The Indianapolis journal., 1902-09-21
GREAT PUMPING PLANTS
RUN NIGHT AND DAY, AND FORCE UP
VAST QUANTITIES OF WATER.
Benefits of Irrigation I'm the Dry Re-
giOns-SOme Plants Furnish 1OO,-
900 Gallons of Water a Minute.

Occasional Correspondence of the Journal
WASHINGTON, Sept 19.-Good mother
earth conceals her riches in many varied
forms. Fortunes and life are often given
to a fruitless search for treasure In mines.
which is never found. while beneath the
soil Of farms and rural homes without
number there goes to waste source of
possible wealth production greater by far
than all the mines of the world.
If the underground waters which are SO
near the surface as to be easily raised to
it were used for the irrigation of the lands
wherever there is such water supply the
increased production of agricultural wealth
would be vast as to be almost beyond
calculation. And it would seem as though
nature had planned that the waters which
she has boarded beneath the surface should
never be monopolized, for II is usually i'm
practicable to use them for irrigating large
tracts with hired labor. But this supply,
under the land, is the surest, safest cheap
est and most unfailing source of water for
countless rural homes where those who
own the land may till it with their own
hands and produce from 1t an almost lin
itless diversity of crops. No vast storage
reservoirs are necessary for such irrigation,
nor no costly canals or irrigation works to
bring this supply from beneath the earth
up to him who would use 1t. 1t is mine
of wealth which lies under his hearthstone,
and to which he can sink 's own prospect
shaft. He needs only a we'll. pump and
a windmill, run by natures motor power,
to utilize this water supply-to unite it
with the soil and reap the increased fer
tility it will create.
TO FIGHT THE DROUGHT.
The value Of water for irrigation is by
no means to be measured by its volume.
It's value lies largely in having it just when
it is needed to relieve temporary drought
or to nourish some growing crop just at
the critical moment when the plant thirst
must be then quenched or the growth
checked. 1t can be truthfully said that
there never was a crop raised under rain
fall which might not have been improved
by irrigation, and in many years they can
be doubled and more. In this connection
note the difference between a lean and
bumper crop. 1t is a matter of moisture.
Herein lies the value and advantage to
every one who is the owner of a small
farm well titled. in supply of water which
ervoir of his own construction, he can draw
from 1t as needed. He is subject to no
rules as to when Ii shall be used, made
necessary by the wants of others No IA
voritism or greed of those controlling some
great irrigation system, nor no whim or
caprice of ditch tender, need affect him.
He will. in fact, be water monopoly-of
one-himself. He need reckon with no su-
perior power but nature.
There are hundreds of thousands of small
farms in the country to-day-East, West
and South-whose yield of their most val
liable products-fruits, vegetables and root
crops of every kind--might be enormously
increased by the utilization, with pump and
windmill, of their underground water sup
ply.
In those communities of the West which
have been created by irrigation the farmers
have learned that forty acres well titled
will yield more profit than four hundred
acres farned in the old haphazard way.
Intensive farming and larger profits from
smaller farms have brought closely settled
communities. nearby neighbors. schools,
churches and libraries, and the isolation of
the old farm life no longer exists. The
monotony of the life does not drive his sons
from the old home. or his wife to the in
sane asylum. And what works the change ?
Irrigation. Fertilizing land with water, for
water is the greatest fertilizer known.
What will gauge the farmers profit for the
year is the amount of feed he can raise for
stock. and not the number of acres they
will range over. Nor is the value of irri-
CATION for stock feed limited to the arid
West.
There is many farmer in the Mississippi
valley, in the New England and middle
States, and in the broad South who has an
abundant supply of water available to irri-
gate his fields, or at least part of them.
He would far better use his brain and de-
wise method to put water on the land he
has and increase its production than covet
his neighbors farm and try to get more
land.
Pumping water for irrigation is a practice
as old as history. To-day. over great tracts
of rhe far East. water is now raised by
primitive bucket pumps. a handful at a
time, as II was thousands Of years ago. On