 

 lands in the humid and sub-humid areas 

 are practically all taken up, it is natural 

 and inevitable that the problem of dealing 

 with those neglected portions of territory 

 should call more urgently for solution. 

 Chicago News. 



There is an area larger than New York 

 and New England combined, and the open- 

 ing of it for successful agriculture would 

 add much to the productive capacity of 



the country. Without doubt the govern- 

 ment soon will move in that direction, re- 

 claiming comparatively small tracts from 

 year to year, until the whole territory is 

 brought under cultivation. Troy, N. Y. 

 Record. 



Irrigation is the problem upon which 

 hinges the redemption of millions of acres 

 of arid land throughout the western states 

 and territories. Considerable work has 

 been accomplished in this line through 

 the employment of private capital, but if 

 ever proper results are realized the gov- 

 ernment itself must take hold of the 

 matter. St. Louis Star. 



All the West is interested in the plan to 

 have the government build a system of 

 storage reservoirs near the headwaters of 

 streams to use for irrigation purposes. 

 The idea is that private capital might be 

 depended on to distribute the waters to 

 the users. As the government controls 

 rivers, it could appropriately undertake 

 the diversion of superfluous water in the 

 winter and early spring into reservoirs 

 where it could be stored until it should be 

 needed in the spring and summer. The 

 government is the more interested in such 

 work because it would probably end the 

 floods that have caused such loss of life 

 and property. The water which now 

 swells the Missouri and Mississippi to un- 

 due proportions at times, would be di- 

 verted for use in transforming deserts into 

 gardens. 



This new farming community would in- 

 crease the market for manufactured goods, 

 and would largely add to the agricultural 

 wealth of the land. For both these rea- 

 sons the East as well as the West is in- 

 terested in the irrigation development. 

 Kansas City &tar. 



Congress has taken tentative but in- 

 efficient steps to aid irrigation, granting 

 the lands to the states which' find them- 

 selves unable to bear the burden involved 

 in a large system of irrigation. Money 



