HEARINGS BEFORE COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE. 371 
Mr. Meap. The studies in Italy were undertaken because there 
were no reports on Italian irrigation within the last half century, and 
in that time it has come to be the foremost irrigating country in 
Europe. I went there to see what had brought about that supremacy, 
what their administrative methods were. I went there with the idea 
that its lessons would be for the arid region, but they are both for 
the arid and the humid regions. In the valley of the Po, where I spent 
the entire two months that Iwas over there, the sections are the most 
densely populated of any part of Europe, and more densely populated 
than Egypt. There are agricultural districts there that supply 800 
people to the square mile, and the lessons of Italian irrigation are the 
great success and ability that they have shown in the distribution of 
water. They have worked out a system there by which an association 
of farmers, 14,000 irrigants working under one system, operate 9,000 
miles of canals, and in fifty years there has not been a lawsuit nor a 
failure to pay their water rent. Itis a remarkable system. I saw 
another section where there are 8,000 irrigators working under a 
system. 
Mr. Henry. Is this in northern Italy? 
Mr. Mrap. Yes, sir; along the Po. That is the very thing in which 
we are weak in this country, in the organization to work together 
peacefully and harmoniously. 
Mr. Apams. Is that a purely business organization without any 
connection whatever, semi or complete, with the Government? 
Mr. Mzap. Yes. 
Mr. Apams. It is absolutely an independent private enterprise. 
Mr. Mrap. Yes, sir. The one that has 14,000 members rents a large 
number of Government canals and operates them. The canals were 
turned over to them by the Government to operate them. This sys- 
tem in Italy was created by the then minister of agriculture of Italy, 
and he was the first president of the parent volunteer association. It 
rew out of exactly the same kind of difficulties we are having in the 
est at the present time. 
Mr. Brooks. Have those difficulties been one of the major causes 
of trouble among irrigators in the West? 
Mr. Meap. Yes. 
Mr. Brooxs. And the streams there are appropriated a good many 
times over in volume? 
Mr. Mrap. Yes. 
Mr. Brooks. Do you know any facts about any of those instances? 
Mr. Mzap. Oh, yes; there is no doubt about overappropriation 
there, but I think if you can get the farmers along a stream, , the 
farmers that live under a canal, to realize that they are part of a sys- 
tem, that they all have a common interest in a common water supply 
and get them to organize together for its distribution, you get over 
all those difficulties. 
Mr. Brooxs. You mean that with the adoption of a proper system, 
even though a stream is appropriated eight or ten times, as it some- 
times is, the water will, to some extent, at least, be divided? 
Mr. Mnap. Yes, sir. me 
Mr. Apams. Does that association embrace all the farmers within 
the irrigated territory? 
Mr. Mreap. Yes; of that particular district. 
Mr. Apams. It takes them all in, every one? 
