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,
