24O FARM DEVELOPMENT 



manufacturing, the public must recognize that landown- 

 ers who build irrigation ditches, or manufacturers 

 who construct dams, are entitled to consideration, 

 and that they acquire rights which the public must 

 respect through suitable legislation and court decrees. 

 Thus, if one man or firm builds an expensive irrigation 

 canal through which is conveyed all the water from a 



Figure 140. Stationary engine raising water by steam power on rice fields in Texas, 

 where thousands of acres are irrigated by means of very large pumps. 



stream and makes use of it upon fields, a wrong would 

 be done if another man or firm were to make a similar 

 irrigation canal further up the stream, thus intercepting 

 the flow of water and causing the first party to lose the 

 value of the expenditure in making the first canal. The 

 second party, however, might properly make a canal 

 further up the stream if he used only part of the water, 

 allowing sufficient to flow to the first canal to furnish 



