The Greenville journal. [volume] (Greenville, Ohio) 1850-1918, 1913-08-28

states. AT the same time, large irrigation canals
built by the government, lberating cultiva-
tors from eternal worry over the prospects Of
rain. These changes vare taking place with
startling rapidity. The process Is proceeding at
a snais pace slowly that 1t Is hard for for
egners to realize that the transition is going on
However, each year more and more of the litter
ate farmers sending their sons and daugh
ters to school, and each year they show more in
terest i'll the demonstrations held on the expert
ment farms, and display less opposition to limo
vatons In few districts the advancement is
already quite marked. This Is especially true
of certain parts of the Punjab-the province of
the Five Rivers situated in northwestern India
which are known as the Canal colonies. There
several million acres of land that twenty years
ago was barren waste, today have been con-
verted, thanks to marvellous irrigation scheme
into an important grain-producing region, spread
ing the fame of India wheat far and wide in the
world
The very first farm that visited in the col.
onies during a recent tour vividly revealed the
transformation of Indian rural conditions. In the
courtyard, shaded by a spreading jujube tree.
stood reapng machine. In mud shed. erected
especially for the purpose of protecting the farm
machinery, wound four chilledsteel plows, two
of them made in the United States. On the floor
Of the low-roofed verandah the farmers son,
lad of about twelve, at the highest reckoning,
clad Dame Nature had dressed him at birth.
wheel of modern fodderchopper, which cut
green chart (milleD in small shreds that fell
about him in a succuent shower
After further travel and investigation among
the cultvators living round about Lyallpur, the
largest city In the erstwhe waterless wilder
ness, which now, in the wake Of the water car
ried by the Chenab canal has become paradise
for farmers found that the cultivator whose
home l had first visited was not whit more
enterprising than scores of others in the district
who today employing time and labor-saving
machinery to do all the work on their land. Wher-
ever l went found agricuturists galore who
owned their own steel plows harrows cultivators
and improved fodder-choppers Occasionally
would come across reaper which was the prop
erty of progressive individual who profted by
renting 1t to his neighbors at harvest time At
one place even found steam threshing ma
chine
Many causes have combined to make the farm
ers In the Punjab colonies progressive. In the
first place they more or less entirely have been
cut OF from their old moorings, and have begun
life all over again in strange locality. They
have left some of their ultra-conservatism behind
them in the congested Punjab from which they
hailed and the pioneer conditions that they
found confronting them in the new region d.
vested them of some more of their inborn reac
tion. The Lyallpur agricultural experiment farm
located in the very heart of the settIebent has
demonstrated to them the good results of deep
plowing with chilled.steel plows and the advan-
tage of using improved implements instead Of
farming in the cumbersome bungling, old-time
aging these farmers to use modern machinery