232 DEPARTMENTAL REPORTS. 



THE GROWING IMPORTANCE OF IRRIGATION. 



It is becoming more and more apparent that irrigation is destined 

 to have a larger place in the agriculture of the humid portion of the 

 United States than a few years ago was thought possible. It is already 

 employed as a means of insurance wherever intensive cultivation is 

 resorted to. Market gardeners in New Jersey, in the vicinity of Boston, 

 and around nearly all the large cities of this country are coming more 

 and more to understand the security and profit which it brings. The 

 rapid extension of rice irrigation in the South promises to influence 

 the utilization of water in the growing of other products in that region 

 wherever a supply can be obtained at a reasonable cost. The develop- 

 ment of the arid region by irrigation is destined in the near future to 

 cease to be a matter of local interest, and to occupy a leading place in 

 National affairs. This is due to the fact that the vacant fertile lands 

 of the inland States have now been taken up. We must look else- 

 where to meet the demands of development, and it is the irrigated 

 lands of the arid region which must replace the farms rendered unpro- 

 ductive by erosion and impoverished by wasteful and exhaustive 

 methods of culture. To meet the growing home demand and to satisfy 

 our expanding foreign trade will tax not only the utmost resources of 

 the humid States, but the productive resources of the arid region as 

 well. On the solution of the problems now being studied in this inves- 

 tigation must rest the laws which will govern the ultimate development 

 of the large areas of public land yet awaiting settlement and reclama- 

 tion. Its work is as important to the nation in aiding it to determine 

 what it ought to do as in assisting the arid States in solving the prob- 

 lems which press for an immediate solution. 



The fact must not be lost sight of that in the arid region agricul- 

 tural values inhere in water rather than in land. In many sections of 

 the West the right to water which irrigates an acre of land is already 

 worth far more than the land itself, and the methods by which titles 

 to streams are acquired and the character of the ownership estab- 

 lished has as direct a relation to the development of the West as the 

 methods employed in the disposal of public land. It is just as neces- 

 sary, too, for the peace and prosperity of that region to keep streams 

 from being acquired by speculative owners as it is to keep the land 

 from being disposed of to speculative holders. In sometcases extrava- 

 gant and unjust grants of water have led to serious abuses, and it is 

 only through a general education of the people most concerned that 

 the expulsion of these abuses and the establishment of correct methods 

 can be secured. The great work of this investigation is to promote 

 the evolution of irrigation laws and customs suited to tjie needs of 

 the different sections of the arid region and necessary for the protec- 

 tion of the individual farmer. As irrigation has extended and streams 

 become more fully utilized it has become increasingly apparent that 

 water laws are fully as important as land laws, and that it is not only 

 necessary to define clearly the rights of each of the multitude of users 

 from a common supply, but to provide adequately for the protection 

 of these rights under some sort of public supervision, so that the 

 peaceful and orderly division of rivers among farmers shall not only 

 be possible but assured. It is also indispensable that there shall be men 

 especially trained for this work. Under the most favorable condi- 

 tions the harmonious division of a river is a complex and difficult 

 performance. It involves the regulation of rights on tributaries so as 

 to protect the rights on the main stream and a consideration of the 



