FACTORS OF AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION 145 



cases, however, the projects have been successful from the 

 point of view of the communities, the loss falling upon the 

 investors alone. 



The failure of these irrigation companies was sometimes, 

 due to mismanagement, but generally resulted from other 

 causes. Mr. Elwood Mead enumerates the following as the 

 most important : 



1. The necessarily long delay in securing settlers for the 

 land to be irrigated, and in obtaining paying customers for the 

 water to be furnished. 



2. The large outlay and several years of unprofitable labor 

 required, as a rule, to put wild land in condition for cultivation. 

 Settlers of limited means cannot meet this outlay and in ad- 

 dition pay water rentals. Nearly all the settlers on arid public 

 land are men of limited means; hence canal companies have, 

 at the outset, to furnish water at small cost, or to supply a small 

 number of consumers. 



3. The unsuitability of the public-land laws to irrigation 

 development. 



4. The acquirement of the lands to be reclaimed, in many 

 instances, before canals are completed, by nonresident or specu- 

 lative holders, who would do nothing for their improvement. 



5. Expenses of litigation. Experience has shown that, in 

 the estimates of the cost of a large canal, provision should be 

 made for a large and long-continued outlay for litigation. It 

 begins with the adjudication of the stream and is protracted 

 through the controversies over water rights. 



These reasons, and the failure of private enterprise to grapple 

 sue cessf ully with the larger problems involved, pointed unmis- 

 takably to the federal and state governments as the only agencies 

 capable of handling the irrigation question successfully. Accord- 

 ingly, the history of American irrigation has passed into the 

 third stage, that of public, or state and federal, control. As 



