IRRIGATION. 



SHOULD TEACH IRRIGATION. 



BY T. C. NYE, Laredo, Tex. 

 I visited the Agricultural and Mechan- 

 ical College last summer, June 23, when 

 the Farmers' Congress was in session and 

 found about 400 of the most successful 

 rain farmers of Texas in attendance and, 

 as I am compelled to use irrigation in my 

 farming, I was alone in that crowd. I 

 felt that my stories about irrigation were 

 regarded as fairy stories. Our Agricul- 

 ture and Mechanical College, which had 

 an income of $73,000 last year, is a splen- 

 did institution, and proposes to teach our 

 boys agriculture and the mechanical arts. 

 With over half of our state land lying in 

 the dry zone and with the healthiest 

 elimate in the world, I could not help but 

 think that our Agricultural and Mechan- 

 ical College should be teaching irrigation 

 also, and at the time of the meeting there 

 was no place in Texas where irrigationn 



T. C. NYE, LAREDO, TEX. 



was needed any more than right there at 

 the Agricultural and American College. 

 Our state school funds are loaned to the 



cattle men at three cents per acre per an- 

 num, which is not a decent rate of taxa- 

 tion, and all of these lands are in the dry 

 belt and never will be good for anything 

 without irrigation. Mr. F. F. Collins, who 

 has a farm in the corporate limits of San 

 Antonia, rents his land to Belgian garden- 

 ers at $22.50 per acre, Collins supplying 

 the water and homes for the tenants to 

 live in. Collins' land is worth $2.50 per 

 acre. 



Our state convicts could not be em- 

 ployed better than in building reservoirs 

 and boring artesian wells, and thus re- 

 claiming the deserts of Texas, which now 

 produce nothing but coyotes and cactus. 

 The land, as soon as water could be put on 

 it, would be worth not less than $50 per 

 acre, whereas as it is now it lacks a dollar 

 of being worth a cent. The rain farmers 

 ofJTexas make our laws for western Texas, 

 where we consider ourselves very lucky if 

 we get the dust laid once a year, just the 

 same as for that part of Texas where 

 there is not less than fifty inches of rain- 

 fall annually. 



The irrigation farmer can grow upon 

 one acre as much as he formerly grew, 

 without water, upon ten, provided he uses 

 some labor, intelligence, and lots of fer- 

 tilizer, and is not too conceited to learn 

 how. Some men cannot learn to adapt 

 their farming operations to the climate 

 where they are situated and stubbornly 

 persist in following methods that were in 

 vogue when they were boys in New York 

 state; consequently if all failures were re- 

 corded it would make a long account. 



There seems to be a general belief that 

 when a man becomes an absolute failure 

 in any other lint of business he is then 

 well equipped to go to farming, but that is 

 positively not so. Irrigation farming needs 

 constant study and the help of all the farm 

 journals, and then there will be lots of 



