220 I HE IRRIGATION AGE. 



practiced what they call dry farming, until they have exhausted all 

 their means, and have become very much disheartened. We think 

 there is a great field for capitalists who have loaned money on this 

 western land, to add a little more to it and get back what they have 

 invested there with from 100 to 200 per cent, interest. Under the 

 past, depending on farming without irrigation, nothing short of a 

 miracle will ever return this large amount of money loaned on their 

 land. I have been told there has been at least $2,000,000,000 loaned 

 on western lands in Nebraska alone. The proposition may be summed 

 up about as follows: Irrigated land will produce a crop with almost if 

 not altogether positive certainty, while even in our humid districts it 

 is quite a speculation whether you will get a paying crop or not. The 

 idea that irrigation is only feasible and practicable in the arid limits 

 of America may be called one of the delusions and fallacies of the 

 day. Irrigation can be made very profitable and insure a certainty of 

 a crop within the humid area as well as the arid or semi-arid portions 

 of America. 



In the construction of reservoirs for holding the water for irriga- 

 tion, but little money is required. It is work that the farmers can 

 perform entirely with the use of their teams. The inside and bottom 

 of the reservoirs can by padding and packings be constructed so as to 

 hold water almost equal to the ordinary railroad tanks, and of course 

 in very much larger quantities With the old canal system, which can 

 be used only in a small area adjoining streams, the cost of water rights 

 varies from $8 to $30 per acre, and the cost of the annual maintenance 

 of the canals and direct connection with the required water right is 

 from $3 to $5 per acre as we understand it. 



Providence has provided substantially a large lake of water under 

 the greater portion of this arid America, furnishing a supply prac- 

 tically without limit. 



