The San Francisco call., 1903-09-23
THE IRRIGATION CONVENTION.

convention the largest that has been held
- since the national organization was made twelve
years ago. That it the most useful may also be
true, though its usefulness may have be measured
more by what it refused to do than what it did.
There appears to have been desire to bring the
meeting of the air and into the waters of irri-
CATION which, however, only partially succeeded.
The practical rrigators and those who expect to be,
desired to use the occasion for educational purposes
Under the Federal irrigation law the Government
will spend many millions of dollars in water works.
The of this water return the money to the
Government, either in the price they will pay for
their land in the they will pay for water. In
either it will be gift, and those who pay it
cannot afford the time required to learn the capacity
of their land and the proper application of water by
experiment
The duty of water in irrigation varies with the alb
sorbent quality of the SOIL the of evaporation
and the kind OF crop to which it is applied 1t is
known that too much water, water applied at the
wrong time, destroys the fertility of some soils,
which under proper and timely irrigation fertile
and profitable The Agricultural Department has a
corps of experienced scientific men working on these
physical problems and identifying the different kinds
of soil with the service each requires for profit
able tillage and in like manner establishing the
These useful investigators and the Government
gineers engaged in the engineering problems
present in Ogden and on the programme with papers
filed with information which practical men desired
to hear. But there also on the programme a
few professional orators who deal in words of the
imagination and irrigate with wind and when these
got into action they so occupied the time OF the con-
venton that the modest OF science were crowded
out entirely appears by the reports and had to
be content with leave to print their papers.
The atmospheric irrigators seem likely to do the
much injury by their habit of raising expecta-
tons impossible of realization. For illustration we
note that they persistently refer to irrigation as ap
picable to an empire of land in the arid States des
tined to be the home OF eighty millions of people"
Indeed, left enumeration entirely behind him,
and giving notice that his imagination was Stag
gered" by the prospect proceeded to Immediately
settle countless millions" in the same area.
All of these perfervd social builders put the total
acreage that can be touched by water and made hab-
table, when the Federal irrigation law has finished
its work and put the last available drop of water
upon the last available inch of land 900 900
acres The law under which this land is to be irri-
gated permits a maximum to each settler of 100
acres and no more. Each one will have his maxi
num- for most OF the land lies on the high pateaus
season. and quarter section is little enough to keep
family. SO when the whole hundred million acres
is watered sold and occupied its 900 quarter sec
tons with a family each with the average of five
to family, will support just 3,I25ooo people, or less
than the population Of Illinois.
OF course that addition to the rural population of
the West is highly important and much to be desired
but it is long way this side OF the countless millions
which teen in the mouths of the imaginative para
sites who infest irrigation congresses This mag gina
tive quality have stopped over into the
resolutions adopted by the congress, which in the
most lush and sumptuous suggest that the r-
rgation OF a hundred million acres on our cold
plateaus will plant there the results achieved in the
Valley of the Po, the Indus and the Nile Yes, this
will happen when irrigation raises bananas in the
open air at Cape Nome
The address OF the Secretary of Agriculture was of
the highest value amounting to a text book on prac-
teal irrigation, and those who appreciated it re-
gretted that they not permitted to hear the
papers prepared by his fine corps of scientists who
were present. The usual scrippers' raid was made
on the convention to get all land laws repealed by
which the public domain may pass into private
ownership, except by the location OF land scrip OF
which about 100000 acres is held by corporations
and syndicates The repeal of the desert land
homestead and timber and stone acts leaves scrip
location the only possible means of acquiring public
lands, and every settler that wants land must pay
whatever price the scrpper asks and then take all the
risks OF location 1t pretty scheme but was
too raw, and the convention attacked it with war
whoop and smote it into dry and dusty death
Other parts OF the platform are open to criticism,
for they seek identity irrigation with an attack
upon the fundamental principles of government, but
perhaps they will stand as good examples to the next
convention OF what to avoid
The Moors have emphatically announced their in
tention to expel all foreigners from Morocco One