Show GOVERNMENT AID IN I AGRICULTURE I Is likely that the General Government Govern-ment will in the near future aid materially ma-terially in the construction of great reservoirs in sonic of the mountainous sections of the arid West for the conservation con-servation of water to be used for irrigating ir-rigating lands at present without water Such schemes will be of Inestimable Ines-timable value for the development of agriculture in these sections and will give up to settlement great tracts of land at a nominal cost to the settler There is locked within this Idea a growth that will be more far reachIng reach-Ing than any perhaps yet offered to agriculture In the West One of the urgent reasons given for the necessity of reservoir construction Is that desirable lands are fast disappearing disap-pearing and that tho development of pea1ng anc the country Is retarded proportionately becauseiof the handicap Should we analyze however the conditions con-ditions which often exist In different places throughout the arid lands we will find that there Is yet much that may be done locally We are Inclined here in the West to overlook some of the economics and possible lines of development de-velopment within our reach We are in n sense somewhat prodigal In our habits and after taking what we consider con-sider bent l of the land nature has placed within easy reach we at once reach put for more of the best and are not loth to ask that we ho helped financially to hut which for the present we cannot oblan alone In nearly all Irrigated sections of the country certain areas having water right are given up as waste land This waste land is what Is known generally as alkali land It is land that has within I accumulations of salts harmful harm-ful to crops These nulls or alkali have In some cases been left In the soil naturally as may be noted In some of the virgin soils o this valley In other cases and more generally these salts exist In harmful quantities due to excessive Irrigation Ir-rigation and seepage and lack of proper drainage In the latter case the lane has become waste within a period of but few years Previous to this time the land was good desirable land and raised C maximum crop Such land has been made waste by the accumulation of salts that came from wide adjoining higher areas Investigations Investi-gations prove the above to be often true and should our observations have been active In times pot we would have noticed also that this alkali began accumulating first on areas where the underground water first came near the surface or In lower lying seepage areas Those salts often accumulate In a very few yearn and thin shows un that there are iimunsiblc yet Hire changes going on In the soil we cultivate culti-vate continually Since these nccuinu latlonr have occurred within our own experience It would worn natural I to conclude that It Its possible to rcrnovo these salts In the same manner and time in which they accumulated In fact this has already been fully demonstrated as feasible In different places on both virgin and cultivated alkali land It In estimated that we have In this valley between this city and the great lake over 100 square miles of thin wasteland waste-land besides about twentyfive square miles of recent lake bottom land This land is undulating and ridged In places and permeated by I old lakeward channels chan-nels and bar t good water supply all of which taken together Invites thc skill of the engineer and the thoughtful husbandman toward seeing what can be done toward reclaiming this an yet waste area The conditions and possibilities which exist here are to be found In many places In the West and while other far reaching plans Involving the future welfare of Western production are In nowlso secondary It yet remains for us personally to begin personaly thinking very seriously about these abou 100 odd square miles and what can be done toward reclaiming that kind |