Municipal Water Supplies

As has been said above, under the law of March 31, 1903, a tax of one per cent is levied on the money put up in wagers under certain conditions, and from the sums thus collected subsidies are granted to communes who apply for them for the construction of aqueducts for drinking water. The applications for subsidies are submitted to the special commission mentioned above, which approves them after a thorough investigation of the project by the agents of the hydraulic service. This examination covers several entirely distinct subjects. First, the hydraulic service must ascertain under what conditions and with what restrictions the contemplated conveyance can be authorized, in order to determine whether it shall or shall not be subsidized. This is indispensable, as by law the rights and interests of all users of the waters from which the supply is to be derived must be safeguarded. Also, the engineers of the hydraulic service are required to verify every detail of the enterprise; to see whether the plans are technically correct and well adapted to accomplish the end in view; and, finally, to determine whether the work is planned as economically as possible. After these data have been obtained in the field the bureau of hydraulics and agricultural improvements submits the projected enterprise to its technical advisers for another examination. If advisable, it takes the necessary steps to have the enterprise declared of public utility, and finally gives to the commission on subsidies a full and clear statement of all the facts.

The subsidies are paid to the communes in installments proportioned to the expense actually incurred, after it has been proved that the work has been properly done and that no modifications have been made in the plans whereby their value might be impaired.

After the experience of three years we may safely assert that the law of March 31, 1903, has resulted in a considerable increase in communal enterprises for the conveyance of drinking water, and that the effect on public health has been most gratifying.

* In addition to their duty as supervisors, the engineers of the service are at the command of the communes to prepare, on request as communal engineers, all plants for the installation of domestic water supply.

INDIA

[SOURCE: United States Geological Survey, Water-Supply Paper No. 87, by Herbert M. Wilson-pp. 31-36, 58, 60.]

Between 1877 and 1900 the gross outlay was $285,000,000, the grand total expended on such work from 1867 to 1900 being $337,850,000. In the year 1900-1901 the expenditures on account of irrigation aggregated $11,500,000 and the revenue $12,075,000, the profit earned on the capital outlay being 7.5 per cent.

Counting irrigated areas cropped twice, the total acres irrigated were 32,059,993; and counting areas of all kinds cropped more than once, the total area under cultivation was 229,362,381 acres.

In the province of Sind in the Indus Valley, including the southern Punjab, there is an enormous and thirsty waste of sandy desert where the annual precipitation is always below 10 inches, even falling as low as 3 or 4 inches. There nothing can be grown without the aid of irrigation, and the entire area under cultivation and the population supported thereby are entirely dependent on irrigation. The works in that region are chiefly inundation canals with a few perennial canals mostly taken from the Indus River. In the Sind alone over 3,000,000 acres are under cultivation, and yield an annual revenue of about $3,700,000.

In Bombay and the Northwest Provinces nearly double the population is now sustained that was supported previous to the introduction of modern irrigation works. According to Col. Baird Smith, the whole of the region irrigated by the Eastern Jumna canal would have been devastated by the famine of 1837-38 without the aid of the irrigation which that canal afforded. With its aid the population was comfortably supported and the gross revenue derived from the use of the water was $2,445,000, of which the Government received a yearly net income of $250,000, and this shortly after the completion of the work. In the same year the united Eastern and Western Jumna canals were estimated to have saved property to the value of $10,000,000, and as a result of this showing the British Government shortly afterwards began the construction of the great Ganges canal and other similar works.

As an indication of the increased revenue derived from the use of water and the capability of the soil to pay that increase, it appears that in the presidency of Madras the rate of assessment in the tank region is about $2.30 per acre on irrigated land, as against 55 cents per acre on land not irrigated.

Of major productive works, the capital for which has been pro

vided from borrowed money, there are 35 in the six principal provinces. The capital expended on these works to the year 1900 was about $100,000,000, while the sanctioned estimates for the completed projects were $103,572,000. These 35 major works are designed to irrigate, when fully completed and irrigation has been fully developed, something more than 10,356,000 acres. Of 6,000 miles of main and branch canals no less than 2,300 miles are navigable. The cost of making these canals navigable can not be readily ascertained, but should be eliminated in determining the true cost of each irrigable acre. The Mutha canal, in Bombay, which is the most expensive of any canal of its kind, derives a considerable income from the supply of water for domestic purposes to the city of Poona. It may be said that the works of this class average $9.30 for each acre irrigable. Of the 10 largest of these major works, the most expensive, the Orissa system in Bengal, cost $27 per acre, and the Ganges canal, which covers the largest area of all, and is at the same time the cheapest, cost a little under $6.30 per acre.

In 1900 there were irrigated by major productive works alone 11,409,528 acres. The rate of working expenses per acre on all the classes of works varied between 40 cents and $2.60. The gross area irrigated by all three classes of works was 18,611,106 acres, while the entire area under irrigation, including that watered by wells and that double cropped, was 33,096,031 acres. The average water rate charged was less than $1.40 per acre. The average value of crops per acre varied from $10 to $35, and the percentage of rate charged on the value of the crop was between $3.30 and $8.25. Gaged by the standard of the percentage of rates charged, theoretically the gage of the severity of the charge on the cultivator, the Bombay rates, which are actually the highest, are shown to be the lowest, and this is really the fact because of the very high value of the sugar-cane crop so extensively cultivated in that province. The gross value of the crops irrigated in 1900 by all the four classes of irrigation works administered by the government reached the sum of $155,000,000.

EGYPT

[SOURCE: Office of United States Agricultural Experiment Stations, Bulletin No. 130, by Clarence T. Johnston, pp. 5, 6, 56, 57, 82.]

By far the most important modern irrigation work in Egypt is the Assouan dam, which regulates the flow of the whole of

the lower Nile and thus affects the irrigation of 4,000,000 of the 5,000,000 acres under cultivation in that country. The dam was completed in 1898 at the cost of $22,000,000, but it is estimated that the resulting increase in the agricultural production of Egypt would pay for this expenditure every two years. The total cost of irrigation per acre of land irrigated, when the smaller distributary canals are included, will be $57. But the net profit per acre of the chief crops varies from $50 to $150 annually.

The revenues of the Egyptian Government from the areas devoted to dates run from $10 to $45 an acre, and the net profit to the cultivator approximates $150 an acre. This little tract of agricultural land, no larger than the irrigable area of California, supports between 5,000,000 and 6,000,000 people, pays the expenses of a costly government, and meets the interest on a national debt half as large as our own from the returns on agriculture alone.

It is believed that the water stored in the Assouan reservoir will add annually to the wealth of the country a total of $11,000,000. Land which can be perennially irrigated rents about $5 per acre higher than that which depends upon inundation alone. As shown above, the taxes on perennially irrigated land are much higher than on land not so watered. It is expected that the semiannual payments on the reservoir will be met by the increased revenue from the lands deriving benefit from the stored water. In the words of Sir Alfred Milner, "The Egyptian Government is relieved from the difficulty of paying for the works until return is received from them; until, in other words, they pay for themselves."

CHAPTER VI

LAND DEVELOPMENT

GOVERNMENT ownership of land is so common under all forms of government and all economic conditions that it can by no means be taken as an example of collectivism. For instance, those new countries most ardently devoted to an individualistic form of government, like the United States and Canada, are often in possession of large tracts of uninhabited land through no fault of their own. The purpose of such governments is to turn this land into private property as soon as possible. And this probably applies to all the governments that control vast areas of new land to-day.

In a few cases, such as the Imperial domains of Russia, Prussia, and Austria, the land is leased instead of being sold outright in small parcels. This is a case of government ownership in the collectivist sense; but governmental operation is far more rare. It is chiefly to be found, in temporary and partial effect, in the process of securing settlers for farming colonies. In such instances while governments do not operate farms entirely, they perform a great many agricultural functions-on such a large scale and in such an efficient manner as to demonstrate the practicability of governmental agriculture where governments desire to enter into this field. It is for this reason that we have devoted a moderate amount of our space to examples of governmental success in this direction-and also to a project of permanent governmental exploitation. (See Chapter VII.)

Undoubtedly still more important examples of the success of government in the field of agriculture are to be found in the European war. (See Chapter on The Food Supply.) At the time of the rapid rise of the cost of living in 1911, a large number of European municipalities also went into various branches of the food producing business. (See Chapter on Municipal Socialism.)