Let us consider irrigation a moment historically. Certainly half of the world’s population depend on it to-day. Modern Egypt has the most extensive system ever known, except the one recently unearthed in India, so massive in construction and vast in stretch that one writer has declared it would take the entire wealth of the British Empire to put it again in order. The Egyptian system cost $200,000,000, and two, sometimes three crops, are raised for one of former times.
No division of the United States has a better credit in commercial circles than Utah, and this is not due to the peculiar institution of polygamy, but to the perfect system of irrigation. The careful husbanding of the waters that come down the Wahsatch Range on mountains, has transmuted a dreary desert of sand and sage brush into what most travellers regard as a garden, and what possibly to the faithful appears symbolically a Paradise.
Senator Stewart, of the United States Irrigation Committee, stated that he had inspected nearly every irrigated region of the world, and knew of no place supplied by so vast a reservoir of water, with either the volume or the pressure of the artesian belt of Dakota. Much of the land in the Jim River Valley is comparatively level and susceptible of sub soil irrigation. It would take from two to three years to put the land in prime condition and to make each acre that is now valued at from three to ten dollars, worth fifty, at least, and probably seventy-five.
Now, $5,000,000 would more than cover the cost of the suggested irrigation in the Northwest—a mere trifle, if the certainty of crops is thereby guaranteed. Nor is the certainty of crops the only object to be considered. According to dealers in Sioux City, Iowa, the quality of cattle, shipped from some places in Clay and Yankton Counties since the introduction of irrigation, has increased twenty-five per cent., which appears not improbable when we note the difference between the warm, sweet flow of artesian water and the icy, brackish stuff of a prairie slough.
The next and really the most important question—for man should not work for the present and immediate future without the keenest regard to the rights of posterity—is whether, under Dakotan conditions, artesian irrigation is safe; whether there is not danger of its poisoning the ground. Professor Upham unhesitatingly declares that on account of the alkaline and saline properties in these artesian waters a continued use of them for many years would render the land worthless. The assertion is a rounder one than scientific men generally make, and must be received with caution, though emanating from so high a source, for many samples of South Dakotan waters, tested at Brookings, have shown no alkaline reaction at all, and the professor’s reasoning seems to rest chiefly upon the North Dakotan waters, which for some reason show larger saline percentages than the South. Then, too, he proceeds on the theory that a yearly supply of one foot of water is necessary, whereas half that amount during the dryest year, supplied through the five growing months, would insure good crops. Four inches last July would have saved the harvest. But anyway the entire amount of saline matter in South Dakotan waters, according to Prof. Lewis McLouth, does not, on the average, exceed one fifth of one per cent. after substracting all inert substances, such as sand, clay, limestone, and iron ores; so that, if six inches of water were applied to the lands, and all evaporated on the surface, the salty crust would be one 1/160 of an inch thick. But as a part of the water would run off into the streams, and much of it, diluted with rain-water, would soak into the ground, the salty ingredients would be mixed at once with at least a foot of the surface earth, and would form less than one fifteenth of one per cent. of the weight of that soil. These ingredients are salts of lime, magnesia, potash, and soda. Now Dr. Bruckner, in an analysis of some soil in Holland, which he pronounces remarkably rich, says that it contains over fifteen per cent. of these same ingredients, or two hundred and twenty-five times as much as six inches of artesian water would give to a foot of Dakotan soil within a year. So it would take two hundred and twenty-five years for this soil to acquire as much of these saline ingredients as the rich soil of Holland already possesses.
We might go further into this subject and show that every ingredient of these artesian well salts is a necessary food for many plant tissues; but even if the accumulation of salty substances were thought dangerous, it is to be remembered that during five of the ten years since the settlement of the Jim Valley, the rainfall has been ample, and if this average should continue, the land could be allowed to rest from irrigation for one half of the time so that the floods of rain-water would wash away the surplus saline matter.
Enough has now been said to show that in South Dakota, at least, no harm is likely to accrue to the soil under five hundred years, if South Dakota chemists are to be trusted. By that time chemistry will have advanced from an analytic to a creative science, and if what was once ignorantly termed “The Great American Desert” should suddenly lapse into a saline state, a speedy cure for that condition may be counted on with confidence.
Dismissing, then, this danger as something too dim in the distance to be regarded even as ultimately certain, we are confronted with a really grave question—a question fraught with serious immediate peril, if answered practically in the way it seems likely to be, unless patriotic Dakotans coöperate to prevent it. How shall the burden of the cost be borne? The farmers individually are mostly too poor, and in the Northwest, which the oppressions of the railroads and the teachings of Donelly have honeycombed with tendencies to State socialism, the first answer is, “By the State, of course.” But the need of action in this matter is pressing, and the State of South Dakota certainly is too poor at present, for her debt-limit, under her constitution, is already reached.
For the counties to attempt it would be equally difficult, for many persons not directly benefited would be forced to share the expense, and under the pressure of continued hard times an irrigation rebellion might result and most certainly dissatisfaction as to the location of the wells would ensue. There is another plan against which none of these objections can be raised. A bill has been introduced in the legislature, providing that when thirty voters shall so petition, the State engineer of irrigation shall select proper sites for nine six-inch or sixteen four and one half inch wells. An election shall then be held to vote bonds of the township. If they carry, the supervisors shall have these wells sunk, and shall rent the water to such farmers as wish it, at a sum in no case exceeding a pro-rata share of seven per cent. of the value of the bonds, the title to the water to go with the title to the land so long as the rent is paid.
The details of the bill are carefully worked out, and it would seem that this plan is feasible. It will enable the present owners to retain their land, and to water it at reasonable cost, while those benefited will bear the expense.