368 TEE IRRIGATION AGE. 



in ten annual installments, thus maintaining th perpetuity of the 

 fund for progressive work. 



If the report should show that lands already setlted required 

 stored water, power should be given the Secretary of the Interior to 

 sell water rights to such settlers upon the same terms as to new set- 

 tlers. Right of entry under the law should be limited to 80 acres, and 

 the sale of the water right to existing settlers should be limited to an 

 amount sufficient for 80 acres; the purpose of this being not only to 

 prevent the creation of monopoly in the lands now belonging to the 

 Government, but to break up existing land monopoly in the West by 

 making it to the interest of the owner of a large tract of land made 

 more valuable by the possibility of securing stored water, to divide up 

 his land and sell to actual settlers. The bill should be so framed as to 

 make its operation automatic, progressive, and complete, to guard 

 against improvident projects, to prevent land monopoly, to secure 

 homes for actual settlers, and to promote the division of the large 

 tracts of land which, under the unfortunate administration of State 

 and national Laws, have been created in the West. 



Under this plan the West would reclaim itself without calling upon 

 the general taxpayers for a dollar. 



It has been suggested that the cession of the arid lands to the 

 States would produce the same results, and would relieve the Federal 

 Government of a great work. My answer to this is that the Govern- 

 ment has no right to abdicate the great trust imposed upon it by the 

 ownership of 600,000,000 acres of land,upon which the homes of un- 

 born millions are to be made. It cannot afford to intrust these lands 

 either to the ignorance, the improvidence, or the dishonesty of local 

 legislatures. The experience of all the Western States has been that 

 the grants of land made by the Federal Government to the States for 

 the purpose of education or local improvement have been maladminis- 

 tered and have resulted in the concentration of immense holdings of 

 land in single ownership. 



This country has to-day 70,000,000 of people; within one hundred 

 years it will have 300,000,000 people. The pressure for land will be- 

 great. 



Imagine the discontent and disturbance which will result from 

 an improvident administration of these great areas easily capable of 

 supporting 100,000,000 people. 



Besides this, the physical conditions are such as to prevent States 

 from dealing with this question. The arid region must be considered 

 as a unit, regardless of State lines. Each unit should be a main river 

 and all its tributaries. The plains to be watered may be in one State; 

 the sources of the river which is to water them, and the only available 

 sites for reservoirs, may be in an adjoining State. No State can act 



