THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



77 



in fact, the vital point on which the feasibility of the 

 whole plan hinges is, how much of an annual tax couid 

 the land within this reclamation district stand without 

 its becoming a burden that the property owners would 

 be unwilling to incur? It certainly must be limited to 

 a small percentage of the income that the cultivation of 

 this land will produce after being reclaimed. This tax, 

 however, must produce a sum that will not only pay the 

 interest on the bond issue, but also lorm a sinking fund 

 which, properly invested and compounded, will pay off 

 the principal at the end of the fifty-year period. 



While a great deal of this land will by reclamation 

 be made very valuable (in some cases even exceeding the 

 $300 to $500 per acre valuation claimed in the Chroni- 

 cle's artcle), and while the owners of such land could, 

 and in most cases would, most gladly stand a compara- 

 tively heavy tax on account of the benefits derived, the 

 tax itself should be kept down to a figure that could be 

 borne without hardship by the poorest grazing land in 

 the district. 



Taking the entire fifteen hundred thousand acres 

 as one body, and it seems reasonable that the expendi- 

 ture of $20 per acre for dredging, draining and reclaim- 

 ing would increase the value of every acre in the entire 

 district at least $50, and if the payment of that $20 

 could be strung along in annual installments forty-five 

 years, the property owners could pay it out of the crops 

 without ever feeling it, particularly if it were provided 

 that any owner could pay the pro rata share of the bond 

 issue outstanding against his land at the end of any five- 

 year period, and by so doing stop interest for the bal- 

 ance of the fifty years that the bonds run. 



To one who has given this matter study the most 

 natural question to ask is this : By what system of dredg- 

 ing can 250 miles of river channel be cleared of 750,- 

 000,000 cubic yards of debris at a cost so low that a tax 

 of $20 per acre on the 1,500,000 acres benefited will 

 pay the bill ? One year ago the question would have re- 

 mained unanswered ; but in that year there has appeared 

 a dredging device which the best posted engineers in 

 California, after thorough and prolonged tests, state 

 unequivocally is destined to revolutionize sand, silt, 

 gravel and mud dredging and reclamation work and 

 that it is the one thing needed to make the reclamation 

 of the Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys a practical 

 certainty. It is known as the Bed Eock Pneumatic 

 Pipe Dredge, and is now in practical commercial opera- 

 tion in the city of Sacramento, where it has proven be- 

 3'ond question that it can succesfully lift the mining de- 

 bris from the bed of the Sacramento River and transport 

 it any reasonable distance at a cost of installation and 

 operation (considering capacity) far below that oi any 

 other method of dredging known today. 



It now remains for the people of Central Califor- 

 nia, who are certainly awake to the seriousness of the 

 existing situation, to face a business problem in a busi- 

 nesslike way and to apply the remedy to their own 

 troubles without waiting for assistance from Washing- 

 ton. Their representatives in Congress will doubtless 

 see that the California Waterways receive their fair 

 share of Congressional appropriations, but if that share 

 should be sufficient to pay the interest on the cost of 

 practical reclamation of their low lands it is all that can 

 be reasonably expected. 



The floods of last Winter alone are charged with 



a damage of over $30,000,000. An intelligent expendi- 

 ture of as much more will make a recurrence of such 

 calamity forever impossible and will add over $100,000,- 

 000 to the tangible wealth of Central California. The 

 property owners who are directly affected should re- 

 member that 



"Half way measures ain't no account 

 In this world or the next." 



They must get after their State representatives and 

 Senators and impress on them the necessity for the 

 early passage of a bill that will be legal authority for 

 the carrying out of one vast comprehensive plan of per- 

 manent reclamation that will make every one of those 

 fifteen hundred thousand acres of waste land an income 

 earner for all time to come. 



The severest blow ever dealt to the prosperity of 

 the State of California was the necessity that confronted 

 her legislature in the early '80s, of making choice be- 

 tween her two most important citizens, the farmer and 

 the miner. Hydraulic mining had made California 

 world-famous, but hydraulic mining in Central Califor- 

 nia was then destroying the fertility of her richest valley 

 lands. The struggle was long and fierce, but none shall 

 say at this late date that the legislature of California 

 did not choose the proper horn of the dilemma when it 

 issued the edict that practically destroyed an industry 

 in which over $100,000,000 capital was legitimately and 

 most profitably invested. A quarter of a century has 

 since elapsed and still no one has shown how the golden 

 crops of the Sierras can be reaped without endangering 

 the still more valuable crops of the valley lands. 



But if it should be shown that the Pneumatic Pipe 

 Dredge can not only take the old hydraulic tailings out 

 of the beds of the rivers where they have lain so long 

 and where they are a continual, ever-recurring source of 

 trouble, to make of them a protecting bulwark defending 

 the valley lands against the rivers themselves; but can 

 also elevate and transport new tailings at a small frac- 

 tion more than the cost of elevating and transporting 

 water, is it not clear that the hydraulic miner would no 

 longer have to depend on the running streams to carry 

 away his tailings, but could transport them to dumping 

 grounds where they could do no possible harm to the 

 agricultural interest* of the valleys. This would mean 

 that the miner and the farmer of California will once 

 more march shoulder to shoulder in terms of perfect 

 amity, each ministering to the needs of the other, each 

 in his own way aiding largely in the prosperity and 

 general welfare of the entire country. It would mean 

 the return of the Golden Age of California, when every 

 gulch gave forth the echo-boom of hyraulic giants, forc- 

 ing the treasure-laden hills to give up their long hidden 

 stores of golden gravel. 



THE IRRIGATION AGE, 1 year $1.00 



THE PRIMER OF IRRIGATION, a finely illustrated 



300-page book 2.00 



II both are ordered send .... 2.50 



Address, IRRIGATION AGE. 



112 Dea.rborr\ Street, Chicago. 



