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52 WATER RESOURCES OP CALIFORNIA. CH APTER VII. SETTLEMENT. The four millions of people within the confines of California in nineteen hundred and twenty-three markedly distinguish this state from the wild and uninhabited mountains, the unsettled valleys and vacant plains of one hundred years ago. Transfigured through years of toil, the state’s lands are now of immense wealth and the source of a great income in foodstuffs and minerals, while in the cities and towns a're a multitude of industries that enhance the value of the natural products. Each succeeding generation contributes to these accumu­lated works that transform the fruits of the valley soils and the min­erals and waters of the mountains into means of sustaining greater numbers of people in prosperity and contentment. But the value of these resources and the value of these works is contingent upon their service to people. Neither fertile soil, crop-maturing waters or irriga­tion and hydro-electric structures ; nor harbors, railroads, or industrial centers disclose their intrinsic value or seethe with industry without man’s vitalizing energy: rather, they are lifeless encumbrances on wide-flung landscapes unless experiencing human exploitation. So, without man to animate and guide them, great works constructed for convert­ing the resources of the state into life-sustaining and comfort-giving commodities, neither increase its wealth nor add to the contentment of its inhabitants. Projects for transforming the immense potential wealth of the state’s waters into food or into light and warmth, must then grow in size and capacity of output in consonance with the augumenting num­bers of people waiting to put their product into use, or those industrial structures, inanimate and without volition, will weather in the elements, and, through nonuse, will deteriorate to early decay before oppor­tunity of service arrives. Enterprises that are carriers of water for domestic and industrial purposes or those which are to distribute its tireless energy in electric current to population centers and rural communities, are readily designed in size to accommodate themselves to growing communities, and select without difficulty, small numbers of employees to operate the works under the direction of trained and skilled superintendents. However, this not so with systems for carrying the waters of the streams to the agricultural lands that these may produce to their full capacity. On these systems, the users of the water are so intimately dependent upon the supply, their successes and failures are so wrapped up in the cost of the waters and excellence of service, that they are as workers in the larger enterprise of developing water for the land in order that it may produce irrigated crops, rather than as consumers of water furnished by the distribution system. The works, the dams, the canals and the distribution ditches are hut part of a system for \ WATER RESOURCES OP CALIFORNIA. 53 increasing the productivity of the soil and until this soil produces with greater abundance, the water impounding and distributing works S i M service to the people. For these reasons, private enterprises BlflHB ^ater for agricultural use and selling I as a commodity; have been supplanted m irrigation development, by mutual companies district organizations or by the governing political subdivision. PIn no other way have the interests of constructors of the works and users of the water become sufficiently coordinated that success could be attained m the enterprise as a whole. There are now perhaps, a million or more acres(2) in California fertile enough and with water at hand, but which are failing to produce adequately to pay for all the costs including improvements on the land. Much of this is m large holdings and in new districts that have recently been brought under irrigation and, although it will undoubtedly be closely settled and produce to capacity within a few years, at present these lands are lacking in numbers of tillers of the soil to respond to the propitious agricultural environment of this state. A t the same time, while these vast areas are but partially productive, eager workers and potential farm owners, anxious to prove their worth, hut without money to make a start; skilled university-trained agriculturalists, capable of directing agricultural effort and anxious to exercise their training and accumulated knowledge, are about us in numbers ample to people and intensively farm these million or more acres and many more besides, if provision were made for their occupying the land It is generally estimated that a settler, in addition to being an experi­enced farmer, should have at least from two to five thousand dollars capital to make the start under existing conditions with reasonable expectancy of ultimate success; the success so necessary for maintain­ing the credit of irrigation enterprises:; This ready money is required to levei the land, to build a house, a barn, fences; to purchase a plow and harrow, a mower, rake and seed; to procure a horse, and cow, as well as to plant the first Crop and sustain the settler until the first harvest isi sold. Two thousand to five thousand dollars, often the sav­ings of a life-time, is not possessed by a large number of people experi-enced m farming, and who are desirous of undertaking the intensive cultivation of an irrigated farm. These requirements so limit the ? I of prospective occupants for California’s agricultural lands that the rate of settlement <3) on the great irrigation projects already constructed is not as rapid as might be desired. In order to enlarge the number of people who may become settlers by reducing the initial cash outlay required, provisions are being made by some colonization enter­prises, through which land may be purchased with small payments that extend over longer periods of time than have heretofore been granted. Although the million or more acres of land in California now failing to put its water supply to use represents a partially idle value in land and works of perhaps $200,000,000, the future is more concerned with whole United st* * * ™ * in mW H BH M M M BMI states that there were 1,675,426 acres which were not irrigated CaPaWe °f lrrl®atin^ ^om e of this is probably of ^h^Real^Estete^ornmissioner^of^CalflorniE^^fter li^canvass Which 8 0 c e n r f s u n d efirrila tioT n0W 95 ° ' 000 aCr6S avallaWe for settlement o f