280 THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



fine water works where they are very much needed and all that, go and 

 mount some first class proposition with all the conditions of success and 

 one that some day will be a source of great public wealth, ride it two or 

 three years and then criticise me. 



To many all this was well known over twenty years ago. Irrigation 

 works in India, and other parts of the world as well as in the United 

 States had failed thirty years ago and over from that cause. But it was 

 quite as quickly discovered that while water in its oivn name would not 

 bring the cost of getting it on the land; it would bring from three to ten 

 times that amount if done up in a very thin covering of dry land. To 

 ask half of a piece of land for making the other half worth three or four 

 times what it was worth before is monstrous robbery. On the instant 

 the proposer becomes a thief and a monopolist. But if he has a few 

 thousand acres of dry land for which no one would give five dollars an 

 acre, brings water to it and offers it for a hundred dollars an acre, on 

 the instant he is a gentleman and a scholar, a grand public benefactor, 

 a man who makes the desert blossom as the rose, makes two blades of 

 grass grow where there was but one before, etc., etc. The old skinflint 

 who never did believe that land was worth anything pulls his wallet and 

 pays the highest price for a piece, while those who, in the early stages 

 did their best to kill the proposition by telling everyone the land was 

 worthless, are now really astonished to see how productive it is and ad- 

 vise all their friends to buy some. 



Those who undertook the first development of water in Southern 

 California were all aware of this peculiarity of human nature. The 

 grants, or large Mexican homesteads of many square leagues instead of 

 half a mile square, have been very much abused by those who know little 

 of these matters. But they have been the foundation of nearly all the 

 prosperity of this country. The builders of nearly all the water works 

 had absolute control in one hand of the land and water by buying the 

 grant that controlled them. They thus had the cutting of a clean 

 piece of cloth. A few old patches here and there would have spoiled 

 Riverside, Pomona, Anaheim, Santa Ana, Pasadena and similar places 

 that are now so perfect. Every small land owner would have thought 

 he held the key of the situation and would have done nothing to advance 

 the building of the works by ensuring a revenue. The land and water 

 were bought together, laid out in the best manner, sold together, so 

 much of the stock being transferred with each acre or tract of land to 

 represent the water right. When all was sold the original projectors 

 had parted with the stock unless they kept some with their own land. 

 The company thus became a land owner's company, fixing the annual 

 rates to suit themselves. As paying dividends would oe taking money 

 from one pocket to put in the other these rates were fixed at or about 

 the cost of actual maintainance. These are not only the most successful 

 of all the water companies of California but practically the only success- 



