THE IRRIGATION AGE. 337 



If it were merely a means of extorting more money from the con- 

 sumer it could not have survived as long as it has, could not have 

 been so universal, and could not have been acquiesced in by so many 

 smart men and so many stubborn fighters. No one of sense has ever 

 contested it. The only man in California who ever did, spent ten years 

 in litigation, and lost his forty acre place with a mortgage to cover 

 the expenses. He had no trouble in getting the ruling of the court in 

 his favor on the abstract propositition that a company was bound to 

 furnish water to all applicants on tender of the rates. But the courts 

 never could make the company furnish water that they did not have. 

 And in some mysterious way there was always a shortage of water in 

 the ditch about the time he wanted to irrigate. Other consumers had 

 somehow got ahead with their orders and had to be taken care of. 

 During the whole period of litigation his place remained dry while 

 thousands of acres around were in the highest prosperity in the world. 



Any man of sense might know that trees and vines will prosper 

 better on water had by contract and the good will of a company than 

 on water secured at the tail end of a lawsuit. And the law suit does 

 not settle the amount of water to which he is entitled, the times at 

 which he is to have it, the heads in which he is to have it, or the 

 length of time he is to have the the run. All these are almost as im- 

 portant as the question of any water at all. They could not be deter- 

 mined for the future by any court, or even by the company, without ty- 

 ing up the whole system in a cast-iron snarl of the worst kind. These 

 matters must be left open to be arranged each time according to the 

 needs of the consumers, the kind of crops they have, the pressure of 

 hot weather upon them, the time at which they get in their orders, the 

 number of those wanting heads on the same day, the size of the heads 

 thus wanted, and a score of other matters that can hardly be foreseen, 

 such as a shortage of rainfall, against which no company can safely 

 provide. In such cases a pro rata distribution must take place and 

 such is always the case in the land-owner's companies. The capabili- 

 ties of a country cannot be limited to what may happen once in many 

 years. It is better to irrigate a large area and go short occasionally 

 than to base the whole on the minimum. Works are therefore based 

 on the average flow of streams or average rainfall, with a provision 

 for pro rata when below the average. Such provisions work very 

 well in practice, for a shortage is no more, and generally much less, 

 than what one will have to stand who depends on the rainfall for cul- 

 tivation anywhere in the United States. In such cases it would worry 

 the best of courts to determine the right of one whose only claim on 

 the works was that of one making a tender of the rates. He will be 

 quite sure to be postponed to every one else and every one else would 

 be only to happy to assist the company in relegating him to the rear 

 and in helping beat him in case he sued for damages. 



Remember always that irrigation works are not analogous to city 



