32 IRRIGATION INVESTIGATIONS IN CALIFORNIA. 



with in Cliico said that img-ation was not needed for either fruit or grain 

 growing. The second said it would bring malaria and attendant ills and 

 destroy the health of the valley. The owner of an in-igation canal said that 

 while he could irrigate, he did so only in a desultory fashion, and did not 

 regard it as beneficial. What I leanied of grain growing and what I saw 

 of the fruit trees and the fruit being gathered did not tend to confir)ii 

 these opinions. While it would be possible to make such wasteful use of 

 water as to injure health, the experience of southern California, Arizona, 

 and New Mexico, where the summers are hotter than in the Sacramento 

 Vallev, shows that this result does not follow the careful use of water. 

 The causes for the opposition to irrigation must be looked for elsewhere. 

 They have in part been explained. (Others are not obscure. 



THE DESIRE FOB LARGE ENTERPRISES. 



The bonanza wlieat farm and the bonanza orchard were in accord Avith 

 the spirit which from the first has dominated the industries of California. 

 It is a State of vast enterprises. Men pride themselves on great under- 

 takings and on doing whatever they undertake on a large scale. Wheat 

 can be grown in this way. The man Avith capacity for organization can 

 look after the growing of 10,000 acres of wlieat as easily as 10 acres. It is 

 an industry freed from detail. There is a period of seed time and harvest, 

 and long intervals of complete freedom. It has none of the petty incidents 

 which go with the management of a farm where there are chickens and 

 pigs, where cows are to be milked, and butter and eggs marketed, where 

 each month has its duties, and where there is no time when something does 

 not need attention. This sort of farming- comes with high-priced land and 

 a dense population, but it does not appeal to the imagination like the plowing 

 of fields so large that turning a single furro\v requires a day's journey, or 

 the cultivation of the ground with steam plows and haiTows which require 

 five-mule teams to operate them. The cutting, thrashing, and sacking of 

 grain at a single ojjeration is spectacular as well as eff"ective. In this 

 respect it resembles the range cattle business in its best days. The owner 

 of a i-ange herd was more than a money-maker, he was practically monarch 

 of all he surveyed. The cowboy on horseback was an aristocrat; the irri- 

 gator on foot, working through the hot summer days in the nuid of irrigated 

 fields, was a groveling wretch. In cowboy land the in-igation ditch has 

 always been regarded with disfavor because it is the badge and symbol of a 

 despised occup.ition. The same feeling, but in a less degree, has ])revailed 

 in the wlieat-growiiig districts of California, and for much the same reason. 



