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Show RECLAMATION OF THE ARID LANDS 645 Furthermore, Hinton, the Department's specialist on irrigation, estimated the area reclaimable by irrigation at 245 million acres "provided that water can be obtained for that purpose." Hinton admitted, however, that known water resources were only sufficient to irrigate 147 million acres. He had great faith in flowing underground streams and artesian wells to tap them and had no fear of such a thing as lowering the water table. He estimated the average capital cost of irrigating this huge acreage at $7 an acre, or somewhat over a billion dollars, and predicted that the average value of the land irrigated would be $30. Later, when Hinton was no longer an employee of the Department of Agriculture, he published an article in the widely read Arena in which he reduced his estimate of the amount of arid land that could be irrigated to 121 million acres, including the 21 million acres he claimed were "under works designed to store and distribute water in irrigation," but went on in his enthusiasm or ignorance to speak of the "millions of tons of fertilizing material" that would be conveyed to thirsty soils. Here he was probably borrowing from Powell who, in his Report on the Lands of the Arid Region spoke of "the water coming down from the mountains and plateaus freighted with fertilizing material derived from the decaying vegetation and soils of the upper regions, which are spread by the flowing waters over the cultivated lands. It is probable that the benefits derived from this source alone will be full compensation for the cost of the process [of building irrigation projects]." As an advocate of the faddist notion that the creation of reservoirs would change the climate, Hinton predicted that the increase in rainfall would provide sufficient water to irrigate an additional 54 million acres. He then entered into a confused statement of the quantities of public and private lands in the arid region that were then open to settlement or might become so, including 540 million acres of United States land, 80 million acres of Texas public lands, 75 million acres of railroad lands, and 120 million acres of Indian lands and Spanish grants, making a total of 815 million. All this was designed to show the possibilities in the future development of agriculture which, if properly followed through, might both vastly increase the Nation's wealth and, if equitably distributed, end poverty. Hinton did not favor a transfer of the public lands to the states and showed that such a policy would not contribute to effective use of the water of western streams for irrigation.25 He had long been a propagandist for irrigation, but now, unhampered by government connections, he could trumpet forth his views even more effectively in company with other extremists who visioned a development of the arid lands not unlike that which had occurred in the more promising areas of the Middle West a generation earlier.2" Major John W. Powell who had first brought dramatically to the attention of the American people the possibilities of irrigating the arid lands in his famous Report on the Lands of the Arid Region, completed in 1878, was not to be outdone by Hinton. Congress had criticized Powell and his staff for their slowness in surveying reservoir sites and had also blamed Powell for the virtual suspension of land entries. Possibly because he felt the need to rehabilitate himself, Powell wrote an article which appeared in the March 1890, issue of Century Magazine, on "The Irrigable 26 Richard J. Hinton, "A Continental Issue," The Arena, VIII (October 1893), 618-29. 26 Even after he was no longer employed by the Department of Agriculture Hinton continued to be highly critical of the Geological Survey for its wasteful expenditure of the $350,000 voted by Congress for surveys of land suitable for irrigation, the reports of which contained a good deal of reprinted matter and compared quite unfavorably with the'much more substantial work done under his direction for the Department of Agriculture which cost much less. Science, XXI (January 6, 1893), 10-11. |