62 IRRIGATION FARMING. 



Some plowed ditches are the cheapest, but they are 

 only temporary, and in the end more expensive. 

 Scrapers will cover the greatest range of work and will 

 fairly represent the average cost. The modern thing 

 in scrapers is the wheeled affair. Work done with 

 ditching machines is very satisfac5tory and far cheaper 

 than any other work. Not every farmer can afford to 

 buy a machine to do his own work alone, but when 

 farmers become associated in the putting down of wells 

 and the construction of reservoirs and ditches, then it 

 will pay to buy machines, for on a large piece of work 

 they will soon pay their cost. 



Cost of Construction. — Classifying irrigating 

 canals and ditches according to their widths, it has 

 been found that for those averaging less than five 

 feet in width the expense of constru(5lion, includ- 

 ing head works, flumes, etc., is $481 a mile ; for those 

 five feet in width and under ten feet, $1,628 a mile, 

 and for those ten feet or more in width $5,603 a mile. 

 The greater number of the irrigating systems of the 

 country have been construdled under such conditions 

 that the owners cannot give even an approximate esti- 

 mate as to what they really cost. Many of them have 

 been built by the efforts of a few farmers acfling origi- 

 nally in partnership, and have been enlarged from 

 year to year as more land was brought under cultiva- 

 tion and population increased. Farmers, as a rule, do 

 not keep account of the amount of labor or money 

 expended on such works, and in cases where they own 

 the irrigating ditches they do not take into considera- 

 tion the labor expended upon the ditches at times when 

 the farm work is not pressing. When contradlors figure 



