CONGRESS. (IRRIGATION.) 



183 



In opposing the adoption of the rule Mr. Robin- 

 son, of Indiana, argued against the policy of the 

 measure. 



" Mr. Speaker, to a casual observer of legisla- 

 tion and to those who have only casually looked 

 into the important questions involved it may 

 seem that two or three days' time would be 

 ample for the discussion of the features presented 

 by this bill. But, involving, as it does in one 

 form or another, nearly all the principles of gov- 

 ernment for which we have stood, involving all 

 the questions of change in the administration of 

 the public lands, involving the abdication by the 

 House of Representatives of its powers over ap- 

 propriations, involving the constitutional ques- 

 tions of State and national powers, and involving 

 home rule, for State rule is home rule, for which 

 this side of the House for a century has stood, 

 two days' time for the discussion of these ques- 

 tions is not ample to present them to the House 

 of Representatives. It involves the whole field of 

 appropriation, economy in expenditure, wasteful 

 extravagance, special and political influence, jobs 

 and deals, political and legislative. 



" It involves in government a change of an 

 old and the ingrafting of a new system of laws 

 for the regulation and control of 600,000,000 

 acres of public domain along untried and experi- 

 mental paths. 



" I do not mean that irrigation is an experi- 

 ment, for it has been successfully and profitably 

 employed by State and private enterprise for 

 ages. But to the Government it is new, experi- 

 mental, and dangerous. 



" This change involves the abdication by Con- 

 gress of its rights and its duties to appropriate 

 money derived from taxation, money derived 

 from the sale of land owned by all the people, 

 and it is a surrender of these rights of the people 

 and this prerogative of Congress to a Federal 

 officer in the expenditure of a mountain of money, 

 the cost of which irrigation projects is vari- 

 ously estimated by experts at from the lowest, 

 $300,000,000, to the highest, $600,000,000, being 

 the reclamation of 60,000,000 acres of irrigable 

 land at from $5 to $10 an acre on the average. 



"While this estimate of 60,000,000 acres of 

 irrigable land is made, there are yet 540,000,000 

 in the arid regions, and we may confidently as- 

 sume, in the light of all past experiences, that 

 the efforts of experts and officers in charge will 

 not be relaxed till the bounty of heaven is ex- 

 hausted and the flood and snow waters are no 

 moite. Cum grano salis is a good rule in passing 

 on preliminary estimates of experts when their 

 hearts are set on a project. 



" I congratulate the gentlemen of the arid re- 

 gions, who have a special interest not common 

 to the whole country, on securing consideration 

 for this measure of interest in their districts and 

 States, but troublesome and dangerous to every 

 other section of the country. 



" That it will affect them advantageously and 



linously affect all the rest of us I firmly be- 

 lieve, and think this will be made plain by a 

 eading of the bill and the majority and minority 

 reports. I can not speak in unkindness, but in 

 araise, of Representatives of the States whose 

 stars are fast floating away in the firmament, 

 losing their luster, and preparing to join the 

 ~Iilky Way, but my constituency can not con- 

 ribute to its own downfall to rescue them from the 

 'loom that surrounds them, and I claim only the 



ime rights that Representatives always exercise 

 Dn this floor, to protect my people as I have the 

 inderstanding to perceive and the power to exe- 



ite. An attempt has been made, unjustly and 



inordinately, to control the Democratic congres- 

 sional committee and to divert it into an unwar- 

 ranted and dangerous path, and culminated a 

 brief time ago in a minority acting on some sort 

 of an irrigation resolution. 



" This new scheme involves the complicated, 

 complex, litigious, and dangerous questions of 

 condemnation of private property in a State ju- 

 risdiction by a Federal officer, and which power 

 and property so condemned is to be used in and 

 for another State to irrigate public land not only, 

 but private land as well. To illustrate: Nevada 

 must go to California and invoke all the compli- 

 cated machinery of law must wade through the 

 perplexing problems of condemnation and inter- 

 state rights or get no water, and this is rendered 

 still more difficult by the invoking of the law 

 within a State jurisdiction by a Federal officer for 

 uses not wholly within the State and not exclu- 

 sively concerning United States land. 



" Such a conflict and litigation would arise 

 like unto that which might come were the dead 

 to arise and attempt to trace their ancient pos- 

 sessions. This scheme involves the purchase 

 without condemnation by a United States officer 

 from the public-land fund belonging to all the 

 people, at exorbitant figures, as it must be when 

 the United States is the purchaser in a State 

 jurisdiction, of private property for the uses and 

 purposes I have just named. 



" It involves the United States Government in 

 the execution of an enterprise around which will 

 cluster, like banqueters at a feast, those patriotic 

 American citizens, with too many of which we 

 unfortunately are cursed, who are always ready 

 to encourage an enterprise by the Government, 

 however stupendous, because there is something 

 in it for themselves. 



" It involves the robbery of peoples of self-gov- 

 ernment in States, and while some speak for 

 them, saying that American citizens will abjectly 

 submit to a surrender of their sovereignty to re- 

 ceive these gifts of the people's lands, and submit 

 to be governed 2,000 and 3,000 miles away, I 

 believe that Representatives of other States 

 should save this misguided people from their 

 friends and at once protect the interest of their 

 own States, their own constituents. 



" It is charged that the land-grant railroads 

 are the principal promoters of this legislation. 

 This is not met with a disclaimer, but by the 

 question, ' Suppose they are ? ' This is a question 

 difficult to answer satisfactorily to all, but for 

 myself, I am unwilling to stand for a proposi- 

 tion embodied in this bill which my party has 

 always stood against; unwilling to promote a 

 system of land grants, either in the land itself 

 or by the Government's increase of value to it, 

 when I remember my party's opposition to the 

 original grants and its vigorous insistence on 

 the forfeitures of lands by the railroad corpora- 

 tions by reason of their refusal to comply with 

 the terms of the grants. Others may see their 

 way clear to go into this conflict with party doc- 

 trine, but I can not. 



" Even if the great railroad interests of these 

 sections do say that the only reasons for this 

 dangerous legislation is to give us the Asiatic 

 trade, for my part I can not see enough of merit 

 in this irrigation proposition from any stand- 

 point to fly me in the face of my party's imiform 

 attitude when it made history on both the sub- 

 sidizing of railroads by land grants or on ex- 

 pansion, the one the real and the other the 

 claimed reason why the railroad corporations are 

 in favor of the bill. 



" This bill involves the United States Govern- 



