TO HARNESS THE MISSOURI. 



PLANS LOOKING TO UTILIZATION 

 OF ITS WATERS FOR IRRIGATION. 



BY 



GUY ELLIOT MITCHELL. 







TWENTY-FIVE years ago Major fore and since yielded 20 bushels of 



J. W. Powell, the greatest Ameri- wheat per acre produced but two poor 



can irrigation authority, told the people bushels, while thousands of acres were 



of North Dakota, at their constitutional never even harvested, 

 convention, some plain facts about this 

 serai-arid section which they were then 



loth to believe, but which have since And the wealth of an empire is going 

 proven only too true. He told them that by in the rivers, as Major Powell stated 

 in the western portion of the state they flowing uselessly to the ocean. That is 

 would have to depend upon irrigation, apparent enough to any one visiting the 

 and that in the eastern part they could country. How to get the water onto 

 grow good crops with natural rainfall, the land is the question. For the very 

 but that in the middle portion an entire reason that dry farming may succeed 

 dependence upon rainfall must ulti- but little interest has been taken in irri- 

 mately bring disaster ; that they would gation. But the farmers of North Da- 

 have a series of years when there would kota are awakening. They are realizing 

 be abundant crops, and then for a num- that it is a false pride which proclaims 

 ber of years there would be scant rain- that irrigation is not needed, for with 

 fall, when crops would fail and disaster irrigation they will have a safe and sure 

 and discouragement would overtake crop and one vastly more productive, 

 thousands of people. Up and down the The business men, too, are beginning to 

 temperature of agriculture would rise see that small farms, intensively culti- 

 and fall with the seasons the lean years vated and made to produce the maxi- 

 and the fat. ' ' You will, ' ' he said, ' ' hug mum yield, contribute much more to the 

 to yourselves the delusion that the cli- growth and upbuilding of the state than 

 mate is changing. This question is do large ranches, half farmed, or wild 

 4,000 years old. Nothing that man can hay land, 

 do will change the climate. There is 



almost enough rainfall, but one year and THE FORCEFUL MISSOURI. 

 another you need a little more than you A certain Western Senator, in a cloak- 

 get. It is flowing past you in your room conversation on irrigation last 

 rivers." winter, stated it as his belief that the 



These words seem truly prophetic as Missouri could be dammed at various 



the history of the Dakotas for the past points and all its flood waters saved for 



25 years is reviewed. The lean years irrigation. This statesman was from 



came and the fat years, the years when the far, far West, where all things are 



there was plenty of rain and the soil easily possible. The Missouri is a vast 



produced abundantly, and the cycles of yellow giant. It flows through North 



lean years came, when the farmers Dakota, even in low water time, a titanic 



watched in vain for the fructifying rain- mill-race, in which a strong swimmer 



fall and their crops burned to a brown may perhaps trust himself , and be swept 



and a crisp, and finally they abandoned down stream as fast as a man can run. 



their homes by hundreds and by thou- In flood, when the Rocky Mountain 



sands. snows are melting, it is the embodiment 



For three years in succession during of power, if not destruction, tossing its 



that period, I was told, land which be- tawny mane as it sweeps before it mil- 



(483) 



