Santa Fe daily New Mexican. [volume] (Santa Fe, N.M.) 1885-1897, 1893-10-18
IRRIGATION CONGRESS.
Its Good Work Educating the Press
and Pubiic-lrrIsatiOn Ma
tiOnal Necessity.

Except that of tariff, there is no sub
ject more vital to the welfare of the ma
ton than that which is under discussion
by the International Irrigation congress,
now in session at Los Angeles.
1t is too much the fashion to think of
irrigation as an appliance conducive
only to the reclamation of desert lands
where fruit growing can be made profit
able. But irrigation of fruit lands is de-
stined to be among the least, though still
magnifcently beneficial, use of water.
| Let 1t lie remembered that the prod
ucts of tho soil form incomparably the
greater part of the exports of the United
States. Let it further be remembered
that cereal crops from great, if not
the greatest, part of agricultural ex-
ports. Let it further be kept in mind
that eminent statisticians have proven
that if the rate of increase of our urban
population which has been tabulated
for the past decade shall continue for
twenty more years the whole farming
| area of the United States, as such area
now is constituted, will be required to
feed the people of the country. Let it
also be kept in mind that of arabic land,
properly SO called, the United States
hardly has an acre left open to home
steaders, and the not remote failure of a
source of foreign money in exchange for
American grain becomes serious con-
sideration.
1t is we'll to carry ones imagination q
e., III 60 ri {1y
hence all the arabic land of this country
will be barely sufficient for the produc-
ton of grain to supply its people, how
many weary will elapse until We become
a grain importing nation? How far
distant is the time in which we shall
have to pay n yearls tribute to Asia or
to some Latin republic for grain, in
stead of collecting, as we now do, a
huge grain revenue from Europe? These
questions are not Utopian. They will
become practical issues in the lifetime of
our children, unless by some new acqui-
sition of grain area they be averted.
| At this point the Importance of the
irrigation congress becomes apparent.
Millions upon millions of acres of the
so-called desert lands can be made to
produce grain more abundantly than the
best wheat lands of our arabic regions.
The granaries of the old world long
we're on the irrigated soil of Egypt.
Experience has proved that irriga-
tion can bring forth large harvests
from the sage-brush soils of Colo
RADIO, California, Montana, Idaho, New
Mexico, Arizona, and the western wastes
of Kansas. An area larger than that of
New England, now lying desolate in the
far west, can be made to produce the
food of millions.
| The irrigation question has assumed
such importance as to have induced the
administration to instruct its diplomatic
agents to gather statistics from all foreign
countries in which water is applied artifi-
cially to crops, and to present them to
the congress now in session. A part of
the business of the congress will be to
suggest means of irrigation, consider
state or national control, and to prepare
a statement that will be presented to con-
gress as a basis of national effort toward
most important work.-Chicago Inter-
| Ocean.