OBSTACLES TO DEVELOPMENT. 29 



place foi" bonanza farms. They are far better suited to the ci-eation of 10 

 and 20 acre homes. 



CAIilFOKNIA, EGYPT, AND ITALY COMPARED. 



There are more acres of iirigable land in the San Joaquin Valley than are 

 now watered in Egypt from the Nile, where agriculture alone supports over 

 5,000,000 people, maintains a costly government, and pays the interest on 

 a national debt half as large as that of the United States. The area which 

 can be irrigated from the Sacramento is about equal to that irrigated in 

 Italy from the Po. The population of the California Valley is about 20 

 people to the square mile. In the Italian Valley it is nearly 300 people to 

 the square mile. The irrigated lands along the Nile support 543 persons 

 to the squai'e mile. Such a settlement of the Sacramento Valley would 

 more than double the present population of the State. It is believed that 

 an irrigated square mile in this valley will support as many people in 

 comfort as now live on an equal area in either of the other districts referred 

 to because neither of these surpasses California in the diversity or value of 

 its products or the e.xcellence of its markets. 



OBSTACLES TO DEVELOPMENT. 



In September last I saw a part of the Sacramento Valley in its most 

 unlovely aspect. One of the ti'ips taken was from Chico to Willows, two 

 towns about 30 miles apart, but the road followed made the distance trav- 

 eled about 35 miles. We crossed what is potentially one of the most fertile 

 and pi'omising agricultural districts on tliis continent. For scores of miles 

 the land rises by a gentle and uniform slope from the Sacramento River 

 toward the foothills on either side. Water would flow over every acre of 

 the country traversed without requiring much labor in its dii'ection or skill 

 in the location of lateral ditches. The plains of Lombardy are not better 

 suited to irrigation, nor the soil of the Nile delta more fertile than were 

 these lands originallv. For a half century they have been devoted to the 

 unremitting production of cereal crops. Each season the crop has been 

 harvested, the grain shipped away, and the straw burned, and nothing done 

 to replace the plant food withdrawn. A more exhaustive form of agriculture 

 can not be imagined. Although this siu'prising drain has gone on for fifty 

 years, it can not continue forever. Last year's crop was a failure, and fail- 

 ures will follow in rapid succession hereafter if a change in methods is not 

 soon made. It required only ten years of continuous grain farming at 

 Greeley, Colo., to reduce the average yield from -lO bushels to 12 bushels of ' 



