KEPORT OF THE SECRETARY OF AGRICULTURE. XCIII 



except land -office fees or without making anj^ .substantial improve- 

 ments, hence ever}- canal survey has been the signal for a rush to the 

 land office to file on the country to be watered. A majorit}^ of those 

 making these filings were not actual settlers, but speculators seeking 

 to make money by selling out their claims to the ditch company, or 

 later to those who actually wished to farm the lands. 



While all the land laws were doubtless intended to benefit settlers, 

 they have in practice, in the arid region, too often benefited specu- 

 lators. Hundreds of filings made under the desert, preemption, home- 

 stead, and timber-culture acts have been made by people who never 

 were farmers and never expected to become farmers. It is to such 

 filings that scores of meritorious irrigation enterprises owe their failure. 

 The repeal of the preemption and timber-culture acts, and cutting down 

 desert land entries from 640 to 320 acres, has improved the situation, but 

 it can be still further improved by an entire repeal of the desert-land 

 act and by requiring settlers on homesteads to cultivate as well as to 

 live on their farms. The desert act was an economic mistake. Six 

 hundred and forty acres is more arable land than a man of moderate 

 means can cultivate under irrigation. 



GRAZING LAND. 



Surrounding the irrigable valleys are vast areas of grazing land 

 which can never be cultivated because of lack of water, or because the 

 surface is too broken for irrigation. Although a single acre produces 

 little forage, the aggregate value of the pasturage is very great, and 

 large sums of monev and many men are employed in the range stock 

 industries. Probablj^ 400,000,000 acres of the public domain has no 

 agricultural value except for pasturage. At present it is an open 

 common with no laws for its protection or its disposal. 



The question to be considered is whether this lack of the control of 

 the grazing lands is an injury or an aid to the irrigation development. 

 That it must exert an important influence can scarcely be doubted. 



In sections remote from railways or local markets the prohibitive 

 cost of transportation renders the growing of farm products for sale 

 unprofitable. These products must be consumed where raised, and the 

 only product that can be so consumed is winter feed for stock, and this 

 in turn requires stock to consume it. Many irrigable areas are 50 or 

 100 miles from a railroad station. The use of grazing lands is as essen- 

 tial to successful irrigation of these areas as control of a water sup- 

 ply, but so long as there is no law giving secure tenure on grazing 

 land the farmer under irrigation is subject to the danger of having his 

 home pasturage eaten up by some nomadic flock or herd. This fre- 

 quently occurs, and the gravity of the conflicts it provokes is serious. 

 During the summer months not a week passes which does not witness 

 an armed encounter either between settlers and range stockmen or 



