THE MIRACLE OF IRRIGATION 



This is the miracle of irrigation upon its social side. 



Irrigation is the foundation of truly scientific agricult- 

 ure. Tilling the soil by dependence upon rainfall is, by 

 comparison, like a stage-coach to the railroad, like the 

 tallow dip to the electric light. The perfect conditions 

 for scientific agriculture would be presented by a place 

 where it never rained, but where a system of irrigation 

 furnished a never-failing water supply which could be 

 adjusted to the varying needs of different plants. It is 

 difficult for those who have been in the habit of thinking 

 of irrigation as merely a substitute for rain to grasp the 

 truth that precisely the contrary is the case. Kain is the 

 poor dependence of those who cannot obtain the advan- 

 tages of irrigation. The western farmer who has learned 

 to irrigate thinks it would be quite as illogical for him 

 to leave the watering of his potato-patch to the caprice 

 of the clouds as for the housewife to defer her wash-day 

 until she could catch rain-water in her tubs. 



The supreme advantage of irrigation consists not more 

 in the fact that it assures moisture regardless of the 

 weather than in the fact that it makes it possible to ap- 

 ply that moisture just when and just where it is needed. 

 For instance, on some cloudless day the strawberry-patch 

 looks thirsty and cries for water through the unmistak- 

 able language of its leaves. In the Atlantic States it 

 probably would not rain that day, such is the perversity 

 of nature, but if it did it would rain alike on the just 

 and unjust on the strawberries, which would be bene- 

 fited by it, and on the sugar-beets, which crave only the 

 uninterrupted sunshine that they may pack their tiny 

 cells with saccharine matter. In the arid region there is 

 practically no rain during the growing season. Thus the 



47 



