340 THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



purposes, all of them national, all of them proper, raising certain ap- 

 propriations to considerable limits, *making additions for river and 

 harbor appropriations in the aggregage of over $12,000,000 in the bill, 

 and senators from the arid regions acquiesce in the appropriations be- 

 cause they are national and beneficial, does it seem the right compre- 

 hension of a great situation to challenge an item in the bill intended 

 to secure needed and absolutely necessary information in order to deal 

 with problems involving the very life of the country itself? We have 

 reached the point in that arid region where we cannot now, without 

 the investment of very large capital, invite any large increase of im- 

 migrants to settle upon our soil. 



" Hundreds of people are passing each and every day upon loaded 

 trains over as fertile land as ever the sun shone upon, going over the 

 Rocky Mountains and off to the humid regions of the Pacific coast. 

 Why? Because in the state of Montana where we have 146,000 square 

 miles, people have taken out nearly all of the water and reclaimed 

 nearly all of the land that individual effort is capable of reclaiming. 



NEED OF OFFICIAL SURVEYS. 



"There are instances in California where large enterprises went 

 in and constructed heavy canals and subsequently found that the 

 water supply was wholly inadequate to supply the canal. This has 

 been discouraging to investment in this line. What we need with 

 reference to this matter is specific, authoritative, substantial infor- 

 mation, vouched for by the public records of the United States. 



"It is said, let individuals do it. According to that suggestion 

 the farmer living out on the Yellowstone is to build a gauge for the 

 benefit of humanity, and is to determine the flow of water that runs- 

 down that stream in twelve months. Why not, on the same principle, 

 let sailors survey the coasts and establish light-houses for their own 

 guidance? To suggest that is to declare that nothing shall be done 

 at all. 



" Are the new struggling states, wherein the government of the 

 United States owns 70 per cent, of the soil, and is the great land- 

 owner of the country, to be charged with the expense of acquiring in- 

 formation which is of equal value to Missouri, Iowa. Nebraska, and 

 all the states below? I think not. It is a government enterprise, 

 looking to the development of government property, looking to the 

 creation of conditions which will develop a superb population where 

 waste places now exist." 



EASTERN OPPOSITION. 



Senator Turner, of Washington, who strongly favored the increase 

 struck a responsive chord, when he asserted that some eastern sena- 

 tors were prone to antagonize measures because apparently they were 

 intended to benefit the West. 



" I consider the amendment," he said, " as exceedingly important- 



