THE PROGRESS OF WESTERN AMERICA. 



109 



of want of a civilization which offers the priceless 

 social advantages of neighborhood association. The 

 friends of the cause are putting these claims boldly 

 forward,. and are appealing successfully to the na- 

 tional imagination. But there is one argument which 

 only the practical irrigators can supply, and this is 

 the argument of facts. Organize Independence 

 Leagues; create Demonstration Farms; show what a 

 family can do in your locality with a small farm 

 under a system of intense cultivation! Do these 

 things, and next autumn your result will plead louder 

 for your home, for Arid America, for the wonderful 

 resourcess of the American people, than all the news- 

 papers, magazines, books and lectures can possibly 

 do. April is the time to begin. 



Col Hall's ^ e n P e tne papers by Col. Wm. Ham. 

 Remarkable Hall, of San Francisco, on " Irrigation 

 Principles," which have been a leading 

 feature of THE AGE the past winter, have received 

 the thoughtful study they merit. We have no hesi- 

 tancy in pronouncing them the greatest contribution 

 yet made to the literature of irrigation economics by 

 an American author. This is perhaps high praise, 

 but it is deserved, and we may add that probably no 

 other man among all the cultured minds that the 

 irrigation industry has attracted to its service would 

 have been able to put forth at this time a discussion 

 of fundamental principles so strong, lucid, and im- 

 pregnable. Col. Hall is a well-known engineer, but 

 he was educated to be a lawyer, while natural taste 

 and bent have given him the historian's love of re- 

 search and analysis. He has brought to the prepara- 

 tion of these papers the varied qualities of the 

 engineer, lawyer and historian. And they could not 

 have been successfully written in the absence of any 

 of these peculiar qualifications. Only the historian 

 would have delved in the archives of the dead cen- 

 turies for the Roman and Moorish theories and prac- 

 tice of irrigation; only the lawyer would have seized 

 upon and separated the real significance of the civil 

 code and common law as affecting our problems ; only 

 the engineer would have been able to apply the les- 

 sons thus absorbed to the peculiar physical conditions 

 of Western America. At some convenient time we 

 propose to review these papers more fully, and to 

 trace the relation of their main principles to localities 

 and actual problems. But we desire now to call 

 attention to the chief point which has been clearly 

 developed, and to apply it to the operation of the 

 Carey law in the several States which have accepted 

 the trust of one million acres. 



Private With the exception of Spanish grants 



E on e puMc e inconsiderable when compared with the 



L,ands. total area of our arid domain all the 



millions of acres thus far reclaimed have come to their 



present owners from the Federal government, either 



directly through the Land Office, or indirectly through 

 land grants to railroads. In all this work three gen- 

 eral rules prevailed : First, that the land should be 

 reclaimed as cheaply as possible ; second, that it 

 should be sold as high as possible; third, that there 

 should be the least possible interference in the way 

 of public regulation or control. Every influence 

 worth considering has in the past favored the oper- 

 ation of these three rules. The enactment of the 

 Carey law, together with supplementary State legisla- 

 tion, brings us to a new era in irrigation development. 

 Let us illustrate by reference to Wyoming, which 

 occupies, by common consent, the place of leadership 

 in the matter of applying the Carey law. It will no 

 longer be possible to build canals " as cheaply as 

 possible." They must be built with due regard to 



\ 



A COLORADO SCENE. 



the service required of them. They must meet the 

 reasonable demands of the State as to size and char- 

 acter of work. It is the business of the State to see 

 that these requirements are fulfilled, even if the cost 

 of the canal be largely increased over the estimate of 



