RRIGATION PLANS. 



BY W. W. JEKMANE. 



The following was Washington correspondence under date of June 

 21 to one of our exchances: 



When the president wrote his name at the bottom of a bill of con- 

 gress last Tuesday he performed an act whose importance will be far- 

 reaching. The bill which he signed was the famous Hansbrough irri- 

 gation bill, and from this time forward the government is committed to 

 the policy of developing and making ready for settlement the arid and 

 semi-arid lands on the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains, and on 

 the Pacific coast. 



Several of the more prominent of the great newspapers, the New 

 York Sun among them, have been indulging in heavy editorial assaults 

 upon the bill, presumably in the hope that the president would be in- 

 fluenced by them. The Hansbrough bill so they call it, and that is 

 the right name is vicious in principle, they say, and will impoverish 

 the national treasury. The latter proposition is the one in which they 

 give great emphasis; but there is no danger that they will become 

 true prophets. 



There are now $4,000,000 of available cash in the treasury for ir- 

 rigation purposes, and the sum is growing steadily. Probably the 

 fund will never be exhausted, for the president's policy will be to ex- 

 tend the work so carefully and systematically as to keep it always 

 within due bounds. On Wednesday of this week there was an hour's 

 conference between him and Senator Hansbrough, at the close of 

 which, the subject not being completed, an arrangement was made for 

 another meeting, at which it is their plan to work out the details of 

 the administration irrigation policy. The president thinks that the 

 work will pay for itself as it goes along, and that it never will be ne- 

 cessary to appeal to the national treasury for aid. With Senator 

 Hansbrough, he says that it will be possible to irrigate half a million 

 acres per annum, on an average, for the next quarter of a century. 

 The work will be kept within proper limits, for it is realized that if 

 the policy now initiated is to continue there must be proper manage- 

 ment and strict economy. The president has something at stake; for 

 both have said, the former in his message to congress, in which irri- 

 gation was strongly recommended, and the latter in his speeches to 

 the senate and senate committees, that the work should never be made 

 a charge againt the public treasury. Without further argument it 

 may be accepted at once that there will be no extravagance in putting 



