324: THE IRRIGATION PROBLEM. 



ing the canals, and rents water to those desiring to irrigate. Our 

 American law of riparian ownership, and the recognized doctrine 

 that each navigable stream is a highway, open alike to the use of 

 the whole people, and especially the ease by which private parties 

 acquire title to great water-courses, will necessarily cut a large fig 

 ure in the disposition of this important question. If the State 

 owned and controlled the fee to all our water-courses, so that no 

 private enterprise or individual could acquire a legal right to any of 

 the waters, any more than they could to a public highway, then 

 terms could be imposed (the fee remaining in the State,) so that 

 large inducements could be offered to private capital to invest in ir 

 rigating canals, while a reasonable and just protection against mo 

 nopoly was assured to the people. 



There is still another view, which presents itself for consideration!. 

 The right to the use of a reasonable amount of water is incident to 

 the ownership of the land adjacent to it, and neither the State, nor 

 any individual or corporation in the State, ought to be permitted to 

 divert and take from its natural channel, or from the valley through 

 which it runs, the water of any of the streams of the State, if it be 

 needed there; but the amount only that is needed should be retained 

 for riparian owners. To say that the waters of the San Joaquin 

 may be transferred from that great valley, and used for the purpose 

 of irrigating lands located either all upon the one side of the river 

 or remote from it, when it is required there, will be to admit that 

 the people of one portion of the State may do an act which will de 

 prive the people of another section of the means of subsistence. 



Yet the riparian ownership should be limited to the amount of 

 water that is actually needed. The man who owns the right to an 

 article like water, in a climate like ours, without taking any steps 

 towards a useful appropriation of it, is as great a monopolist as he 

 who owns and uses it as a means of oppression. 



In a country like this, where a large portion of the year is rain 

 less, a monopoly of the water is as dangerous to the prosperity of 

 the country as a monopoly of the air we breathe; and yet, when we 

 reflect that it requires the expenditure of a sum of money greater 

 far than any estimate which has hitherto been made, to dig canals 

 through our valleys large enough to answer the purposes of irrigation 

 on a grand scale, we can realize how difficult it is to avoid a monop 

 oly of this character; for every exclusive right necessarily amounts 

 to a monopoly. 



What can be done, and ought to be done, is to regulate its use 

 and its price by legislation; not to prohibit or limit its use. There 

 is a labor side to this question that can be only protected by legis 

 lation. Labor is weak and unprotected. Capital is strong and 

 united, and can protect itself. The people, at this time, would un 

 doubtedly object to the State, or the counties of the State, taking 

 an interest in this enterprise. The subject is new to us; the profit 

 not understood, or at least uncertain; the work vast and expensive; 

 the interest local, as it could afford but a small advantage to the 

 mining counties; therefore, private capital must be chiefly looked to 

 for this purpose. 



Already, some of the most wealthy, shrewd and enterprising busi- 



