Page:Statesman's Year-Book 1921.djvu/528

 476

UNITED STATES

of 640 acres of land, in each ' township, ' are reserved for common schools, so that the spread of education may go together with colonisation.

The power of Congress over the public territory is exclusive and universal, except so far as restrained by stipulations in the original cessions.

The Reclamation Service (organised under the Reclamation Act of June 17, 1902) is engaged in the investigation, construction, and operation of irrigation works in the arid and semi-arid States of the West. Thirty pro- jects have been authorised for construction or operation for irrigation of lands in Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Washington, and Wyom- ing. These projects aggregate 3,200,000 acres, and the major works aid in serv- ing an additional 1,000,000 acres under private canals that generally get stored water from the Government reservoirs. The funds for this work have come chiefly from the sale of public lands, and the money expended is returned to the fund by easy payments of settlers, usually in twenty annual instalments without interest, in accordance with the Reclamation Extension Act of August 13, 1914. The Service has built on the 30 projects over 12,000 miles of canals, ditches and drains, including 100,000 canal structures, and involving the excavation of 174,000,000 cubic yards of materials. In con- nection with this work there have been constructed 100 storage and diversion dams with an aggregate volume of 13,700,000 cubic yards, including the Arrowrock dam, the highest in the world (349 feet), the Elephant Butte dam on the Rio Grande, forming the largest artificial irrigation reservoir in the United States. The net construction cost to June 30, 1919, was 123,853,000 dollars.

According to census returns the total acreage of farms and the improved acreage have been : —

Years

Farm area. Acres

Improved area. Acres

Value of farm property

Value of products in preceding year

1890 1900 1910

623,218,619 838,591,774 878,798,325

357,616,755 414,498,487 478,451,750

Dollars 16,082,267,689 20,439,901,164 40,991,449,090

Dollars 2,460,107,454 4,717,069,973 8,558,199,196

In the same years the numbers of farms of different sizes were : —

Acres

1890

1900

1910

Under 3 acres. 3 and under 10 20 50 100 500 1,000 and over

Total

10

20

50

100

500

1,000

150,194

265,550

902,777

1,121,485

2,008,694

84,395

31,546

4,564,641

41,385

225,844

406,641

1,257,496

1,366,038

2,290,282

102,526

47,160

5,737,372

18,033

317,010

504,123

1,414,376

1,438,069

2,494,461

125,295

50,135

6,361,502

In 1910, 4,771,063 farms were occupied by native whites, 669,556 by foreign-born whites and 920,883 by negroes and other non-whites. Of the occupants, 3,948,722 were owners, 58,104 managers, 712,294 cash tenants,