expensive construction and heavy charges. The legal expense for the maintenance of water rights was often large because of the interminable suits brought during the times of water scarcity. The laws regarding water in most of the arid states were indefinite or contradictory, being based partly on the common law regarding riparian rights, and partly upon the Spanish law allowing diversion of water from natural streams. Few fundamental principles were established, except in the case of the state of Wyoming, where an official was charged with the duty of ascertaining the amount of water in the streams and apportioning this to the claimants in the order of their priority of appropriation for beneficial use.
It may be said that, up to the year 1900, irrigation progressed to such an extent that there remained few ordinary localities where water could not be easily or cheaply diverted from creeks and rivers for the cultivation of farms. The claims for the available supply from small streams, however, exceeded the water to be had in the latter part of the irrigating season. There remained large rivers and opportunities for water storage which could be brought under irrigation at considerable expense. The large canals and reservoirs built by corporations had rarely been successful from a financial standpoint, and irrigation construction during the latter part of the decade 1890–1899 was relatively small. Owing to the difficulty and expense of securing water from running streams by gravity systems, a great variety of methods were developed of pumping water by windmills, gasoline or hot-air engines, and steam. Ordinary reciprocating pumps were commonly employed, and also air lifts and similar devices for raising great quantities of water to a height of from 20 to 50 ft. For greater depths the cost was usually prohibitive. Throughout the Great Plains region, east of the Rocky Mountains, and in the broad valleys to the west, windmills were extensively used, each pumping water for from 1 to 5 acres of cultivated ground. In a few localities, notably in South Dakota, the Yakima valley of Washington, San Joaquin, and San Bernardino valleys of California, San Luis valley of Colorado, and Utah valley of Utah, water from artesian wells was also used for the irrigation of from 1 to 160 acres. The total acreage supplied by such means was probably less than 1% of that watered by gravity systems.
The development of irrigation was in part retarded by the improper or wasteful use of water. On permeable soils, especially those of the terrace lands along the valleys, the soluble salts commonly known as alkali were gradually leached out and carried by the percolating waters towards the lower lands, where, reaching the surface, the alkali was left as a glistening crust or as pools of inky blackness. Farms adjacent to the rivers were for a time increased in richness by the alkaline salts, which in diffuse form might be valuable plant foods, and then suddenly become valueless when the concentration of alkali had reached a degree beyond that which the ordinary plants would endure.
The situation as regards the further progress of irrigation on a large scale was however dominated in the early years of the 20th century by the new Conservation policy. Mr Roosevelt brought the whole subject before Congress in his message of the 3rd of December 1901, and thereby started what seemed likely to be a new sphere of Federal initiative and control. After referring to the effects of forests (see Forests and Forestry) on water-supply, he went on as follows:—
“The forests alone cannot fully regulate and conserve the waters of the arid regions. Great storage works are necessary to equalize the flow of the streams and to save the flood waters. Their construction has been conclusively shown to be an undertaking too vast for private effort. Nor can it be best accomplished by the individual states acting alone.
“Far-reaching interstate problems are involved, and the resources of single states would often be inadequate. It is properly a national function, at least in some of its features. It is as right for the National Government to make the streams and rivers of the arid regions useful by engineering works for water storage, as to make useful the rivers and harbours of the humid regions by engineering works of another kind. The storing of the floods in reservoirs at the headquarters of our rivers is but an enlargement of our present policy of river control, under which levees are built on the lower reaches of the same streams.
“The government should construct and maintain these reservoirs as it does other public works. Where their purpose is to regulate the flow of streams, the water should be turned freely into the channels in the dry season, to take the same course under the same laws as the natural flow.
“The reclamation of the unsettled arid public lands presents a different problem. Here it is not enough to regulate the flow of streams. The object of the government is to dispose of the land to settlers who will build homes upon it. To accomplish the object water must be brought within their reach.
“The reclamation and settlement of the arid lands will enrich every portion of our country, just as the settlement of the Ohio and Mississippi valleys brought prosperity to the Atlantic States. The increased demand for manufactured articles will stimulate industrial production, while wider home markets and the trade of Asia will consume the larger food supplies and effectually prevent Western competition with Eastern agriculture. Indeed, the products of irrigation will be consumed chiefly in upbuilding local centres of mining and other industries, which would otherwise not come into existence at all. Our people as a whole will profit, for successful home-making is but another name for the upbuilding of the nation.”
In 1902, by Act of Congress, a “reclamation fund” was created from moneys received from the sale of public lands; it was to be used under a “Reclamation Service” (part of the Department of the Interior) for the reclamation of arid lands. The “Truckee-Carson project” for irrigation in Nevada was immediately begun. About thirty other government projects were taken in hand under the new Reclamation Service, in some cases involving highly interesting engineering problems, as in the Uncompahgre Project in Colorado. Here the Uncompahgre and Gunnison rivers flowed parallel, about 10 m. apart, with a mountain range 2000 ft. high between them. The Uncompahgre, with only a small amount of water, flowed through a broad and fertile valley containing several hundred thousand acres of cultivable soil. The Gunnison, with far more water, flowed through a canyon with very little land. The problem was to get the water from the Gunnison over the mountain range into the Uncompahgre valley; and a tunnel, 6 m. long, was cut through, resulting in 1909 in 148,000 acres of land being irrigated and thrown open to settlers. Similarly, near Yuma in Arizona, a project was undertaken for carrying the waters of the main canal on the California side under the Colorado river by a siphon. In the report for 1907 of the Reclamation Service it was stated that it had dug 1881 m. of canals, some carrying whole rivers, like the Truckee river in Nevada and the North Platte in Wyoming, and had erected 281 large structures, including the great dams in Nevada and the Minidoka dam (80 ft. high and 650 ft. long) in Idaho. As the result of the operations eight new towns had been established, 100 m. of branch railroads constructed, and 14,000 people settled in what had been the desert.
A White House conference of governors of states was held at Washington in May 1909, which drew up a “declaration of principles” for the conservation of natural resources, recommending the appointment of a commission by each state to co-operate with one another and with the Federal government; and by the end of the year thirty-six states had appointed Conservation committees. Thus, in the first decade of the 20th century a great advance had been made in the way in which the whole problem was being viewed in America, though the very immensity of the problem of bringing the Federal power to bear on operations on so vast a scale, involving the limitation of private land speculation in important areas, still presented political difficulties of considerable magnitude.
IRULAS (“Benighted ones,” from Tamil, iral, “darkness”),
a semi-Hinduized forest-tribe of southern India, who are found
mainly in North Arcot, Chingleput, South Arcot, Trichinopoly,
and the Malabar Wynaad. The typical Irulas of the Nilgiris
live a wild life on the lower slopes of those hills. At the 1901
census this branch of the Irulas numbered 1915, while the total
of so-called Irulas was returned at 86,087.
See J. W. Breeks, Primitive Tribes of the Nilgiris (1873); Nilgiri Manual, i. 214–217; North Arcot Manual, i. 248–249.
IRUN, a frontier town of northern Spain, in the province of
Guipúzcoa, on the left bank of the river Bidassoa, opposite the
French village of Hendaye. Pop. (1900) 9912. Irun is the
northern terminus of the Spanish Northern railway, and a
