THE IRRIGA T10N A GE. 53 



RESOLUTIONS OF FORMER SESSIONS. 



Resolved, That the National Irrigation Congress endorses the fol- 

 lowing resolutions, as expressing the principles heretofore enuciated 

 at its former sessions: 



i j We urge upon the American people. the profound importance of 

 the social, political and philanthropic features of the great irrigation 

 movement, its ultimate aim being that we may become a nation of 

 rural homes, rather than a nation of great cities. 



We favor the construction by the federal government of storage 

 reservoirs and irrigation works wherever necessary to furnish water 

 for the reclamation and actual settlement of the arid public lands. 



The value of the irrigated farm and the- security of the homes 

 thereby created are alike dependent upon sufficient public control of 

 the water supply, and the prevention of water becoming a speculative 

 commodity. We believe that the waters of all streams should forever 

 remain public property, and that the right to its use should inhere, 

 not in the individual or the ditch, but in the land reclaimed. 



We favor the cession of the public lands of the nation to the re- 

 spective states and territories only upon conditions so strict that they 

 will insure the settlement of such lands by actual settlers in small 

 tracts, and absolutely prevent their monopoly in large bodies under 

 private ownership. 



The rock upon which the Irrigation Congress split for so many 

 sessions in its earlier history was that of State Cession, some favoring 

 unconditional cession af all the arid lands to the states while others 

 bitterly opposed this policy, believing that it would defeat its ostensi- 

 ble purpose, and result not in the actual reclamation and settlement of 

 the lands, but in their being made the basis of speculation and eventu- 

 ally falling into the hands of single owners in large tracts for grazing 

 or other purposes to the exclusion of actual settlers. 



The resolution of the Phoenix Congress, favoring state session 

 only upon conditions so strict as to insure the settlement of the lands 

 by actual settlers in small tracts is one to which no one who desires 

 the prosperity of the West can object. Even those who have most 

 strongly urged state cession have argued for it on the ground that 

 the federal government never would reclaim its own arid lands. This 

 is a false premise. The federal government will do it and the day is 

 coming near by when the great work will be begun. The strongest 

 argument, therefore, in favor of absolute cession fails. No one, how- 

 ever, objects to the doing by the states of all that each state can do to 

 accomplish the reclaimation by irrigation of the arid lands within its 

 borders, provided it is done in such a way as to insure the reclamation 

 and settlement of the land. There should, therefore, be a complete 

 uniting of all forces upon this policy, and each proposed enactment 

 whether of state or national legislation should be subjected to this test 

 and if all possibilities of the evils which would inevitably follow un- 

 conditional state cession are removed, in framing laws, the objections 

 of those who have opposed that policy will likewise be removed. 



There can be no question that in some of the grazing states of the 



