IRRIGATION IN THE ARID STATES. 149 



The total area is more than half of the United States (without 

 Alaska), and the total present population is less than one eighth 

 of the population of the United States. 



It is difficult, perhaps impracticable, to divide States once cre- 

 ated. Although a respectable minority in California and Texas 

 favor division schemes, which would make of the former three 

 States, and of the latter four, the tendencies of the time are 

 against it. But with the Territories it is different ; and if admis- 

 sion is long delayed, so that irrigation developments will have 

 enabled the soil to sustain a dense population, such Territories as 

 Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah are very likely to be divided. 

 Eastern Oregon and Washington are separated by diverse inter- 

 ests from the western slopes of those States in somewhat the same 

 way as southern California is separated from the northern coun- 

 ties. If the desire for smaller States should increase in the fu- 

 ture, it is not impossible, therefore, that the States and Territories 

 of the arid belt should some time contain twenty-five or thirty 

 political divisions instead of sixteen, as at present. It is perhaps 

 too much to say that the balance of power can ever be transferred 

 from the Mississippi Valley to the ultimate West of the Rockies, 

 the Great Basin, the valley of the Rio Grande, the irrigated 

 leagues of the Nevada and Arizona deserts, the vast valley plains 

 of the Sacramento and San Joaquin, the mountains of Coast 

 Range, Cascade, and Sierra. But if such a change is ever brought 

 about, the irrigator will be the principal cause of the transfer of 

 leadership from the man of the corn lands to the man of the fruit 

 lands. 



Twenty years ago no one in America knew how to utilize 

 water on a large scale for irrigation. A few colonies in different 

 parts of the arid zone, a few settlers in isolated valleys, were mak- 

 ing experiments. Half a dozen ranchers would come together 

 and plow an open ditch two or three feet wide, to irrigate their 

 crops in years of severe drought. As for the districts where the 

 average annual rainfall was below the required amount, no one 

 tried to live there. But some of the most successful of recent en- 

 terprises have been upon lands where there is " no rainfall." Even 

 ten years ago, though the number of colonists had increased, 

 the total area under water ditches in the arid region was hardly 

 more than two million acres. In 1886 it had increased to five and 

 a half million acres, and the following table shows the state of 

 affairs in 1891 : 



