Barton County democrat. [volume] (Great Bend, Kan.) 1885-1915, 1894-11-29
IRRIGATION.
| Meeting of the Irrigation Convention -
Observation-Disclosures Discussed.


Meeting of the Irrigation Convention -
Observation-Disclosures Discussed.
HUTCHINSON, Kan, Nov. ga two
days session of the Kansas Irrigation
association opened in this city Friday
There are several big guns here from
all parts of Kansas. G. O. Cannon,
president of the Mormon church OF
Utah, was elected chairman. He
will speak on the history of Utah
as affected by irrigation. Short
papers were read by practical irrigators
from several western Kansas counties
Secretary Coburn, of the Kansas
state board of agriculture gave his
views on irrigation as follows:
Most of our people are past the point OF need
Ing to be told that irrigation is good thing. or
even largely essential. What they want to
learn now is the ways and means; instead OF
gllttering generaiiteS they need to be told
where there is water; its depth below the sur
race; the cost and capacity OF wells, and the
machinery forts most certain. economical and
rapid lifting; carefully calculated plans for
storage reservoirs, the times and methods of
the waters most judicious application. These
and kindred problems which confront the Kan
saS farmer have never pressed for solution
as during the last two years. Speaking for
Kansas agriculture in its larger sense for Kan
sas as a whole, without in the remotest degree
d1sparaging the Importance of irrigation,
the need of giving it that large measure of con-
sideration that we are in duty bound to give it,
am convinced there is another Kindred mat
ter pressing, of equal, if not paramount con-
sequence, although the utterance of such
conviction may be little short or
the rankest heresy in the Kansas state
irrigation convention Please do not infer
from this that am not much and enthuSi-
ast1ca1ly in favor of irrigation as any man from
anywhere The point make is that the mass
OF our people who live outside of this marvel
Gus Arkansas valley and beyond reach of its
wonderful underfiow should give better APP
| probation to the rainfall: to harvesting the
| wealth of water copiously, benefciently
sent them without money and without cost,
and seeking (and finding, if permitted to do SOY
| THAT inc comparable reservoir, the ample bosom
| OF mother earth, where it is always within
root reach, without wells, without pumping,
without bitches: where every hour of the night
and day its ife-giving moisture is in its perfect
way ready to help endow US with such wealth
| OF flower and fruit, of grass and golden grain as
the people OF few countries are ever given to
see. This must be attained by deeper, moro
thorough loosening, breaking up of the impervi-
Gus, compacted Sub-Soil, that it may absorb
and retain the rainfall rather than reject it,
and as is now the case, compelling it to find its
way to the rivers and the sea, in floods that
nearly every year do millions of damage to our
| fellow-citiZens in other states. Acting on this
| idea along with that OF irrigation, which we
| are to encourage, there can be. there is no
| doubt about the wonderful future of Kan
SaS agriculture This is a part of our
great problem that van be solved
the past ten years show that the average an
| nual rainfall in Kingman county has been
| % inches; in Ford and Trego counties about 10
| inches; even in Kearny, Greeley and Wallace
counties about 10 inches; in Decatur, Osborne
and Cloud counties about % inches, and in
! Manhattan more than 90 inches. Observers OF
such matters tell that even these smaller
quantities of water while not all that would be
| desirable will, if judiyiously conserved and
utilized, welI-nigh give a crop every year
and in most years yields that are prodigious.
The sort of irrigation problems that confront
| US in the main radically different from
| those in any other like territory. Whenever
any large proportion Of state is artificially
| watered it must be from wells instead of
! streams, and most of the help, most needed is
| along that line. In honor congress should. at
! least, help to locate and determine the
| water supply; but we cannot wait congress;
we must be up and doing for ourselves; we Will
| have, too. to rely chiefly individual enter
prise. am deeply imbued with the idea that
the way for US to irrigate is to irrigate-and to
| subsoil. Kansas salvation in this direction
| must be worked out by Kansas effort. The
] lawmakers must rise with to the Importance
| OF this movement and take iI by the hand. BY
judicious enactments and proper financial sup
port the state should within the next ninety
days judiciously provide for a line OF progress
| tion, observation, Superintendent and advisory
aid, thus doing at very small cost per capita
| a part OF the work that the individual canno5
| afford to do. The people in two-thirds of Kan
sas will be grieVously disappointed if this is