38 LANDS OF THE ARID REGION OF THE UNITED STATES. 
interests of single individuals and considering only the interests of the 
greatest number, would meet with local opposition. ‘The surveyors, them- 
selves would be placed under many temptations, and would be accused— 
sometimes rightfully perhaps, sometimes unjustly—of favoritism and cor- 
ruption, and the service would be subject to the false charges of disappointed 
men on the one hand, and to truthful charges against corrupt men on the 
other. In many ways it would be surrounded with difficulties and fall into 
disrepute. 
Under these circumstances it is believed that it is best to permit the 
people to divide their lands for themselves—not in a way by which each 
man may take what he pleases for himself, but by providing methods by 
which these settlers may organize and mutually protect each other from the 
rapacity of individuals. The lands, as lands, are of but slight value, as they 
cannot be used for ordinary agricultural purposes, 7. ¢., the cultivation of 
crops; but their value consists in the scant grasses which they spontaneously 
produce, and these values can be made available only by the use of the 
waters necessary for the subsistence of stock, and that necessary for the small 
amount of irrigable land which should be attached to the several pasturage 
farms. Thus, practically, all values inhere in the water, and an equitable 
division of the waters can be made only by a wise system of parceling the 
lands; and the people in organized bodies can well be trusted with this right, 
while individuals could not thus be trusted. These considerations have led 
to the plan suggested in the bill submitted for the organization of pasturage 
districts. 
Tn like manner, in the bill designed for the purpose of suggesting a plan 
for the organization of irrigation districts, the same principle is involved, 
viz, that of permitting the settlers themselves to subdivide the lands into 
such tracts as they may desire. 
The lands along the streams are not valuable for agricultural purposes 
in continuous bodies or squares, but only in irrigable tracts governed by 
the levels of the meandering canals which carry the water for irrigation, and 
it would be greatly to the advantage of every such district if the lands could 
be divided into parcels, governed solely by the conditions under which the 
water could be distributed over them; and such parceling cannot be properly 
