202 



THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



SYSTEMATIC AID TO SETTLERS IS FIRST NEED 



A Notable Address by Elwood Mead before the Governors' Conference at Denver 



FOR the past seven 

 years I have had the 

 privilege of working for 

 a government that has 

 shown great wisdom and 

 sagacity in its so- 

 cial and industrial legis- 

 lation. Nowhere has this 

 been more conspicuous 

 than in its land and 

 water laws and the pol- 

 icy followed in irrigation 

 development. In this it 

 has blazed trails which 

 this country can follow 

 to advantage. Recently 

 I explained to Governor 

 Johnson, of California, 

 the methods by which 

 Victoria, one of the 

 Australian States, is se- 

 curing settlers on its ir- 

 rigated lands and aiding 

 them to rapidly become 

 self-supporting and pros- 

 perous. He was greatly 

 interested and. asked me 

 to come to this conven- 

 tion as a delegate from 

 California and explain 

 what I had told him. 

 Believing that a national 

 policy of aid to settlers 

 on irrigated lands will 

 prove of immense value 



in the developing of this country and stop the drift 

 of American farmers to other lands, I availed my- 

 self of the Governor's suggestion, and did this the 

 more readily because of the opportunity of meeting 

 many whom I had formerly known. 



The absence of adequate financial help for set- 

 tlers, during the first five years, is the main cause 

 for the stagnation in irrigation development in this 

 country, and for the calling of this conference. One 

 only needs to put himself in the place of the settler 

 to realize what a costly and serious venture it is 

 to attempt to transform unimproved land into an 

 irrigation farm and how much danger there is to the 

 man of small capital that the attempt will prove a 

 disaster. ' Before the settler can have any return 

 from his land he must do many things not required 

 in an unirrigated country. A house must be built, 

 ditches dug, land cleared and graded, seed sown and 

 the somewhat difficult art of irrigation mastered 

 under untried conditions before he can have any 

 return. While this is being done there is no income. 

 His scanty capital is being swallowed up in living 

 expenses. Often there is much hardship for himself 

 and his family. Many a poor settler's wife has aged 

 ten years in ten months. If money has to be bor- 



ELWOOD MEAD 



Former Chairman of the State Water Commission of Vic- 

 toria, who ivill soon return to Australia 

 to take up his former duties. 



rowed, interest rates are 

 excessive and all com- 

 bine to discourage those 

 to whom these condi- 

 tions are strange and 

 new. 



To these have been 

 added, in recent years, 

 great increases in 

 charges for land and 

 water. Great dams and 

 costly and permanent 

 works mean much high- 

 er water charges than 

 were paid by the earlier 

 generation of irrigators, 

 until in many cases the 

 marvel is not that many 

 fail, but that any endure. 

 With water rights cost- 

 ing from $40.00 to $60.00 

 per acre, and with the 

 present western interest 

 rates, the chances are all 

 against the success of 

 the settler who has less 

 than $5,000 or $6,000 

 capital, and the question 

 which now needs to be 

 decided is whether this 

 nation is to restrict op- 

 portunities under na- 

 tional or private works 

 to men with this or 

 larger capital, or en- 

 courage poorer men by helping them to improve 

 their farms. 



Thus far in America we have almost entirely 

 ignored the requirements of colonization and settle- 

 ment. We have looked upon the building of irriga- 

 tion works and the marketing of irrigation securi- 

 ties as the problems of irrigation development. We 

 have not given enough thought to the obstacles 

 which confront the farmer in completing the work 

 of reclamation, and the risks and hardships imposed 

 on himself and his family when they undertake the 

 development of raw land, and the payment of high 

 charges now imposed. Another mistake has been 

 to regard irrigation enterprises as something which 

 could be paid for quickly. We have taken it for 

 granted that if they were once built the farmer 

 would come forward and foot the bills. The actual 

 facts are entirely different. Irrigation works do not 

 create irrigated agriculture. The money spent on 

 dams and canals must be followed by an equal or 

 greater expenditure for houses, farm buildings, 

 fences, grading and ditching fields before the water 

 can be used and irrigation works have either reve- 

 nue or productive value. 



Owing to settlers not being able to obtain 



