228 THE 1RRIGA TWN A GE. 



Mr. THURSTON. Mr. President- 

 Mr. STEWART. One at a time. 



Mr. THURSTON. That suggestion was not made in committee this 

 year, and I see no reason^why there would be an objection to adding it. 



Mr. BEVERIDGE. Then that would meet the point made by the 

 Senator from Connecticut. I was about to ask the Senator from 

 Nevada whether it is true that all other methods of irrigation have 

 been tried and have been cast aside as inadequate? 



Mr. STEWART. You will get some water, some underflow, but 

 there were men before the committee who said that the underflow is 

 now down 3 or 4 or 5 feet deeper than it was a few years ago. You 

 cannot get a permanent supply in that way. 



Mr. BEVERIDGE. I understand that the Senator from Nevada 

 says he will accept that amendment. 



Mr. STEWART. I want to say something, if you will let me have 

 the floor for a while. 



The policy is established that we should irrigate for the Indians. 

 We give them vast tracts of land, and we may spend three or four 

 hundred thousand dollars a year irrigating for them, and we have it 

 conducted under inexperienced men, Indian inspectors or something 

 of that kind; yet if by any possibility the irrigation benefits the white 

 man, then it becomes a monster. That is the extraordinary feature of 

 the opposition to this measure. They say you can not irrigate to help 

 the Indians if by any chance there may be some irrigation for white 

 men too. Agriculture has been conducted more by irrigation than by 

 rainfull in this world. All ancient agriculture was by irrigation. 



Mr. BEVERIDGE. No. 



Mr. STEWART. Pretty nearly all was by irrigation. Only recently 

 have they undertaken to subdue countries where there was rainfall. 

 See the great irrigation works in Africa and in Western Asia. All 

 those great civilizations were by means of irrigation. Two-fifths of 

 the entire area of the United States requires irrigation. It is a vast 

 empire where you can make homes for 50,000,000 people, if irrigated, 

 and it will not be nearly so thickly populated then as were ancient 

 countries. You see ruins of the irrigation plants of the ancients; they 

 are being excavated now, and other people are taking an interest in it. 

 In Egypt they are excavating old irrigation works, which show that 

 the Sahara Desert, or a large part of it, was once irrigated, to the won- 

 der of t-h'e world. There is masonry there that cannot be surpassed 

 to-day. It is being developed everywhere. 



Here we have a country of immense possibility, and because this 

 improvement may be used for the benefit of white peopl^ there *s 

 objection to it. If it could not be used for white people, if it could not 

 benefit white people, there would be no objection to it. There is no 



