THE IRRIGATION AGE 



VOL. XXXI 



CHICAGO, APRIL, 1916. 



No. 6 



THE IRRIGATION AGE 



With which is Merged 



The National Land and Irrigation Journal 



MODERN IRRIGATION THE DRAINAGE JOURNAL 



THE IRRIGATION ERA MID-WEST 



ARID AMERICA THE PARK HERALD 



THE WATER USERS' BULLETIN THE IRRIGATOR 



D. H. ANDERSON 



PUBLISHER, 



Published Monthly at 30 No. Dearborn Street, 

 CHICAGO 



Entered as second-class matter October 3, 1897, at the Postoffire 

 at Chicago. 111., under Act of March t, 1879. 



D. H. ANDERSON, Editor 



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Official organ Federation of Tree Growing Clubs of 

 America. D. H. Anderson, Secretary. 



Interesting to Advertisers 



It may interest advertisers to know that The Irriga- 

 tion Age is the only publication in the world having an. 

 actual paid in advance circulation among individual irriga- 

 tors and large irrigation corporations. It is read regularly 

 by all interested in this subject and has readers in all parts- 

 of the world. The Irrigation Age is 31 years old and is 

 the pioneer and only publication of its class in the world. 



At last the Government has reached 

 Forty Acre the conclusion which the settler on 

 Unit Plan the reclamation projects has con- 



May Now tended for for years, that the system 



Be Changed of dividing irrigation districts into 

 forty-acre tracts is a mistake. Save 

 in fruit growing districts there is no exception to 

 the now conceded contention. And even the fruit 

 grower, who in recent years has been compelled to 

 contend with seepage, frosts and other calamities, 

 has concluded that the forty-acre tract is a mistake. 



A bulletin just issued by the Agricultural De- 

 partment gives some of the findings from a survey 

 in Chester county, Pennsylvania. In that region, 

 where dairying and intensive farming are generally 

 practiced, it has been found that the forty-acre farm 

 is not large enough. On less than forty acres, we 

 are told, the difficulties of success with the type 

 of farming most prevalent in that region, namely, 

 dairying, are so great that only one man in sixteen 

 was able to make more than $1,000 a year for his 

 labor. 



It was shown that the relative cost of equip- 

 ment for the small farm is so high as to make the 

 cost of operation much greater, relatively, than on 

 larger farms of the same type. Of the idea that 

 the small farm is the ideal of American agriculture, 

 the authors of the bulletin embodying the report 



of the survey say : "It is a distinct fallacy. Very 

 small farms are difficult to make successful any- 

 where, under American conditions, and it is only 

 the exceptional man who is equal to the task." 



If it is the exceptional man who can make a 

 fair living on a highly developed forty-acre tract in 

 Pennsylvania, where dairying is the principal in- 

 dustry, how can the Government expect the ordi- 

 nary homesteader on a Western irrigated farm to 

 support a family on a forty-acre tract of wholly un- 

 developed sagebrush land ? 



Drainage Is 

 the Great 

 Crying Need 

 of the West 



"Drain the water-logged lands and 

 give the farmers on the Govern- 

 ment projects the use of cheaper- 

 money." These are the two prob- 

 lems which the entire West is now 

 endeavoring to solve. 



Drainage is the great immediate crying need, 

 and the sooner the reclamation project officials take 

 steps for a universal application of aid, the sooner 

 will they make sure of the future success of the 

 undertakings. 



On the Boise and Minidoka projects some ex- 

 cellent work has been done and the result is highly 

 gratifying. 



But on the Gunnison project in -Colorado, at 



