THE 1RR1GA TION A GE. 283 



fellow man you should strike the magnanimous chap who appreciates all 

 these difficulties, knows that capital must have some interest, that wait- 

 ing for settlement is too slow and that the land must do its share etc., 

 etc., and then after scratching his head for a week or two and wanting a 

 dozen consultations with his wife decides to buy water for ten acres out 

 of one hundred and sixty. 



I think it was Mr. Kinney of Utah who said at the Irrigation Con- 

 gress at Albuquerque that, as between water hogs and land hogs his sym- 

 pathies were with the water hog every time. He represented neither but 

 he had seen enough to know what was the matter. While other parties 

 are to blame also for the failure of many irrigation works the land owner 

 should notb3 overlooked. The sooner the blame is placed where it be- 

 longs, the sooner We will get more capital enlisted in these works, and 

 enlisted in a way that will not bring discredit on the only thing that will 

 now increase the productive power of our country to any great extent, 

 and the only thing that is sure to make cultivation of the soil once more 

 popular andrespeetable by making it profitable and easy. Within my 

 experience, which has not been limited to California either, the land own- 

 er is more to blame than any one in the combination. He must recognize 

 the fact that one can get land by perjury, by waiting for dead men's 

 shoes, by marrying rich widows and various other ways, but to get water 

 by a reliable aqueduct from a reliable source takes a long stern chase 

 with cold cash and bushels of it. In many cases one half the land for 

 water oh the other half, besides the maintainance fee that must be paid 

 to k^ep the works in good o^der, is not enough to ensure against bank- 

 ruptcy. I know cases of good land and plenty of water, presenting no 

 engineering difficulties, and under a climate-where the growing season is 

 double that in most of the states, and the land, the most fertile that the 

 sun shines on, where three quarters of the land given outright by the 

 government would hardly save the proposition. On the other hand there 

 are many cases where all thi land is now in private hands, but most all 

 of it lying idle for want of water, where one half for water on the other 

 half would ensure a system that would. more than quadruple the imme- 

 diate selling value and pay a good and sure profit on the money invested 

 Nothing is now more idiotic than for the land owner to think he can 

 escape this rigorous law of compensation. He could for a time, though 

 those who have made any thing out of it are very few compared with the 

 number who have been frozen out during the chilly period of waiting. 

 But capital the world over is now as fully aware of this law as it is at last 

 of the fact that a prospect hole is not a mine. No more works will be 

 failures from, any such cause. So much ^water must be sold in advance, 

 under a contract giving a lien on the land for the payment before the 

 works are built, or so much land must be deeded for water on the rest. 

 The latter is often the better plan and- by placing the deeds in escrow it 

 m ly be mide perfes&ly safe. To try to avoid iboth of these ways is one 



