52 



THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



MR. GWINN OUTLINES ORGANIZATION. 



"It is going to take a good deal of money to carry 

 out our plans, but it will be the best money we ever 

 spent. Our first step is to form a local organization, 

 and this should be begun at once. We must get together 

 a committee of the best workers in Boise, and to add 

 members from all of the surrounding towns, men who 

 will take a lively interest in the matter, and who will 

 not think it is too early to go to work at once. Plans 

 must be outlined for raising a large sum of money to 

 be used in defraying the legitimate expense of entertain- 

 ing the large delegations that will come. With this 

 done, the rest will be comparatively easy. A number of 

 plans have been suggested as to the best way to accom- 



Slish this, which will be made known as soon as they are 

 ecided upon. The one thing that we are determined on 

 is that Boise and Idaho will be remembered as having 

 been the place where the Irrigation Congress reached 

 the climax of its glory in a most successful convention." 



1 



told and shown and shown and told ten thousand times 

 ten thousand that if they would simply build an open 

 ditch to turn the flood waters, often called the winter 

 waters, of the Umatilla River onto the land south and 

 southeast of Irrigon, that they could turn some 50,000 

 acres of six-bit land into $100 }and and all at an 

 expense of less than $100,000, or practically for one-half 

 of what they have spent in going over the very same 

 land, digging holes and test pits in it, assaying it, an- 

 alyzing it, smelling of it, sifting it, sorting it, tasting 

 it, bottling and labeling it, and sending it on to Wash- 

 ington as "Exhibits A to" well, God alone knows. 



The work asked was in no way an experiment. The 

 engineers have been shown a thousand times over on 

 Butter creek alfalfa lands, now worth $100 per acre, 

 that never get a drop of water save when the Umatilla 

 or Butter creek is at flood. And these lands were abso- 

 lutely valueless until they got this warter. 



"The feasibility of the scheme for the government, 



Sugar 



Beefs 



Acres 



Showing Method of Making Map of Land. 

 [From the Primer of Irrigation, Page 122.] 



GOVERNMENT IRRIGATION. 



Mr. Bennett, editor of the Irrigon Irrigator, has 

 learned at last that the Reclamation Bureau is not the 

 infallible institution that some of his former editorials 

 led us to believe. Mr. Bennett will learn much more of 

 the failures and mistakes of this department if he will 

 hold his ear to the ground during the year of our Lord 

 1906. We quote as follows from a recent issue of the 

 Irrigator, headed "Government Irrigation" : 



"It is now reported that the Umatilla government 

 irrigation project has been permanently and finally 

 abandoned. So the telegraphic dispatches from Wash- 

 ington stated on Sunday last. As a matter of fact it 

 was found over a year ago that the scheme was imprac- 

 ticable ; but those in charge of the preliminary work held 

 on and on and kept spending money, in a way that a 

 private individual or corporation would have consid- 

 ered unwise, to say the least. 



"And yet Mr. Newell and his underlings have been 



and its impracticability for private or .corporate inter- 

 ests, has been time and 'again pointed out by such men 

 as ex-Congressman Malcolm A. Moody, United States 

 Senator C. W. Fulton, Gov. Geo. M. Chamberlain, Con- 

 gressman Williamson, and practically every citizen in 

 the vicinity of the lands. 



"But no. There would be no glory in the simple 

 diversion of a couple of hundred cubic feet of water, 

 which would only mean, the reclaiming of a few thou- 

 sand acres, and the adding to the crops of Oregon at 

 least a million tons of alfalfa a year, or to her income, 

 say, $3,000,000 per annum. 



"And again, the scheme would be too easy, not com- 

 plicated enough, not giving enough work for the legal 

 branches of the service. And so the whole field is aban- 

 doned, after an expenditure of probably $200,000 in ex- 

 perimental work. 



"But the end is not yet, for there will be a change 

 in the reclamation service some of these days." 



