308 THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



It is also too great and important to the world to have any cheap work 

 about it, or make shifts of any sort that would save interest while the 

 slow settler is deliberating about whether he will buy or not. Every 

 thing must be done in the best style and all at once. In most cases works 

 must be completed on a large scale or people will have no confidence in 

 there being a solid settlement under them. In many cases it is cheaper 

 in the long run to build more expensive works. But there are also many 

 cases where neither of these is the case and a start can be made on a safe 

 basis and the work kept on it. People will argue for instance that there 

 should be iron pipe or ditch of cement and stone because flume is not 

 durable. They are not thinking of the durability of interest which 

 works nights and Sundays. If you had all the water sold and paying its 

 annual payment at the start, as in case of supply for a city, it would in 

 most cases be best to make the works as durable as possible at the begin- 

 ning. But where there is no revenue assured, and especially where its 

 absence for many years is assured and the work is built on borrowed 

 money, the end is not far off. 



It is common to blame engineers for works that are too expensively 

 built. But an engineer is only human, like any one else, and has among 

 other things to retain his job. The proprietor of "the biggest thing on 

 earth" has no thanks for any one who does not fully agree with him 

 about its importance and especially the small amount of money it will 

 cost. He does not want to be taken behind his rainbow where he may 

 find some drizzling mist about it. He wants his engineer to stand off 

 and contemplate it from his standpoint and there is generally but one 

 result of being independent enough to cross him. I have lost two jobs 

 that I know of by being a little too quick to say that something could 

 not be done for so much money and I have known others dropped for the 

 same reason. An engineer also feels a pride in seeing his name on a 

 fine piece of work and if the owner is prepared to foot the bill with pride 

 there is no special reason why the engineer should feel bad about it. 



But in most cases where works are made unnecessarily expensive 

 the builders are wholly to blame, no matter what the advice of the en- 

 gineer. One need not be an engineer to see that building an iron aque- 

 duct instead of a wooden one is simply betting that the proposition will 

 be a big enough success to justify the difference. Most cases of expensive 

 construction are of this nature, and many works have been so crippled 

 in that way that a complete reorganization with almost a total loss to the 

 old stockholders will be the result. Big notions have ruined them just 

 as they do men. 



There are however faults of expensive construction for which no one 

 is to blame. The combinations of circumstances that enter into a large 

 water enterprise are so numerous and shifting that it is not possible for 

 any engineer to make estimates very close. Unless he has sat upon the 

 board of directors and seen something of the inside management of com- 

 panies he knows little of contingencies. One who has done so is generally 



