These measures are suggestive of what may be done by law to correct abuses, but laws alone can not accomplish everything. The rivers belong to all the people, and every one who wishes may operate steamboat or barge lines, but before these can become profitable, and before first cla.s.s warehouses and machinery are installed, there must appear on the part of the people a desire to patronize them. The best results are found in those cases where there is harmony between the railways and the steamboat lines; those in which the steamboat lines relieve the railways of much of the heavy freight which they are not able to handle without greatly increasing their present equipment.
There should be cooperation on the part of the people. The towns and cities along the banks of many European rivers provide suitable terminals, warehouses and wharves with free use of the service. In other cases this is done by private capital with a charge for use to shippers.
Sometimes it is done by the steamboat companies themselves, but unless one or the other method is a.s.sured all along the river it is not wise for the government to undertake the improvement of a stream.
Intelligent improvement of the waterways of the United States demands first that a careful survey of the needs of the whole country be made, then that a systematic plan be carried out providing for the improvement of important streams first.
The state and nation should work together, and any work that is begun should be completed as promptly as possible so that its full benefit may be realized.
Certain work, such as the improvement of the channel, should be done by the national government, since the waters belong to the nation; but the expense of constructing levees or d.y.k.es should be borne by the land owners along the banks, because the land thus protected is greatly increased in value; or by the state, which gets the return in increased taxes.
In many instances, the improvement of a stream would be a great benefit to one state or part of a state, but it would be impossible in many years to improve all the desirable streams, so that the larger ones of most general importance must be considered first.
In such cases the improvement is often undertaken by the state. Some navigable rivers have been thus improved and many ca.n.a.ls are the property of states or of private companies.
Only a few rivers have a steady flow throughout the year at a depth sufficient to carry large boats. On most streams destructive floods at certain seasons and low waters at others interfere with navigation during a considerable part of the year. Most rivers have sand-bars, sunken rocks or logs in the channel, making the pa.s.sage of boats difficult and dangerous. Others are well suited for navigation, except at points where rapids and falls make it impossible for boats to pa.s.s.
The Ohio, the Tennessee, the Missouri and the upper Mississippi abound in such dangerous places and these should be ca.n.a.lized. It is the improving of rivers in these ways, dredging harbors to make them safer, and digging ca.n.a.ls to provide a short pa.s.sage between two bodies of water, that const.i.tute what is known as the Improvement of Inland Waters.
If you look at a map showing the navigable streams of the United States you will see that nearly all of them lie in the eastern part.
The Mississippi is like a great artery with branches extending in all directions, east and west. The Great Lakes, with their outlet, the St.
Lawrence River, and the many important rivers emptying into the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico, such as the Merrimac, Hudson, Delaware, Susquehanna, Potomac and Rio Grande, form great highways for all the commerce of the eastern part of the country, while the Columbia, Sacramento and Colorado Rivers, with their branches, are the only navigable streams of any importance west of the Mississippi River system.
In some places a small portion of land divides two important water areas, and ca.n.a.ls dug through this neck of land change the commercial routes of the whole world. Such are the Isthmus of Suez, eighty-seven miles wide, through which a ca.n.a.l was cut that saves a sailing distance of 3,700 miles from England to India. Only the Isthmus of Panama, forty-nine miles in width, divides the Atlantic from the Pacific Ocean.
When the ca.n.a.l across this narrow strip is completed, the sailing distance from New York to San Francisco will be shortened 8,000 miles, the entire distance around South America.
The Sault Ste. Marie Ca.n.a.l, connecting Lakes Superior and Huron, is only a little more than a mile and a half long, but it opens up the entire iron, copper, lumber and wheat resources of the Northwest to cheap water pa.s.sage through the other lakes to the manufacturing region of the East.
The Erie Ca.n.a.l, by connecting Lake Erie with the Hudson River from Buffalo to Albany, New York, makes the only water pa.s.sage from the Great Lakes to the ocean that lies within the borders of the United States.
If you will turn to the map again, you will see still other places where a short ca.n.a.l may open up an entirely new and important water route.
From Chicago to Lockport, Illinois, is only thirty-seven miles, but Chicago is on Lake Michigan, while Lockport is on the Illinois River, a branch of the Mississippi. This ca.n.a.l, a large part of which is now in operation, is a part of the Lakes to Gulf waterway. One plan is to broaden and deepen the channel so that large vessels may pa.s.s, without unloading, from the Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico.
Another proposed ca.n.a.l which would be undertaken largely by individual states and a part of which is already completed, would afford a safe inside pa.s.sage connecting the many bays, channels and navigable rivers of the Atlantic coast.
Still another proposed measure is the cutting of a ca.n.a.l from the southern end of Lake Michigan to the western end of Lake Erie at Toledo, Ohio, to avoid the long haul up Lake Michigan and down Lake Huron again.
The United States now has 25,000 miles of navigable rivers and a nearly equal mileage of rivers not now navigable but which might be made commercially important; five great lakes that have a combined length of 1,410 miles, 2,120 miles of operated ca.n.a.ls, and 2,500 miles of sounds, bays and bayous, that might be joined by tidewater ca.n.a.ls easily constructed, less than 1,000 miles long altogether, and making a continuous pa.s.sage from New England to the Gulf of Mexico.
In all, our waterways at the present time are 55,000 to 60,000 miles long, the greatest system in the world, but almost unused.
The most important waterway improvement so far completed, is the Sault Ste. Marie, or the "Soo" ca.n.a.l which cost $96,000,000. A depth of eight feet was increased to twenty-one feet. The traffic has risen in sixteen years from a million and a quarter tons to forty-one and a quarter million tons.
A large proportion of the United States is not naturally fitted to be the home of man; at least, it is not fitted to produce his food, and except on the lofty mountains the reason for this will almost always be found to be either a lack or an excess of water.
In some parts of the country, there is, as we have seen, little rainfall. These arid or semi-arid lands must be provided with water for drinking purposes and for agriculture. The diverting of water courses into ca.n.a.ls and ditches so that water can be carried to these waste lands is called irrigation.
In other parts of the country where rains are abundant, serious floods occur every year, often many times in a year. Thousands of acres of land thus subject to overflow are lost to use. The holding back of these flood waters in the upper part of the rivers, and so preventing these overflows, is termed storage of waters.
In still other regions the rainfall is abundant, and the land low-lying.
Large areas are always covered with water. Such lands are called swamps or bogs, and when drained, they become the richest of agricultural lands. Irrigation, storage and drainage are the three methods employed to make waste lands valuable and useful. The land is saved or reclaimed, so all these methods of balancing and distributing the water supply are called reclamation.
In general it may be said that irrigation is more generally needed in the West, storage of flood waters in the central and eastern states, and drainage in the South.
By thus distributing the rainfall, hundreds of millions of acres have been or may be reclaimed, and large regions, formerly unfit to inhabit, have been turned into profitable farms. Three-fourths of one per cent.
of our total rainfall, or two per cent. of all that falls in the West, is used for irrigating 13,000,000 acres.
There are several methods of irrigation which are adapted to different regions and different crops. The rice fields of South Carolina, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas are irrigated by allowing the land to remain continually flooded to a depth of several inches. When the irrigation season is over the levees are opened, and the water runs off rapidly, and the crop is soon ready to be harvested. Tidal rivers are used to supply water in most cases, but in Texas many flowing wells are employed for irrigation.
In Florida, where irrigation is used largely for intensive farming, various means are employed, some of which are also used in the western and southwestern states. Mechanical pumps, operated by turbine wheels, pump the water from the rivers if a lift be required. Sometimes the water is pumped direct to the fields in iron pipes and applied by means of hydrants and hose, as in a city water system.
Overhead pipe lines are now recognized as the most perfect and satisfactory form of artificial watering. Two-inch pipes are run over frames several feet in height. These are arranged in parallel lines all over the fields about forty feet apart. At intervals of forty feet, a small iron pipe, ending with a fine spraying attachment, extends upward.
The water is turned on in the evening and comes out of the sprayer in a fine mist and falls upon the plants like a gentle rain.
By another form of irrigation, the fields are divided at regular intervals by wide wooden troughs from which water is directed between the rows of plants. Main ca.n.a.ls leading from the streams and intersected by short ca.n.a.ls extend in all directions through the fields and orchards, and are distributed in various ways. This system is in general use throughout the arid portions of the West. The methods are said to be the most scientific and varied in southern California.
When water for irrigation is supplied from wells some underground system is generally used. One common method is to lay continuous pipes from the wells all over the fields and distribute from hydrants, plugs and standpipes.
By still another system, the water is carried below the surface through pipes which are broken every few inches and laid in beds of charcoal.
In the eastern states irrigation is only employed in dry weather to increase the yield of vegetable crops. In the arid western region it transforms what would otherwise be a dreary desert into fertile valleys.
William J. Bryan, speaking at the first Conservation Congress, said, "Last September, I visited the southern part of Idaho and saw there a tract that has been recently reclaimed. I had been there before. I had looked upon these lands as so barren that it seemed as if it were impossible that they could ever be made useful.
"When I went back this time and found that in three years 1,700,000 acres of land had been reclaimed, that where three years ago nothing but sage-brush grew, they are now raising seven tons of alfalfa to the acre, and more than a hundred bushels of oats; when I found that ten thousand people are living on that tract, that in one town that has grown up in that time there are more than 1,900 inhabitants, and in three banks they had deposits of over half a million dollars, I had some realization of the magic power of water when applied to these desert lands."
The same thing might be said of other regions throughout the West. In the Salton district of California a marvelous change has been brought about by irrigation. A few years ago that was one of the most desolate and forbidding regions on our continent. Now it is covered with several thousands of acres of alfalfa and other crops, and it bids fair to be a great fruit region. Of southern California it is said, "The irrigation systems of this part of the state are known all over the world, and have created a prosperous commonwealth in a region which would be a scene of utter desolation without them."
This locality presents a better opportunity for the scientific study of farming by irrigation than exists anywhere else in the world. Here all land values depend directly on ability to obtain a water supply. So precious is the water and so abundant are the rewards that follow its application to the soil that the most careful consideration is given to the various sources of supply and distribution.
As land becomes scarcer and the cost of living greater on account of the increase in population, men are turning more and more to irrigation to solve the problem of food supply.
As showing what may be accomplished by irrigation, the report of the last census says: "The construction of large irrigation works on the Platte, Yellowstone and Arkansas Rivers would render fertile an area equal to that of some eastern states. Engineers are grappling with the great problems of conserving the flood waters of these streams, which now are wasted and help to increase the destructive floods of the Mississippi. The solving of these problems will change a vast area of country, now practically worthless, into valuable farms."
The "Great Bend" country, drained by the Columbia River, contains several million acres of land which only requires water to make it of great agricultural value.
The Gila River basin contains more than 10,000,000 acres of fertile land, capable of producing immense crops if irrigated, but without irrigation it is a desert land where only sage-brush and cactus flourish.
From arid lands capable of producing excellent crops but lacking in the magical element of water, we pa.s.s to the consideration of lands where the richest of soils are shut off from productiveness because they are covered with water. On the lower Mississippi the soil is richer than in any other part of the United States, but much of it is overflowed so frequently that it is unfit for cultivation. d.y.k.es and levees have reclaimed thousands of acres of such overflow land. Many states control large marshy sections that have been or may be reclaimed.
In southern Florida lie the Everglades, a vast country which has been worse than valueless; a malarial region abounding in alligators, rattlesnakes, scorpions and other dangerous animals and insects. The state of Florida has undertaken the work of draining this great swamp, and when the task is completed, Florida will have added to its resources 3,000,000 acres of the richest soil for the raising of winter vegetables and fruits.
Florida is engaged in another great project--the digging of an inside pa.s.sage connecting its inland tidal waters by a ca.n.a.l system which will open to navigation a continuous inland waterway six hundred miles in length. In digging these ca.n.a.ls through the marshes bordering the coast, thousands of acres of exceedingly fertile land have been reclaimed and are now producing valuable crops.
The Kankakee marshes in Indiana have been drained, adding many thousands of acres of rich soil to the agricultural area of the state.
In all, about 80,000,000 acres are so wet that they must be drained in order to make them produce good farm crops, but which, while now covered only with marsh gra.s.s or undergrowth, is capable of being made the most fertile of all land.
This swamp land is ten times the area of Holland, which supports a population of 5,000,000 people. It is therefore easy to see how greatly we may add to our productive territory and our national wealth by reclamation through drainage.