The age-herald., 1898-09-04
Systems of Irritation.

an average crop of corn in the hill region of Alabama, where perennial streams flow, does nothing more than return to the farmer who produces it, in connection with cotton, the corn he had consumed in>cul- tivating both crops. That is the endless chain.
 Fifteen bushels of corn to the acre holds no greater place in the farmers economy than to secure him in the privilege of mak- ing bale of cotton to four acres; and the marketing of the cotton at present prices allows him to discover that he has received about 15 cents a day for his years work net, taxes, state and national, paid; the lat ter on a rising scale and the farmer not high enough yet to school his children six months in the year, and thus lit them up to wider views of farming.
 Pursuing this inquiry, The Age-Herald finds that a farm of forty acres in the Murphree's valley, in which lies East Lake, has made for three years in succession, in- cluding 1898, not less than 75 bushels of corn to the acre. This crop has made to the owner 60 bushels over and above the as- stunned 15 bushels consumption of corn by man and beast in the production. As to fact, the farmer on the forty-acre tract feeds his surplus to dairy cows, and hogs, and reaps from the Birmingham market rich return from pork, butter and milk. The surplus corn in this case is traceabe to the increased fertility of the land derived from the scrapings from the COW lot. Thus the economy of dairying includes farming and vice versa. Continue the same system into the cotton field and there is a possible four bales to one acre in lieu of bale to four acres, for it is of record that the Georgia Agricultural society paid in the early seventies $500 premium to a farmer who made more than twenty-two hundred thin sandy land. Go yet further in the economies and convert the cotton into tex- tiles at a neighboring mill, built, operated and owned by the farmers, operated by members and their children, and we find the bale now worth $25 leap forward to $75 or $50. Times with silver lining lie along the line of these farming economies.
 In each of the three years, including 1898, at one period or another in the growing season, the corn on the forty-acre farm has suffered for moisture An abundant 0f la1 Fn fbo iEnia1 fertillza ton of the land, would have added largely to the yield of corn and to the de- pendent profits of the dairy and the hog pen
 The investigation which The Age-Herald undertakes to suggest is, the praetlcabllity of irrigating the farm lands of Alabama rivers that offer a supply at once abundant, convenient and perennial
 It is assumed that small areas only could come within system of irrigation. In the arid region of the west, the farmer who has entered 16O acres buys irrigating water for, say, five acres only, the remainder being devoted to pasture upon which horses, cattle and sheep live. The five acres irri- gated spring forward from a nominal value to s20o, up to $4O0 the acre. Last winter it appeared in the proceedings of congress that the government would have to feed 4,Co0 Indians whose lands had failed to pro- duce because white settlers on the Gila river, in Arizona, above the Indians, had consumed the water of that stream in their irrigating canals, and thus cut off the cus- tomary supply from the Red mems crops.
 A water-tight box, which many farmers can build with their own hands, say, fifty feet long, twelve feet wide and ten feet deep, will hold, in round numbers, 50.OOO gallons of waer.t Elevate this box on posts in a ten-acre cotton field, and as drouth continues apply 5000 gallons of water to the acre by means of hose and pipe as often as desired. The land having been sufficiently fertized can be thus sufficiently watered. The result might be expected in the form of ten bales instead of two or three under the ordinary conditions The cost to the user of the water in Alabama for irrigating purposes under Alabama conditions, would be hardly appreciable compared to like quantity doled out to the farmer of the west who would under no circumstances consent to do without.
 Irrigation of lands by artificial means is as old as history In Second Kings, chap ter 3, of Holy Writ, it is related that three kings, of Israel, Judah and Edom, went