Irrigation and Drainage [pp. 19-32]

30 Iirrigation and Drainage. [Jt
Swamp. The point of discharge in each densely populated parts of the country, t
case is about ten miles from the previous crops annually are necessary to feed the p
one. The original United States surveys, ple, and these can be had only by utiliz
made in i855, show a still wider divergence by irrigation the water caused by the melt
of this shifting channel. Such rivers refuse snow stored in the mountains. The alter
to be governed by the decrees of courts that tive of less production is starvation, with
"inseparably annex them to the soil, not as attendant fevers. The director of the Gan
an easement or appurtenance, but as part Canal Water Works states, as a striking
and parcel of it." An appropriator easily vantage of irrigation in that country, the s
adapts his means of diversion to such streams; stitution of a constant for a fluctuating
but a riparian proprietor finds his insepara- turn of produce. Alternations of product
ble annex nearly as fleeting as the clouds and failure consequent upon non-irriga
that sail over his land. In whatever light agriculture, are significant of enormous m
the matter is viewed, the conclusion comes ery among thelaboring classes. Theseh
irresistibly back, that the laws made for a disappeared as the great works inaugura
country so different in all physical aspects by English capitalists have become operat
as England is from California, cannot and In a community dependent for its mean
ought not to be enforced here. subsistence on the soil, the importance
In the foreign possessions of England, the having thus excluded the disturbing influe
practice of appropriation prevails over the of variable seasons need not be insisted
doctrine of riparian rights, wherever irriga- All the benefits of security for capital inv
tion is a necessity. It is so in India and in ed in cultivation are obtained; the reven
Australia. India has gigantic works for sys- fluctuates only with the price of produ
tematic irrigation. Three hundred and sev- and the working classes have cheap food
enty millions of British money are being ex- a constant demand for their labor. The E
pended in that country to supplement a sys- rible famines of India, the sickening det
tern older than our era. Professor George of which have from time to time reached
Davidson reports that the whole breadth of distant ears, cease where irrigation gi
the base of the peninsula of India, sweeping steady returns to the labors of the husba
in a great curve from the delta of the Gan- man. In India the government posses
ges to the delta of the Indus, is the field of the right of property in all running wa
a vast system of irrigation. The supply of whatsoever. It may dispose of them
water is in the Himalayas, where snows en- ever, if it thinks fit, and the doctrine of
sure an unceasing supply. The Rocky and parian rights has no part in the economy
Sierra Nevada Mountains are the Hima- that country.
layas of the arid region of the United States, Irrigation is resorted to in all count]
while the broad areas of irrigable lands which where much of the land must otherwise