384 . IRE IRRIGATION AGE. 



principle is adopted the control of the water is divided precisely like 

 the land, among a multitude of proprietors. Reservoirs and canals 

 are then like the streets of the town, serving a public purpose and 

 permitting ready access to private property on every hand. Water 

 monopoly is impossible under this method, and no other abuse is en 

 couraged by it. Years of painful experience have abundantly proven 

 that peaceful and orderly development cannot be realized except as 

 water and land are forever united in one ownership and canals treated 

 merely as public or semi-public utilities rather than as a means of fas- 

 tening a monopoly upon the community. In Wyoming and Nebraska 

 the true principle has already been adopted by the state boards of 

 control and put into practice with the above results. If it can be 

 maintained and speedily extended to the other states, as it surely must 

 be in time, it would mark an economic reform of the highest signifi- 

 cance in the life of the West. 



The entire discussion leads up to one inevitable conclusion: This 

 is that irrigation, over and above all other industries, is a matter de- 

 manding supervision and control Every drop of water entering the 

 headgate, and every drop escaping at the end of the canal, is a matter 

 of public concern. The public must determine through constitutions 

 and statutes the nature of water ownership. The public must estab- 

 lish means for the measurement of streams and for ascertaining how 

 much water may be taken for each acre of land under the principle of 

 beneficial use. The public must see that justice is done in the distri- 

 bution of water among those who have properly established their 

 rightful claims to it. We have thoroughly tried the method of leaving 

 all this to private initiative and management, and, along with mag- 

 nificent audimaterial progress, we have reaped a large crop of deplor- 

 able financial results. 



While much must be left to the action of states and committees, 

 there is still a wide field for national effort. Only the nation can leg- 

 islate as to the public lands and reform the abuses which have been 

 referred to in connection with the present system of land laws. There 

 is a strong popular demand in the West for legislation providing 

 public aid in the construction of work of too great magnitude and cost 

 for private enterprise and a growing belief that one of two things 

 should be done. Either the arid states should be placed in a position 

 to extend this aid, or the general government should extend the work 

 it is now doing in the reclamation of certain Indian reservations to the 

 reclamation of the unoccupied public lands. One policy much dis- 

 cussed and widely favored is legislation which will permit of the leas- 

 ing of the public grazing lands for a term of years at a small annual 

 rental, the proceeds to be given to the several arid states, and applied 

 by them to irrigation development. If this is carried out the settlers 

 owning the contiguous' irrigated lands should be favored the object 



