404 THE TRRIGA TION A GE. 



"There is going to come a time, and that time is here now, if de 

 velopment is necessary, when there will have to be an expenditure of 

 public funds in order to secure certain kinds of development. There 

 are rivers like the Missouri that I do not believe it will ever pay 

 within our lifetime to take the water out of those streams because it 

 will cost so much that the land will not pay for it. Irrigated land and 

 the value of irrigation improvements is measured by the value of lands 

 in the Mississippi valley or the value of irrigated lands under cheaper 

 works, and you can go only just so far with private enterprise. Now 

 there are prospects there that have been serving some time that it 

 would pay as a public work perhaps to do it, because in bringing 

 land that is now worthless into a condition of productivity, you create 

 homes, you create taxable values that the public gets the benefit from 

 that the private investor does not share in, and there is the argument 

 in favor of state or national aid to certain classes of important works. 

 And there are certain kinds of works that never will be built by pri- 

 vate enterprise until they get that aid. But there are a great many 

 works that, if there would be better laws, would be built by private 

 investors without loss. You wculd by better legislation very greatly 

 promote development without any appropriations of money. 



''The first canals were taken out of the sluggish streams that 

 flow into the Gulf of Mexico; but when the importance of the value of 

 the rice product becomes established, and lands rose in value from $5 

 to $50 and $100 an acre it became manifest that those streams would 

 not supply the need of water; and they began looking about for other 

 sources of supply. They found one by putting down wells, so that 

 the pumping stations to supply water from the rivers are being sup- 

 plemented now largely by wells. Hundreds of wells are going down 

 throughout that portion of Louisiana and this year a study is being 

 made to determine the source of that water supply. If it is simply 

 that the subsoil is filled with water and it can be pumped out, it will 

 soon be exhausted; but there is a belief that it is being reinforced 

 from the Mississippi. There was a conjecture at the time I was there, 

 but a study is being made to ascertain if it be true. If it be true, 

 there will be a capacity for indefinite extension by wells of water. 



"The success of rice growing there after the long period in which 

 we had been continually shrinking in our rice production, has led to 

 increased interest along the Atlantic seaboard. For years the rice 

 growing there, if not unprofitable, has not been sufficiently profitable 

 since the war to lead to any extension. In fact there was a constant 

 decline. Old canals in use long before the war were going out of 

 operation; but that is now being extended and the question now is 

 whether they can adopt the Louisiana methods. 



"Rice cultivation in the Carolinas is largely after the methods 



