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Show AN IRRIGATION PRECEDENT. What Great Britain Has Done in the Arid Part of the Nile Valley. (San Francisco Call.) President Roosevelt's cordial indorsement, indorse-ment, of the policy of providing irrigation irri-gation for the arid regions of the country, coun-try, wherever such irrigation can be economically maintained, has had the effect of bringing the issue into the domain do-main of practical politics. It has been under discussion a long time and several sev-eral tentative measures have been enacted en-acted by congress for dealing with it. The prospects are that it may now soon be taken upiin a comprehensive way and a scientific plan devised for redeeming millions of barren or semi-barren semi-barren acres. If any precedent were needed to demonstrate dem-onstrate anew the value of irrigation carried out on a large scale it would be found in what has been accomplished accom-plished by the British in Egypt. In a recent report on the subject Lord Cromer Cro-mer states that since 1885 the government govern-ment of Egypt has expended over $35,-000,000 $35,-000,000 on public works connected 'with the Nile. That is an enormous outlay for a country so poor as Egypt, but the results prove it to have been one of the most successful achievements of British rule. It has had the effect of doubling, the cotton crop and adding upward of $25,000,000 annually to the income of the people. Basing conclusions upon the results thus obtained by improved irrigation facilities in lower Egypt the . British I are sanguine that an even large prop-portional prop-portional benefit will be derived from comprehensive irrigation along the upper up-per Nile. It is proposed to dam one of the lakes which form the sources of j the Nile and so create a huge reservoir to draw upon at need. . j Sir William Garstin, who has charge of the engineering problems involved in the scheme, states in a recent report that a series of dams and canals can be i so constructed that the completed work will not only provide irrigation for mil- lions of arid acres, but will also drain i extensive swamps and, finally, improve the navigation of the upper Nile as t well. The . accomplishment of three-such three-such important benefits by a single scheme of improvement will certainly rank among the best things the white man has yet performed in the task ' of improving the condition of inferior ' races. ... j What Great Britain is doing for the i poor people of Egypt the United States i can certainly undertake to do for the benefit of its own people. Modern engineering engi-neering is quite equal to any task the policy will impose upon it. We cannot afford to let Egypt beat us in the work of turning the desert into a garden. |