356 HEARINGS BEFORE COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE. 
Mr. Mrap. In Italy. 
There is another phase of economical use of water in different parts 
of the West that we are dealing with in California, and I speak of it 
here simply as an illustration of the kind of questions we are study- 
ing in the arid region. I can explain that by giving a concrete illus- 
tration. 
In the valley of the Lagrange River, in California, they have 
country that can be farmed without irrigation. It is very much the 
same kind of country you have in Texas. Farming is hazardous. 
The only sure crop they have there is wheat, and it 1s impossible to 
grow wheat continuously on the same land without destroying its fer- 
tility; and they have reached a point where they must diversify their 
crops. There is a community of farmers that settled and occupied 
that whole country. They had achange all atonce. They have spent 
over $2,000,000 in building canals. They raised the money by levying 
an assessment on the land of the farmers there, and the canals are the 
common property of the farmers in those districts. One of the canals 
irrigates 80,000 acres of land and another irrigates almost the same 
amount. There are 150,000 acres under the two canals. 
Here is a community of several thousand farmers beginning to irri- 
gate for the first time. They have to handle several hundred miles of 
canal and to manage a distribution system that in order to be efficient 
and successful needs the same kind of organization that is needed by 
a railroad or express system. What happened the first year was this: 
Work began to be active, and they did not know how much water 
each man ought to have. They had not made any apportionment of 
the supply to each individual. Proper arrangements were made for 
the regulation of gates, and they left everybody free to take water 
as they pleased. The man at the upper end of the eanal took more 
than he needed and the man at the lower end went without. At the 
end of the first season they were up against this proposition. They 
either had to spend half a million doliars more to build a canal so 
large that that wasteful use could not absorb the supply, if they were 
going to supply the man at the lower end of the aitotes and laterals, or 
they had to inaugurate some sort of economic system of distribution. 
So we have been petitioned by both of those districts to assist them 
this year in a determination of how much water is needed for an acre 
of land in that country so that they can make their regulations fit 
their necessities, a proper method of policing, and the establishment of 
by-laws and regulations to determine how their gates shall be raised 
and lowered. They also ask us to begin now a record there to deter- 
mine whether or not the leakage of those canals, the wastage in the 
use of water by farmers, is going to cause the soil water to rise and 
flood out the lower lands as it has in some other cases, so as to force 
them to institute a drainage system entirely or their crops are lost. 
We have that sume question of how to set about making water, under 
the ignorant and unskillful use of the beginner, do a larger duty in a 
_ great many of the communities of the West. Take the Yakima Valley 
in Washington. There is a valley that is very fertile, very productive, 
and hence it is the scene of an active settlement and development in 
irrigation, and they now have canals that will water probably 200,000 
acres of land. I do not remember the exact area. They have about 
100,000 acres under irrigation, and last year they used the whole sup- 
