476 IRRIGATION PRACTICE 



274. Some advantages of irrigation. There are many 

 reasons why irrigation-farming should become and remain 

 very attractive. Under irrigation, crop-yields may be 

 depended on from year to year. Crop failures are very 

 rare and are usually due to hail-storms or some unusual 

 atmospheric disturbances. The possibility of varying the 

 quantity of water applied to the land gives the farmer a 

 control over the yield and quality of the crop that does 

 much to vitalize the routine of the work and to make the 

 harvest more profitable. The soil and climatic conditions 

 prevailing over most of the territory demanding irrigation 

 are of a kind to make life enjoyable. 



275. Finally. The nature of irrigation is such as to 

 bring into close social relationship the people living under 

 the same canal. A common interest binds them together. 

 If the canal breaks or water is misused, the danger is for 

 all. In the distribution of the water in the hot summer 

 months when the flow is small and the need great, the 

 neighbor and his rights loom large, and men must gird 

 themselves with the golden rule. The intensive culture, 

 which must prevail under irrigation, makes possible close 

 settlements, often with the village as a center. Out of 

 the desert, as the canals are dug, will come great results 

 of successful experiments in intimate rural life; and out 

 of the communities reared under irrigation will come men 

 who, confident that it is best, can unflinchingly consider 

 their neighbors' interests with their own; and who, there- 

 fore, can assume leadership in the advancing of a civili- 

 zation based upon order and equal rights. 



The environment of wise irrigation-farming compels 

 the belief that of all kinds of farming it may be the most 

 enduring. 



KING, F. H. Farmers of Forty Centuries (1911). 



