THE NATIONAL ORGANIZATION. 



NATIONAL EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE ELECTED BY THE IRRIGATION CONGRESS AT 

 LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, OCTOBER 14, 1893. 



CHAIRMAN, Wm. K. Smyt he, Member-at-Large. 



Postoffice Box 1019, Chicago. 



V I < ' K- ' II A I It >I A V K.I ward M. Boggs, Arizona. 



Tuscon, A. T. 



SECRETARY, Fred I-. Alles, Member-at-Large. 



Los Angeles, California. 



TREASURER, 



CALIFORNIA, 

 COLORADO, 

 IDAHO. 

 ILLINOIS, 



KANSAS, . 

 MONTANA, 

 NEBRASKA, 

 NEW MEXICO, 



Eli H. Murray, San Diego. 

 J. F. Rocho, Hardin. 

 T. D. Babbitt, Nampa, 

 Willard E. Allen, Chicago. 

 J. U . Gregory. Garden City. 

 Z. T. Bnrton, Chontean. 

 Chaw. P. Ross, North Platte. 

 M. A. Downing, Las Crnces. 



NO. DAKOTA, 

 OKLAHOMA, 

 SO. DAKOTA. 



TENNESSEE, 



TEXAS. 



UTAH, 



WASHINGTON, 



WYOMING, 



John E. Jones, Nevada. 



Carson City, Nev. 



Dr. Merchant, Ellendale. 

 John H. Cotteral, Guthrie. 

 J. T. Me Williams, Aberdeen. 

 P. H. Porter, Nashville. 

 J. J. Walker, Barstow. 

 Arthur L. Thomas, SaltLake Ci'y. 

 G. > . Blalock, Walla Walla. 

 9 1 wood Mead, Cheyenne. 



COMMITTEE ON NATIONAL LEGISLATION. 



W. A. Clark, Bntte, Montana. 



Eli H. Murray, San Diego, California. 



Richard J. Hinton, New York City. 

 NATIONAL LECTURER. 



J. S. Emery, Lawrence, Kansas. 



THE IRRIGATION PROPAGANDA. 



THE dawn of 1894 finds irrigation in the hands of 

 an organized propaganda, the aims and methods 

 of which are as sharply defined as are those of any 

 contemporaneous movement in this or foreign coun- 

 tries. The plans made and making for this work will 

 be rapidly developed to the public eye, as the year un- 

 folds, but the great end to which they tend already 

 stands clear and luminous before the men of the 

 West, who see in it the fairest promise of human 

 progress in the coming century. To utilize all the 

 water and ultimately reclaim the utmost acre of des- 

 ert soil, and then to develop, on irrigated lands, the 

 highest degree of industrial freedom and the most 

 satisfying conditions of social life in short, to found 

 a new civilization wherein human equality shall be a 

 fact and not a theory is the sublime task in hand. 



LAYING THE FOUNDATION. 



The people of the arid States and Territories will 

 be expected, during the next few months, to formulate 

 the irrigation policies under which these hopes of the 

 future may be realized. There can be no enduring 

 and stately structure unless there is first provided a 

 broad, substantial foundation. This foundation must 

 include, (1) an honest and workable national law for 

 handling the arid public lauds and interstate and in- 

 ternational streams, and (2) a code of State laws recog- 

 nizing certain common principles relating to water 

 appropriation and to supervision of ditch construction 



and management, as well as to systems of public ad- 

 ministration. We are now approaching the vital 

 stage of our formative period. We are just where 

 the fathers were when they went into a five months' 

 session to build the Constitution. They had declared 

 independence and won the objects of the Revolution, 

 but it still remained to formulate into enduring law 

 the fundamental ideas upon which their new political 

 and industrial systems should rest. Western men 

 have declared their faith in the new industrial phi- 

 losophy, they have established irrigation plants and 

 developed communities after a more than seven years' 

 war with prejudice, skepticism and numerous phys- 

 ical obstacles. And now the time has come to erect 

 a system of permanent laws upon the broad princi- 

 ples of justice and equity officially uttered by the 

 International Congress at Los Angeles. 



HOW IT WILL BE DONE. 



All this is no irridescent dream of impracticable 

 enthusiasts. It will be done. The work is in the hands 

 4 of the National Executive Commktee, which is re- 

 sponsible to the Irrigation Congress, and of the State 

 Commissions, which are responsible to the committee- 

 The men at the head of the movement are bent on get- 

 ting results. They will not fail in the performance of 

 their full duty, nor will the people fail to support them. 

 Events have so shaped themselves that the critical 

 moment in this work has come at the time when the 

 depression in mining leads the public to study, with 

 earnest interest, the possibilities that lie in reclamation 



