366 HEARINGS BEFORE COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE. 
with us and doing work. Thatis, we are working together along the 
lines of our work. Then they are doing a great deal of additional 
work on other lines, on local and special questions. 
Mr. Bureson. In what part of the United States is the most money 
being invested at this time in irrigation work? 
Mr. Mzap. Probably this year in California; last year it was 
Louisiana. There was more money going into irrigation, for the past 
two years, in Louisiana and Texas than in any other part of the 
United States. 
Mr. Brooxs. And that land is under private ownership? 
Mr. Mrap. Yes. 
Mr. Brooxs. And therefore not under the Interior Department? 
Mr. Mzap. All the land in California is under private ownership, 
too. 
Mr. Brooxs. And the same thing is true with regard to a good 
deal of the Kansas and Nebraska lands? 
Mr. Meap. Yes. 
Mr. Brooxs. And South Dakota lands? 
Mr. Meap. Yes. 
Mr. Brooxs. Then this work of yours is outside the field of the 
Interior Department? 
Mr. Mzap. The greater part of the work we are doing is on ground 
under private ownership. . 
Mr. Scorr. Is the work which has been done in Louisiana and 
Texas the result in any degree of your work, or done in any particular 
way under your advice, or was it undertaken wholly as a private 
enterprise and with private initiative? 
Mr. Merap. Private initiative entirely. 
Mir Bur.eson. But they benefited largely by the suggestions you 
made? 
Mr. Meap. I think we can claim one thing in Louisiana and Texas 
that would entitle us to an appropriation if we had never done any- 
thing else. That is, we showed the people down there how to build 
contours over which they could run their harvesters. They were 
building abrupt ditches, abrupt banks, on their contours to hold the 
water in particular places. We showed them how they did that thing 
in California, where there was a long rounded turn over which they 
could drive their harvesters. That is one improvement that we intro- 
duced in the rice cultivation. 
Mr. Grarr. Do you mean that you made the ditch wider and the 
approaches more gradual ? 
Mr. Mrap. Yes; and the banks. : 
Mr. Grarr. The banks more gradual, so they could drive right into 
the ditch and out of it again? 
Mr. Mrap. Yes. 
The Cuarrman. What have you done along the lines of the laws of 
the several States? You remember that was a point under discussion 
last year, and it was one of the wedges that restarted this appropria- 
tion after it had been allowed to lapse four years. 
Mr. Meav. Yes; I feel this way. The work we have done in that 
line has been of very great service. The passage of the Utah irrigation 
law, we are assured by the State engineer and others who were instru- 
mental in its passage, would not have been possible without it. 
The Cuarrman. Just state to the committee the difficulties you 
