LAND reclamation policies in the united states 
33 
Up to 35 or 40 years the curve for all projects included for 1909-10 
and that for 1919-20 do not differ more widely than would be ex- 
pected, considering the difference in the data on which they are based. 
It seems likely, therefore, that the curve for 1919-20 is a fairly cor- 
rect index of the experience of irrigation projects large and small. 
The percentages representing the extent to which irrigation enter- 
prises are in use at 5-year intervals from the date of beginning, read 
from the 1919-20 curve, are as shown in Table 17. 
Table 17. — Extent to which the estimated full capacity of irrigation enterprises 
is utilized at various periods after construction oegins. 
Five years... 
Ten years 
Fifteen years. 
Twenty years 
Per cent. 
Twenty-five years 
Thirty years 
Thirty-five years.. 
Forty years 
Per cent. 
The curves for 1909-10 show, as is to be expected, that the rate 
of utilization is much higher for the small projects than for the 
large ones. 
The curves show plainly the immediate cause for the financial 
failure of irrigation enterprises — the very low rate at which the 
land included is brought into production. The figures given on 
pages 27 and 28 show the same wide difference between land in 
projects and the acreage irrigated. The figures and the curves taken 
together show that the unused land is distributed through projects 
generally and not concentrated in certain projects that are largely 
unusued. The most obvious conclusion is that reclamation works 
are overdeveloped, and the equally obvious remedy is to limit new 
construction to the effective demand for new land. But the fact that 
the experience has been so universal and. so long continued indicates 
that overdevelopment is not the only cause, for failure. 
In the very nature of the case, construction must precede settle- 
ment and use. Farmers can not maintain themselves on the land 
until it is reclaimed. The development of farms and farmers is a 
gradual, time-consuming process and the heavy expenditures for 
reclamation in advance of possible use make the holding of land not 
in use a practical impossibility, for the farmer, if he is to meet his 
payments for the cost of reclamation, and for the investor if the 
farmer does not make his payments. 
The real problem in reclamation work is bringing the land into 
use promptly enough to prevent financial failure caused by heavy 
carrying costs chargeable to land that is not producing. The dif- 
ficulty of accomplishing this increases with increased cost and with 
the size of enterprises, and, of course, with overdevelopment. 
Various methods of solving this problem have been attempted. 
Private enterprises operating under various State and Federal 
laws have attempted to solve the problem by extensive advertising 
and high-pressure sales methods generally, but these have failed 
because they aggravate the trouble by increasing the cost, and be- 
