Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 136, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 June 1912 — PIONEER ADVOCATE OF DRAINAGE FOR NEWTON. [ARTICLE]

PIONEER ADVOCATE OF DRAINAGE FOR NEWTON.

tJohn Foresman Says If It Were Not For Ditches Our Land Would Not Be Worth Anything. John Foresman was over from Newton county today and talked freely about his experiences as an advocate of drainage. He said to a reporter for The Republican, “I am the daddy or drainage in Newton county and served as a viewer on the first ditch ever established there.” He went ahead to relate the unsystematic manner in which tile was laid in the old days and how each drainage scheme had resulted in such great good that others had been started and how swamps and swails and marshes had given way to golden grain, and land that wat literally valueless was now worth from SIOO to S2OO per acre. “Do I favor the Borntrager ditch?” asked Mr. Foresman. “Well, I should say I do. All these years I have been telling people to ditch their lands and to run their drains to the Iroquois and then to ditch the Iroquois river and provide an outlet sufficient to take the water away. We have been dredging and ditching for years and have received marked benefit, but now we must do the most important thing there is for the further development of our land and that is to lower the channel of the Iroquois river. It would be the trunk line for all of our ditches and make our land just as valuable as the higher priced land in Illinois.” Mr. Foresman is probably a competent authority on ditches and his enthusiasm shows a conviction that he will live to see the day when his prophecy about the Iroquois will come true.