THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



163 



$7, and other classes of hay from $10 to 

 $15 per ton. Onions by the car load lot 

 have sold at $1 per hundred and cabbages 

 at 70 cents per hundred. In fact all the 

 products of the garden, the orchard, the 

 farm, the dairy, the apiary, the pasture 

 and the range in Colorado find ready, mar- 

 kets at good prices, and in some cases al- 

 most phenomenal ones. The consequence 

 is that the farmer and all those lines of 

 business dependent upon him are flourish- 

 ing. 



The effect is visible on all sides. Debts 

 ar,e being paid and mortgages are being 

 lifted. Especially fortunate is the farmer 

 who raised a good potato crop. Whole 

 farms have been paid for by the sale of last 

 reason's potato crop; bank accounts are 

 being swelled; improvements are being 

 made on the ranches and more land pur- 

 chased. Yet the consuming masses of 

 Colorado, excepting in so far as the reflex 

 of the general agricultural prosperity has 

 an effect, are suffering in common with 

 their fellow consumers of the country at 

 large; so in spite of the beneficent influ- 

 ences of irrigation, the blighting effects of 

 the drouth are felt here; which fact is only 

 an added argument in favor of the nation- 

 alization of the system of irrigation. 



Who then shall raise his voice against 

 the utility, yea, the vital necessity of the 

 system? If it is so beneficial in the arid 

 regions, which are not by any means the 

 main source of our food supplies, why 

 should it not be of supreme benefit in those 

 great regions upon which the nation, if not 

 the world, depends for its bread and meat, 

 in saving the crops in drouth years from 

 partia', if not total, destruction? Suppos- 

 ing the vast millions that were lost in three 

 states by last season's drouth were to be 

 expended in irrigating canals and storage 

 reservoirs in those states! Why, they 

 would provide a system that would place 

 those states beyond the danger of crop 

 failure from drouth for all time to come! 

 The topography and the water supply of 



those states are both favorable for irriga- 

 tion. Consider for a moment the vast 

 quantities of flood water that both rise and 

 flow through those states year by year, only 

 to cause damage on their way oceanward, 

 and are yet lost forever to the vital uses 

 of husbandry. These states, too, not only 

 are well supplied with water within their 

 own limits, but might have the advantage 

 of those great waters of the north that 

 annually come rolling down in turbid and 

 irresistible floods, only to carry alarm and 

 destruction in their path. 



The storage reservoir is the thing. Irri- 

 gators of the arid regions are recognizing 

 this fact. Irrigation water in the West is 

 estimated to be worth all the way from 25 

 cents to $250 per acre foot, which means 

 enough water to cover an acre of land a 

 foot deep. This is the amount of water 

 that the Colorado irrigator considers to be 

 necessary each year to make a crop. Prob- 

 ably the lowest value of an acre foot of 

 water as applied to land would be placed 

 upon it when applied io native pasture; 

 the highest when applied to land planted 

 to small fruits. Its highest value is found 

 in California for irrigating fruit lands. In 

 Idaho it is estimated to be worth $50 for 

 as common a crop as potatoes. The same 

 is probably true of its average value in 

 Colorado. Then how doubly valuable 

 would it be in the great fertile valleys of 

 the Missouri and Mississippi in a year of 

 drouth such as that of last season! Water 

 thus stored would be better than money in 

 the bank, for it would pay a better inter- 

 est, and there would not be so much dan- 

 ger of the storage reservoir bursting as 

 there would be of the average bank. 



Then, too, if irrigation were ever started 

 in the East, promoters would find it much 

 easier to prosecute their enterprises. Com- 

 munities are more thickly settled, help and 

 material are cheaper and money more 

 plenty, and to be obtained at lower rates of 

 interest than in the far West. 



