CONSIDERATIONS FOR THE NOVICE. 



ward while cornfields withered. When, during the long rainless summer in his new Cali- 

 fornia home, he lets his furrows fill with water exactly according to his Judgment or 

 pleasure, he will realize what the elimination of the rain problem means. California 

 has its rain problems, of course, but they disappear to the degree that the irrigation 

 problem is solved in any region. The Eastern man may reflect on what premium he 

 could afford to pay at home through a term of years to be fully insured against all' 

 even partial, failures of crops through lack or excess or untimeliness of rain, and then 

 reflect that he may get that insurance in an irrigated district, along with much else, 

 by paying so much an acre for water. What would he have paid back there to be able 

 to start and stop the rain, have it drizzle or pour, fall during determined hours, and 

 on this field and not on that? Here he may do all that, in effect, at a cost of 50 cents 

 and upward per acre. 



One of the many elementary conceptions to be gained by the stranger to irrigation is its 

 relation to land values. Irrigation is a something that in itself makes land worth more — 

 more than the same land would be worth if a miracle provided the rainfall of a humid 

 region. Irrigation develops the highest possible commercial value of land for agricul 

 tural uses, and the highest priced lands in the United States are in some of the most 

 completely developed and peopled irrigated districts of California. The Eastern man 

 bought or sold farms without thought of the water. It went with the sky above. In an 

 irrigated district he conceives of buying two things, and the water is a very real and 

 tangible property and marvelously cheap in relation to its intrinsic value. 



Some colonists come to California seeking a fully developed income-producing 

 home, as one would in the East, but most people who go westward for land figure on 

 buying what will increase in value as well as provide an income. "Cheap land" is 

 everywhere a great motive in immigration. There is no desirable part of the world 

 where one may pursue that plan with greater confidence in the future than in many 

 of the districts of California now or soon to be provided with irrigation systems. Here, 

 particularly in the great central valley of the State, are hundreds of thousands of acres, 

 recently or soon to be brought under canal systems, which can now be bought for, say, 

 $25 to $75 an acre with water rights. 



The colonist from the East is characteristically a progressive man, apt to appre- 

 ciate the meaning of modern "scientific" agriculture. He will soon see that scientific 

 agriculture reaches its highest possibilities in a sunny and winterless land with the 

 aid of irrigation. "Intensive culture" and "diversified farming" are elementary features 

 of the modern gospel of agricultural success and he may readily see that on the 

 small California irrigated farm these principles may be carried out to incomparable 

 perfection. 



The California climate will make a difference in the current of his life and labor 

 and so will his coming within the influence of this institution of irrigation. It charac- 

 teristically means small farms, near neighbors, enterprise, thrift, prosperity, intelli- 

 gence, a greater feeling of common interests, more ready co-operation and more of the 

 material conveniences and adornments of modern civilization. Self-sufficient inde- 

 pendence, the glory of the farmer's life, is to be gained in its greatest perfection on 

 the small irrigated farm. Such a farmer finds much added to his life. New and 

 broader activities and interests easily come to him and new room for skill and ambi- 

 tion in his calling. 



It would be well for the intelligent California colonist to early make as thorough 

 a study of the history and methods of irrigation as his convenience will allow. He 

 may get along very well in his new home by following the practice and advice of his 

 neighbors, but he will be more successful If he studies the science of irrigation in rela- 

 tion to soils, crops, methods, etc., and particularly with reference to his own, for, 

 of course, much of the success with Irrigation must depend upon the skill with which 

 it it used, and he can find many Interesting practical problems that concern him and 

 his fields. The ways to such knowledge are not hard to find. From a broader stand- 

 point, the whole great story of Irrigation, "mother of Institutions," as a factor in the 

 world's civilizations, and particularly as a tremendous factor in the present and future 

 of California, is well worthy of his Interest. He may thus gain a larger and clearer con- 

 ception of the potential greatness of the State whose future he has come to share, and 

 he will more competently and readily take an Intelligent citizen's part in solving prob- 

 lems and meeting tasks that are ahead for this great commonwealth, which is des- 

 tined to develop the practice of Irrigation to a perfection never before reached and to 

 found a matchless civilization largely on the intelligent use of a peerless water supply. 



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