103 



regarding the stability of their water titles. The fanner who remains 

 serene of spirit when he sees his fields burning for lack of water and 

 knows that his loss of crops is due to wasteful use by others is a rare 

 if not impossible character. 



Advancing civilization has done more than augment the uses and 

 value of water; it has increased the evils and dangers arising from 

 w^ater. The ice gorges along the Ohio and Mississippi rivers were a 

 matter of small concern when Indians were the only people concerned. 

 Now they often cost millions of dollars and hazard many lives. 

 Hence immense sums of money are being expended to protect com- 

 merce from their action. Every reservoir, every diversion dam in a 

 stream, every artificial waterway adds a new element of danger and 

 insecurity to the lives and property below and gives ground for new- 

 laws and regulations with respect to the management of water. The 

 swamps and marshes created through the interrui)tion of under- 

 ground water supplies by impervious strata are a matter of small 

 concern in sparsely populated regions, but in highly civilized coun- 

 tries they seriously impair the value of lands for agriculture and 

 become a menace to the health and prosperity of cities and towns. 



HOW THE PLATTE HAS BEEN APPROPRIATED. 



In Wyoming and Nebraska the water of the Platte River is a 

 State property. In order to divert it one must secure a permit 

 from the State. In each State there is an administrative board 

 which has control of the appropriation of water and of its distri- 

 bution among the parties acquiring rights to its use. The theory 

 of State ownership and the manner in which State authority is 

 exercised is in many of its features analogous to the Federal owner- 

 ship and management of public land. There is no such administra- 

 tive machinery to govern the acquirement of water rights in the 

 river in Colorado. The State exercises direction over the filing of 

 claims and the building of dams, but it does not assert any control 

 over the number or location of ditches, and the courts have held 

 that the State can not enact laws either to fix the place where water 

 is to be diverted or to restrict the building of diversion works. There 

 is not water enough for all the ditches that can be built, and to build 

 more ditches than can be filled means either that the money spent on 

 the last one will be lost or that filling it will rob some earlier ap[)ro- 

 priator. These two things have been conspicuous features of the 

 assumed generosity of the Colorado water laws. After ditches are 

 built the law in that State can be invoked to prevent any water being 

 turned in them, but no one is permitted to pi-event the waste of money 

 or conflicts over water which this lack of supervision involves. 



In AVvoming and Nebraska any one permitted to divert water 



