THE IRRIGA TION A GE. 367 



will be supplied by the stored water, we will require within the next 

 fifty or one hundred years a storage capacity equal to 40,000,000 acre- 

 feet of water that is to say, a storage equal to covering 40,000,000 

 acres 1 foot deep, or 1,000,000 acres 40 feet deep. Assuming that 

 the average cost of this would be $5 per acre-foot, the total cost 

 would be within a period of fifty or one hundred years about 

 $200,000,000. 



Expenditures of the settlers upon their lands would far exceed 

 this; it would probably average from $10 to $40 or $50 per acre, 

 dependent upon the cost of the main canals, the level or broken char- 

 acter of the ground, and the difficulty in leading out the water from 

 the river. But thing is assured, and that is that every acre of land 

 reclaimed would be worth at least $50, and, as 100,000,000 acres are to 

 be reclaimed, we would have a total increase in the wealth of the 

 country in land alone, without improvements, of $5,000,000,000 by the 

 expenditure upon the part of the Government of $200,000,000, and we 

 would have a country opened up for the surplus population of the East 

 and the middle Western States. 



There are two ways of legislating upon this work. One is to pass 

 annually a bill similar to the river and harbor bill, providing, first, for 

 the construction of projects which have been surveyed, estimated, and 

 reported favorably, and, second, making appropriations for surveys, 

 estimates, and reports as to projects that are contemplated. Such 

 appropriations would come out of the National Treasury and would be 

 raised from general taxation, just as the appropriations in the river 

 and harbor bill are. 



Another method would be to fasten the cost of the Government 

 work of storage upon the public lands susceptible of reclamation. 

 Such a plan would involve the ereation of an arid land reclamation 

 fund in the Treasury, into which all moneys received from the sales 

 of public lands in the arid and semiarid States would go. The receipts 

 from the sales of public lands last year amounted to about $3,000,000, 

 and including commissions and fees, to $4,000,000. So the sum avail- 

 able for the first year would be about $4,000,000. Provision should 

 be made for investigation, surveys, estimates, and reports by the Geo- 

 logical Survey of various projects, and upon approval of a project by 

 the Secretary of the Interior he should be authorized to withdraw 

 from entry the lands in the reservoir sites and to withdraw from entry, 

 except under the homestead act, all land susceptible of irrigation by 

 reason of such project. He should then be given power to contract 

 for the work; no contract to be made unless the money is in the fund' 

 When the project is completed the total cost should be ascertained, 

 and the price of the lands susceptible of irrigation and of the water 

 rights attached thereto should be so fixed as to compensate the fund 



