REPAYMENTS.

The projects now making payments under public notice are:

Repayments of construction charges are increasing gradually, and for the fiscal year 1918 reached the sum of $1,353,144.64.

OPERATION AND MAINTENANCE.

The Reclamation Service has operated all of the projects under its charge except the Salt River project and the gravity unit of the Minidoka project, which, as above stated, have been turned over to the water users for operation and maintenance. Considerable progress has been made in the matter of cooperation with the water users and friendly cooperative relations now obtain where antagonism formerly existed on several of the projects. Benefit has been derived by the irrigators from the dissemination of knowledge of better methods of farming and irrigation, and in spite of unfavorable physical conditions the projects, as a whole, are prosperous and remunerative and are contributing largely to the wealth and especially to the subsistence of the country. The crop values on Government projects for the season of 1917 reached nearly $60,000,000 without taking account of the live-stock industries, including meat, dairy products, wool, etc, nor of either crops or livestock products or substantial areas several from the Government works, but not covered by crop census. Besides this is the indirect or incidental benefit to the mining and livestock industries resulting from the production of large quantities of food and forage in the localities where needed and the increase in the number of independent homes in the arid region.

It is necessary for the Reclamation Service to exert by such methods as may be possible a pressure toward the achievement of greater economy in the use of water than has obtained in the past. A few of the projects have achieved creditable results in this respect, while upon others much remains to be done to terminate wasteful use of water and correct the injury that this has produced.

An excess of water used in irrigation is not only a waste of a costly and precious liquid, which should be used in extending agricultural production, but it is actually harmful to the lands to which applied by leaching plant food from the soil, raising the water table, and causing injurious swamp or water-logged conditions in their vicinity.

The methods employed to enforce and encourage a more rational use of water are three:

1. Dissemination of knowledge of the reasons why excess of irrigation water is injurious and the methods adapted to conserve water in the soil and to handle it with greater economy.

2. Adjustment of charges for irrigation water as required by the reclamation extension act, by which the irrigator must pay for the use of excessive quantities of water.

3. The introduction of the rotation system by which water is delivered in larger heads in order that it may be more economically used and careful measurement of water to each user.

SETTLEMENT.

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The settlement section under the jurisdiction of the statistician has charge of publicity, photography, and the dissemination of information concerning the home-making opportunities of the service.

Publicity is obtained through the medium of the daily and weekly press, special stories for syndicate and magazine writers and others, lectures illustrated by stereopticon and motion pictures, the loaning of illustrated lectures, and by attractive exhibits at fairs, expositions, etc.

During the fiscal year the use of the newspapers and magazines decreased, for the reason that the work of construction having been gradually slowed up the area of public lands available for settlers correspondingly was reduced. War has resulted in fewer calls for lectures and material for special stories. Notwithstanding these facts there has been but slight falling off in the number of inquiries from home seekers, and the correspondence in the Washington office. continued heavy throughout the year.

During the fiscal year the settlement section had charge of three important land openings, namely, on the Shoshone project, September, 1917; on the Grand Valley project, March, 1918; and on the Uncompahgre project, April, 1918. Announcement of these openings brought a flood of inquiries to the Chicago and Washington offices. In a single day more than 1,200 people visited the former office. During a period of three days the temporary office in Kansas City was visited by more than 500 home seekers daily. The lands opened to entry were unclassified, and on each project varied widely in quality and value. Naturally the home seekers made choice of the best, and there was no difference in the water-right charges. This resulted in as high as 50 to 60 applications for the choicest units, while numerous of the poorer and less attractive units were without an applicant. At each opening the number of home seekers in attendance greatly exceeded the total number of the farms, and if the latter had been of equal value all would have been filed on. injustice of taxing the poorest land on a project the same construction charge that is placed on the best will always retard the settlement of the former. The proof of this is found in the fact that of the 295 farm units open to entry to-day on all of the projects not one can be classed as choice. Most of the remaining units are rough, seeped, and cut by canals or otherwise unattractive and far more expensive to develop. For one or more of the reasons mentioned these units are vacant to-day and in numerous cases are an eyesore

The

or a breeding place for grasshoppers and rabbits. On projects like the Minidoka and North Platte such units are gradually being acquired by sons or relatives of farmers residing nearby or by employes of the Government. On the Minidoka project a large number of units of this kind were taken up during the past 12 months. To-day less than 200 acres remain unentered on this project.

In view of the extraordinary favor which the public and our national lawmakers have accorded the plans of the Secretary to provide employment and homes on reclaimed areas for our returning soldiers, it is well to emphasize the fact that notwithstanding the war crisis there is no lessening in the demand for public lands as soon as they are made available by homeseekers who are not at the front. Some provision must be made to satisfy this demand at the same time that the Nation is providing for its soldiers. The follow-up system employed by the settlement section to ascertain the financial condition and experience of the homeseekers indicates that a far better class is to-day seeking lands under Government control than ever before. They are more practical and experienced, and as a rule have a greater capital to invest, all of which presages a larger measure of success. With the jump in prices of all farm products, lands on the projects generally have greatly increased in value. It is no longer surprising to find lands but three years from desert selling for $100 and $200 per acre, the buyer in addition having to pay a water right charge ranging from $40 to $80 per acre.

Briefly summing up the settlement work it may be said that the demand for Government lands of good quality far exceeds the supply, and the present settlement organization with little difficulty could readily find settlers for 200,000 acres a year. The untilled lands on the projects offering the greatest difficulty in the way of settlement are those in private ownership. The problem of securing homeseekers for these can not be solved successfully until the present owners prepare these lands for crops and make the prices and terms of sale more attractive. Exploitation of the settler, while much less prevalent than before, still obtains on some of the projects and is a serious factor in retarding development. With the high prices of farm crops the percentage of tenant farmers shows an increase. Many of our landowners have leased their lands and have moved into town. This condition warrants careful consideration of all who are concerned in perpetuating the back-to-the-land movement because it subverts the basic principle upon which the Reclamation Act was founded. The evils of tenantry are too well understood to require discussion.

During the past year the settlement section has had the heartiest Gooperation of the project and civic associations, of the State lands boards, and other officials. This cooperation has enabled the service to secure a very large quantity of valuable motion film, photographs, and other publicity material. Much of this film has been made available for public use, and a large amount is now being used by the Committee on Public Information in connection with its educational campaign abroad.

In June the settlement office was closed for the term of the war. 83290°-18

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IRRIGATION AND CROP RESULTS, 1917.

The works built under the reclamation law are now serving probably 2,000,000 acres under irrigation. The exact acreage is not known to the Reclamation Service because considerable areas not covered by its census are under canals built by private parties and are related to the Government projects only through contracts under the Warren Act, by which they share in various degrees the benefits of the Government works. In most of these cases the storage works are used in common; occasionally the diversion works and main carriage canals and part of the water stored or diverted by the Government is delivered in bulk to the private canals or irrigation districts, which provide their own distributaries and operate them.

On most of the reclamation projects proper, where the Reclamation Service has built and operates the complete system of storage and distribution works, carrying water to each farm, the service has a force of ditch riders in daily touch with the irrigators. As the delivery of water declines toward the close of the season this organization, while still required for occasional deliveries, can perform other service and an opportunity is offered at little extra expense to collect data of the exact areas irrigated and the crops produced.

Such statistics have been collected for a number of years. Although, as indicated above, these figures do not show the entire development or crop production based on the works built under the reclamation, law, they do show a large part of it and are complete enough to show clearly the nature of the crops grown, their relative importance in area, the values produced, and other factors.

This crop census for 1917 shows that in the present world crisis the reclamation projects are making a substantial contribution to the food supply. Seven million bushels of grain, an equal quantity of vegetables and truck, and 200,000,000 pounds of fruit were harvested from the lands covered by the census. A million and a half tons of hay and forage crops were produced and largely converted to animal products by feeding on the projects. Other crops included nearly 12,000,000 pounds of cotton, 30,000,000 pounds of cotton seed, and 300,000 tons of sugar beets which yielded probably 75,000,000 pounds of sugar. The total crop reported was worth $56,460,000, substantially more than that reported for any New England State at the last national census. Thus, in effect a new State has been added to the Nation in the matter of crop production, farm homes, and agricultural development. It is conservative to say that the crop and live-stock products on lands irrigated from the Government works, in value and nearly in variety, are sufficient to clothe and feed an army of a quarter of a million men.