462 IRRIGATION PRACTICE 



and including North and South Dakota, Kansas and 

 Oklahoma, excepting the 5 per cent set aside for educa- 

 tional purposes, shall be made a "reclamation fund" for 

 the "examination and survey for and the construction 

 and maintenance of irrigation works for the storage, di- 

 vision, and development of waters for the reclamation of 

 arid and semi-arid land in the said states." The lands 

 brought under irrigation by this act shall be open to 

 bona-fide settlers under the regulations of the Secretary 

 of the Interior, and at a price that will return in time to 

 the reclamation fund a sum equal to that expended by 

 the government upon the project. The fund, thus made 

 permanent, may continue to serve until all irrigation 

 projects feasible under the terms of the act shall have 

 been constructed. 



Work under the reclamation act has been pushed 

 with vigor almost from the day the act was signed by 

 Theodore Roosevelt. The workers have been assembled 

 under the head of the United States Reclamation Service, 

 the director of which almost from the beginning has been 

 F. H. Newell, a life-long student of water supply and 

 irrigation, assisted by a most admirable and efficient corps 

 of irrigation experts. During its first decade of work, 

 the Reclamation Service undertook projects which, when 

 completed, will cost over $100,000,000. In 1910 the pro- 

 jects of the Reclamation Service irrigated 3 per cent of 

 all the irrigated lands in the country, and, when completed, 

 would irrigate nearly 7 per cent of the area to be irrigated 

 under all projects, private and public. 



Many projects that private enterprise felt unable to 

 undertake have been constructed by the Reclamation 

 Service. Confidence in the arid section has been strength- 

 ened by the national approval of irrigation contained in 



