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Show IRRIGATION OF MUCH VALUE Chief of Investigations of Department of Agriculture Says It Builds Up Commonwealths. Samuel Fortler, chief of irrigation Investigations of the U. S. Department of Agriculture, speaking before the Irrigation Ir-rigation Congress, at Chicago, declared declar-ed that if the cost of Irrigation works was to be reckoned in the millions, the value created by the water which these works had furnished was to be reckoned In billions. "Unlike mining which has unearthed countless millions by the toil of the many, but has allowed nearly all this vast wealth to pass Into the hands of the few, leaving the original toiler stranded and helpless, Irrigation builds up enduring commonwealths by establishing estab-lishing homes on the land and by fostering fos-tering a high order of citizenship, good institutions, and a stable government," govern-ment," he said. Mr. Fortler asserted that the problem prob-lem now was to show the farmer on Irrigated land how to secure increased yields. "The farmers are not getting anything any-thing like the greatest possible returns re-turns from their irrigated farms," he continued. "At our demonstration farms a season's yield of eight or ten tons of either red clover or alfalfa is readily obtained. It Is, therefore, disconcerting dis-concerting to find that the average yield of irrigated alfalfa in some parts of the west, as obtained by the census in 1911, was only 3.26 tons per acre." |