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Show built v.p' e built in the nj03t.exjcii.sive way possible, because they were not properly planned j and managefl, and because they failed to secure tor residents resi-dents on their irrigated lands responsible respon-sible and intelligent farmers and fruU growers. More recentl" several large irrigation irriga-tion companies have been successfully launched, most of them building at the same time a great beet sugar factory, where the product of their irrigated lands might find a quick and profitable market. The Rocky Ford factory produced pro-duced last year more than 15,000 tons of sugar, and every year increases its capacity. In southern California irrigation, and irrigation alone, has raised the value of some lanus from $2 an acre to as many thousands of dollars an acre. Even in districts where rainfall is normal nor-mal it is declared that a modified system sys-tem of irrigation would be. immensely profitable, because it would enable the farmer to avoid the effects of the pro- - 1 . - : The announcement that a company of Chicago capitalists has completed arrangements for building a large irrigation ir-rigation plant which is expected to redeem re-deem 2,000 acres of arid land in "Wyoming "Wy-oming marks another step in the new Inning of the West. Perhaps no single sin-gle undertaking now under way means o much to the country and to the world at large as the supplying of sufficient suf-ficient water to this great region, aggregating ag-gregating in area over four-tenths of the total area of the country, and over which the average yearly rainfall is less than half the average in the Eastern East-ern States. place it was long ago discovered that over almost all flat desert country a plentiful supply of water may be reached by sinking shallow wells. Then came the question of finding power to raise this water to the surface, sur-face, and out of that need has grown a demand for huge windmills of curious curi-ous construction. As for the necessary power it has been estimated that the free winds which sweep over the Kansas Kan-sas prairie develop more power than all Niagara during the same length of time. So immensely important is this question of irrigation that the National Nation-al Department of Agriculture has devoted de-voted much attention to it. Under the direction of the department a corps of experts is kept constantly in the field with the idea of helping the irrigation ir-rigation farmer. One expert, for instance, in-stance, is kept busy experimenting with pumps and endeavoring to determine de-termine what style is best for the purpose of irrigation. Another expert drives over the arid country and determines de-termines the depth from the surface to I IB- ''ML' s sr-a- . J . A CURIOUS TYPE OF WIND ENGINE. longed droughts and other abnormal weather conditions. water in various places and also what is the nature of the water supply. All the results of the experiments and tests are printed in pamphlet form by the Agricultural department and are sent free of charge to any one Who may be interested. One of the great benefits of irriga"-tion irriga"-tion is often lost sight of. Not only does the irrigation of a considerable section of land reduce the probability of crop failure in that district to a minimum, but it also has a beneficial influence on other fertile lands which lie contiguous to it. The intensely hot winds which blow across the leagues of barren and heated desert have a bad effect on the crops of the A MERRY-GO-ROUND WIND ENGINE. Much has been accomplished already. al-ready. Utah and southern California owe their greatness as agricultural countries to the irrigation ditch, and ' in a dozen places in Colorado great tracts of land have been redeemed from the desert and made most productive pro-ductive farms. These great plants are as a rule controlled by large companies which have invested thousands in building ditches and reservoirs and which furnish water to a multitude of farmers as gas is furnished elsewhere. In western Kansas individual farmers have largely built their own irrigation irriga-tion plants, and in one corner of the Sunflower State there are more than 1,200 windmill irrigation plants owned by individuals. But after all is said about the wonders which irrigation has accomplished, the ' fact remains that the work still remaining is infinitely in-finitely greater. Roughly speaking, it is said that there are now not much more than 8,000,000 acres under irrigation, irri-gation, while the total area which it is estimated may be profitably brought unrter irrigt!on.-ffnd which will not be productive without it, is estimated I to be over one hundred million acres. As a fair example of what irrigation irriga-tion will do for a country and its people, peo-ple, Rocky Ford, in the Arkansaw valley val-ley of Colorado, may be cited. Men still young have hunted buffaloes over the site of one of the greatest sugar beet factories in the world, and in a single year Rocky Ford sends to market mar-ket 800,000 sheep and 800 carloads of melons. All this is due to irrigation, and as a result land has increased in value from $25 to $250 an acre. In eastern Colorado, near the Kansas Kan-sas state line, the largest irrigation eystem in the country has just been completed. It will furnish sufficient water for 200,000 acres of land, and more than a million dollars has been spent in its construction. The system consists of five great reservoirs, covering cover-ing 13,000 acres of land, and provided with seven great canals and a number of subsidiary ditches, with a total length of more than 500 miles. But even this irrigation system is entirely dwarfed by the colossal work 1 MODELED AFTER A BATTLE AX. fresher and more fertile lands beyond, as was shown by the partial destruction destruc-tion of the Kansas corn crop during the recent summer by the hot winds blowing from the west. When a desert region is redeemed through irrigation the winds which blow over it lose their sting and are tempered to the growing grow-ing crops. In this way a desert does harm far beyond its own limits and an irrigated district scatters blessings outside out-side its own boundaries. Of the hundred million acres of arid land still remaining in the west the government experts have made a thorough thor-ough survey, and they report that a sufficient water supply is easily available avail-able to redeem 95 per cent of it. Government Gov-ernment lands open for free settlement are becoming scarcer, but this enormous enor-mous tract still remains practically untouched, un-touched, and simply waiting for the touch of water to blossom. It is said by those competent to judge that forty acres of properly irrigated land in Kansas or Colorado will furnish a surer and a larger competency than 160 acres in the east. The experience of thousands of irrigation irri-gation farmers has been practically the same. They pay perhaps $1.25 or $2, or perhaps even $5 an acre for their land in an arid and entirely unproductive unpro-ductive state. At an average cost of not more than $100 each of them puts up a tower sixty feet in height and surmounted by a sixteen-foot windmill. wind-mill. This windmill works an eight or ten inch pump in a well twenty feet deep. The water brought to the surface sur-face is stored in a reservoir about seventy-five feet in diameter, and which will cost another $100 to build. With such a plant a man can irrigate thoroughly thor-oughly at least ten acres of land. If he plants ten acres with alfalfa he will have water enough for twenty acres in all, for the alfalfa needs to be irrigated irri-gated only in the winter time, for its long tap roots run down so deep below the surface that they will find a sufficient suffi-cient supply of moisture even when the surface of the ground is baked and hot In this way, with an expenditure of not more than $250 for an irrigating plant, a man may raise the value of his land from $2 or $3 to $40 an acre, this being a conservative average of the value of Irrigated farming lands along the lines of railroad. A few years ago there was a big boom in the formation of huge irrigation irriga-tion companies. Many of these companies com-panies failed because the plants they A HOME-MADE GIANT, now wnder way in Egypt, under the direction and control of the British Governors of the kingdom. This irrigation irri-gation system, work on which has been going on for some time, is much the largest ever undertaken in the world, as is indicated by the fact that it will cost upwards of $25,000,000. Ther are two ways in which arid lands may be irrigated. The first and simplest is by means of the so-called gravity ditches, according to which water is diverted from a river or reservoir res-ervoir and flows by the force of gravity gravi-ty through irrigation ditches to the land it is desired to water. In hilly and mountainous country this system has been systematically followed and has proved immensely profitable and "successful. But gravity ditches are not practicable on the flat prairie lands which make so large a part of the arid West. As a means of hiking tlieir |