The Winslow mail., 1925-10-09
POWER AND IRRIGATION


tive vice-president and general
manager of the Southern Califor-
MIA Edison company, delivered he
fore a convention of California real
estate men in Fresno, California,
Wednesday.
Mr.. Ballard is unquestionably
one of the greatest authorities in
America on question of irrigation
and power derived from mountain
rivers. His life has been spent in
studying conditions in the south
west, and was identified with the
early history of irrigation in the
Salt River valley.
Mr.. Ballard's address was prin-
cipally devoted to the generation
of power, but a number of para
graphs relate to irrigation. The
Mail wishes it had space to repro
duce the address in full.
The speaker has glorious hopes
for the future of arid-America.
In retrospect and prophecy, he
said in part:
Geographical lines and state lines
have been drawn by the hand of
man. The lines which distinguish
the boundaries of semi-arid Amer
lea from that portion of our ma
ton in which production depends
upon natural rainfall, were drawn
by the Creator. Nature has plac-
ed upon mankind the burden of
making fertile what were the waste
places of the earth-that portion in
which you have chosen to live and
to transact business. Nature made
the greater portion of the United
States productive by perpetual
rainfall, entailing upon mankind
only the turning of the soil by the
plow and the sowing and reaping.
''None of the populations of Eu-
rope have ever exceeded their Wis
ible food supply, if we can take
the statement of Lothrop Stoddard
in one of his most recent economic
surveys of the world of today with
its historical background. This
statement is absolutely borne out
by every chapter of H. G. Wells
outline of history from the time
that he picks up the record of the
human race down to the close of
the worlds war. There are even
those who go so far as to say that
this same worlds war was simply
a modernization in armament and
motive of the strife for food and
expansion which impelled the anci-
Rnt Huns to raid the fertile lands
that lie along the Mediterranean
in their quest for pasture and sub
sistence.
''The history of the Middle Ages,
and even later, seems but sue
cession of wars and slaughters and
conquests, as tribe and nation fell
upon each other in the dealy strife
for that which the earth, and the
earth only, can produce.
t"Thus reads the record down to
1892, when Columbus planted the
emblem of European civilization on
the western hemisphere, and the
yield of a continent was provided
for the famishing. For three CEN
sturies the history of America was
to sow and to reap under skies that
spoured down freely of the lifegiv-
ing water upon the rich virgin land
which gave its abundant increase.
"From our thirteen original
states, with a population about
equal to the present population of
California, the young, the strong,
and the courageous of our fore
bears, greatly augmented by the
sturdy Nordic stock of Northern
Europe, sprang to the call for pro-
duction and more production. They
climbed the crest of the Blue Ridge
the Cumberlands, and the ALE
ghenies. With ruthless axe and in.
dustrious plow they tanned the
wilderness and subdued the prairie
and in the quest for production
they swept on beyond the Missis
Sippi. Westward Ho!" was the
slogan. The farmer boy with rifle
on back, with hands on plow, witt
human initiative in his heart, wa:
the pioneer of production. In hi:
wake came the country merchan
and the blacksmith, these in tur1
became the land holders, the mer
chants, and the manufacturers O
the middle west, still the demand
for production was Unsuitable. II
England the dawn of the mechani