142 PRINCIPLES OF RURAL ECONOMICS 



Amsterdam and Leyden, their streets having been flooded by its 

 waters in times of storm. Taking all these things into consider- 

 ation, it has proved a profitable and wealth-producing enterprise. 



The draining of the Haarlem Lake, it must be remembered, 

 was more of an undertaking at that day than it would be now. 

 Again, it was a greater undertaking to drain a body of water of 

 such depth, without sufficient fall to make a natural outlet, than 

 it would be to drain a swamp of similar size not covered with 

 such a depth of water, and lying high enough to require very 

 little pumping to carry the water away. 



Dry land. The subject of the reclamation of dry lands has 

 received more public attention in this country than that of re- 

 claiming either stony or wet lands. This is probably because 

 there is a much greater area of land going to waste because it 

 is too dry than for both the other reasons combined. The two 

 leading methods of dealing with this problem are irrigation and 

 dry farming. 



Irrigation. Historically, the first of these methods to receive 

 public attention in this country was irrigation. Irrigation enter- 

 prises have been carried on in some form since the earliest 

 settlement in the Far West. In fact, in various places there 

 are found remains which show that this art was practiced long 

 before the white man ever set foot upon this continent. The 

 early Spanish missionaries who made their way from Mexico 

 into what is now the southwestern portion of the United States, 

 also constructed irrigation works on a small scale around their 

 missions. But the first development of irrigation on a com- 

 prehensive scale was.* by English-speaking settlers, namely the 

 Mormons, immediately after the founding of their colony on 

 the Great Salt Lake in 1849. 



Having settled in a land which was, to all appearances, a 

 desert, and being forced to extract a living from their un- 

 promising surroundings, they set to work with a vigor and 



