106 



THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



known fact that the transactions in connection 

 with the Salt river and Gila river irrigation projects 

 in Arizona did not happen years ago, and could not, 

 in any event, have happened over ten years ago, 

 and during all of that time the present director 

 and a goodly number of his assistants have been ac- 

 tive in the work. Furthermore, if Secretary Fisher 

 will read the report of the Board of Army Engineers 

 that investigated these reclamation projects he will 

 learn that their criticism of the works was in line 

 with the criticism recently made by the sub-com- 

 mittee. 



It is presumed that the secretary has been so 

 exceedingly busy that he has not had time to go 

 carefully over this report, and it is feared that some 

 of his subordinates may be working hand in glove 

 with Reclamation Service officials, and that he, in 

 that way, has not been permitted to get all of the 

 facts, although it was clearly his duty to make a 

 careful study of the report of the army engineers. 



It may not be out of place to state further in 

 this connection that this report of the Board of 

 Army Engineers has never had a very wide circula- 

 tion. The only copy the IRRIGATION AGE has been 

 able to secure was borrowed from a Reclamation 

 Service official who insisted upon its return within 

 a given time, and this in itself would indicate that 

 they were not particularly desirous of having the 

 information contained in that report spread broad- 

 cast. 



It is a strange fact that the report of the 

 Board of Army Engineers was not given more 

 attention by the daily press of the country. This 

 may possibly have been due to the peculiar wording 

 of the report, which was framed in the style of all 

 reports emanating from army headquarters or army 

 officials. 



Naturally, this board was inclined to skim over 

 some of the more flagrant features of the irrigation 

 work throughout the country. They, moreover, 

 were not the likeliest class of men to appoint on a 

 committee of this kind, as their studies have 

 naturally been along other lines which would not 

 familiarize them with the details of irrigation de- 

 velopment. 



A committee composed of leading engineers 

 picked from various sections of the country who 

 have no bias in the matter and who have no intent 

 other than to give actual facts as they exist would 

 have presented a report with more clear conclusions. 



Secretary Fisher states that his first assistant, 

 Secretary Adams, is held responsible for three 

 rulings, two of which were made during the admin- 

 istration of Secretary Garfield. This, to say the 

 least, is not a very high compliment to his prede- 

 cessor in office. 



In a recent dispatch from Wash- 

 Galloway ington we note that Dr. B. T. Gal- 

 Statements loway, chief of the Bureau of Plant 

 Are Industry, states that the Depart- 

 Questioned ment of Agriculture is working hard 

 to overcome the recognized dangers- 

 confronting farming on irrigated lands. Dr. Gal- 

 loway's testimony was given before the House 

 committee on expenditures in the agricultural 

 department, and he informed this committee that 

 the department hoped to put irrigation farming 

 on a firm basis for the future, and that the danger 

 lies not only in the alkali in the soils of irrigated 

 lands, which wash down into other lands, but also 

 in what the expert terms the "wearing out" by 

 saturation. 



In Dr. Galloway's testimony he states that 

 he will go so far as to say that, so far as he 

 knows, there has never been any long continued 

 irrigation in semi-arid climates anywhere in the 

 world. 



This is rather a peculiar statement to come 

 from a man who holds so important a position as 

 Dr. Galloway. It is a well known fact that irri- 

 gation has been practiced in various countries of 

 the world and on some of the land for centuries. 

 This is true in China, Egypt. Peru and some of 

 the sections of our southwestern states where agri- 

 culture, under irrigation, is being carried on suc- 

 cessfully today on land that, the best knowledge 

 we may obtain informs us, was being irrigated at 

 the time of the Spanish invasion, and a study of 

 the first bottom lands of the Rio Grande valley 

 below El Paso will show the markings of pre- 

 historic ditches, and these lands also show fertility 

 beyond that of any soil known in the United States. 

 Hence they could not have been over-irrigated, nor 

 could the humus have been washed out of the soil 

 in the elimination of alkali. On the other hand, 

 crops could not have been successfully grown had 

 alkali proved a serious menace. These relics of 

 early irrigation indicate that there were engineers 

 of wonderful ability in those days and they, no 

 doubt, had some plan to cope with the conditions 

 that confront our present bureau heads in the 

 Department of Agriculture. 



It is reasonable to suppose that where land is 

 heavily charged with alkali, and where the land 

 has been over-irrigated, and the ground water table 

 raised to the surface, bringing with it deleterious 

 salts, a system of leaching by drainage should, 

 no doubt, be carried on. Where these conditions 

 exist to an unusual degree the leaching process 

 carries away with it the humus and life-giving salts 

 of the soil along with the alkali. 



It would seem that a reasonable study, such 



