The Woman Citizen's Library; Practical Politics, by F. H. MacGregor Volume 6 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1913 edition. Excerpt: ... and at the same time to conserve it for the use of posterity. Science will become the servant of agriculture as well as of industry. While lending this aid to improving the methods of agriculture, the federal government is widening the public domain by reclaiming arid and semi-arid lands through gigantic irrigation undertakings. The Newlands Act of June 17, 1902, authorized the Secretary of Interior to undertake the work of reclamation on a large scale. The fund for the work consists of the proceeds from the sale of the public lands in certain states. The lands made available by irrigation are sold, in small tracts, to actual settlers, who pay the price in annual instalments, thus restoring to the reclamation fund the money that is laid out. Up to June 30, 1908, the sum of $50,661,549.27 had been paid into the fund from all sources. The work is done by the Reclamation Service, which is in the Department of the Interior. Reservoirs, drains, canals, etc., are constructed by the government, and from them the settlers can draw water by means of ditches to irrigate their farms. A large number of projects have been undertaken, some of them requiring engineering skill of a high order. One of the most interesting of these is the Shoshone project in Wyoming, which contemplates the erection of a dam over 300 feet high. The first six years of the reclamation work resulted in making 767,958 acres fit for settlement, out of which 424,549 acres were actually irrigated. Some of the states are also carrying on similar work. For Idaho has undertaken stupendous projects. It has constructed one of the largest irrigation canals in the world and rendered arable more than 300,000 acres of barren waste. It has entered into contracts for the construction of large...