109 



they gi-aiit farmers to specific tracts of land. Tlio contracts of these 

 companies for perpetnal water rights always describe the land on 

 which the water is to be used, they limit the amount which will be 

 furnished to the needs of that land, and do not permit the farmer 

 to a^jply any surplus he may have to other lands. 



Uses of water for other purposes than irrigation may require a 

 uniform continuous volume, and hence the granting of a right to a 

 uniform continuous flow is not an equivalent of the actual use. but 

 based on actual use; but even in these cases where these rights can be 

 severed from such use and applied to a different use. they ceaso to 

 be usufructuary rights and become property rights. They may be 

 and often are fair equivalents of the original user's right, and if this 

 original right was not for an excessive amount of water one of the 

 grave evils of transfers is avoided, but along the Platte practically 

 all of the early rights were for an excessive amount of water, and the 

 danger of substituting an equivalent for the original use is that it 

 destroys the original measure by which excess might in the future 

 be corrected and turns the mistake originally made into a valuable 

 speculative property. Where an original right for irrigation is 

 restricted to the original number of acres, the owner can never make 

 use of the surplus without destroying his land. On the contrary, as 

 the subsoil becomes filled and his methods become more skillful, care 

 for profits will compel him to take less and less water from the 

 stream. But if he can sell his appropriation the way is open to turn 

 this excess into money, and his interest in irrigation becomes second- 

 ary to his interest in the property he has in the stream. His ingenu- 

 ity is not directed toward the skillful use of w^ater, but to making 

 trades which will extend his control over the stream. Xo one famil- 

 iar with the transfers of appropriations in Colorado and the litiga- 

 tion which has grown out of these transactions during the past 

 fifteen years can doubt that if water rights had been attached to the 

 land irrigated it Avould have been a great gain to the peace and wel- 

 fare of the farmers of that section. The different reports of the 

 State engineers of Colorado and the information contained in Bulle- 

 tin 118 of this Office, on pages 49 to 75, fully support this conclusion. 



Most of the irrigation rights to the Platte River and its tributaries 

 in Colorado are described as a constant flow of a certain numl)er of 

 cubic feet per second. They are therefore assumed equivalents of 

 actual uses. In some respects they resemble warehouse receipts for 

 grain — that is, the holder of an appropriaticm has a right to deuiand 

 a certain amount of the flow of the stream every day. It differs 

 from a warehouse receipt in this: He can not hold it out of use or 

 claim credit if he fails to use it or i)rovide for its use: but in Col- 

 orado, if he does not wish to use it himself, he can lend (?) it to some 

 one who does, and as water b(icomes more valuable the inducements 



