THE IRRIGATION AGE 365 



than they would be had not this water been diverted or stored. Thus 

 a saving will be effected in the dredging of the shallows intended to 

 relieve as against low water as well as in the construction of the 

 levees intended to relive as against flood water. 



We content that by the construction of storage reservoirs at the 

 head waters of these rivers in the rocky mountains a large proportion 

 of the expenditures for levees on the lower Mississippi will be saved 

 and that a more equal flow of the main river will be maintained, and 

 thus the expense of dredging during the hot season will be greatly 

 diminished. Navigation, like^ irrigation, requires that the streams 

 should maintain an equal flow; that they should not be torrents at one 

 season and attenuated threads at another. 



The evils which attach to both navigation and irrigation are the 

 same, viz., that the streams are overflowing at a time when the water 

 is not needed and they are attenuated threads at a time when the 

 water is most in demand; and we of the arid regions contend that 

 both navigation and irrigation can be promoted by the storing of 

 these waters at the sources of these mountain streams which are trib- 

 utary to the great navigable rivers. 



We also contend, even assuming that the river and harbor bill 

 should be confined to improvements essential to navigation, that the 

 proper place for appropriations for storage reservoirs on the rivers 

 tributary to our navigable rivers is in the river and harbor bill, as 

 they tend to promote navigation, although having a very much larger 

 value in the promotion of irrigation. 



But all the rivers in the arid region are not tributaries to naviga- 

 ble rivers. Upon what theory, then, should the Government proceed 

 to store water on such rivers? Our contention is that irrigation is a 

 public use, just as navigation is; that it is subject to the control of the 

 law, and that the congress of the United States, under the "general 

 welfare" clause of the Constitution, can do anything in the way of in- 

 ternal improvement that is calculated to promote the general welfare, 

 and that the general welfare is promoted by maintaining an equal and 

 sustained flow of a stream for irrigation as well as by maintaining it 

 for navigation. 



Besides this, the United States Government is the owner of 600,- 

 000,000 acres of land in the arid region, of which 100,000,000 acres can 

 be reclaimed by a gradual process of storage extending over fifty or 

 one hundred years. The reclamation of these lands will make more 

 valuable the remaining pastoral lands, which are now used in common 

 by all the stock-raising interests in the West. The Government un- 

 doubtedly has the power to look after its own property to survey it, 

 to mark it by section posts, and to put it in condition for settlement 

 and sale; and if the maintenance of an equal flow in the rivers running 



