370 THE IRR1 GA TION A GE. 



resulted in the fall of the price of silver from $1.29 an ounce to 60 

 cents an ounce. You can readily understand that in mining enter- 

 prises, in which the operating expenses amount to from one-half to 

 three-fourths of the gross receipts, a fall of over one-half in the price 

 of the product of the mines would absolutely suspend and destroy 

 silver'mining. Prior to that time conditions were speculative. Farm- 

 ing itself was speculative, commercial life was speculative. Little 

 was done during that period of tremendous mining output in the way 

 of building the foundation of harmonious and proportionate growth. 

 The result is, that under all these discouraging conditions Nevada has 

 declined in population since 1880, while the population of the other 

 intermountain States and Territories has nearly trebled. No one who 

 is familiar with that region can contend for a moment that Arizona is 

 equal to Nevada in its mineral or agricultural resources, but railroad 

 and other conditions have been better there, and that territory has 

 advanced from a population of 35,000 in 1880 to a population of nearly 

 150,000 to-day, while Nevada has declined from 65,000 to 45,000. 



In addition, Nevada is in debt $300,000. It has reached the limit 

 of its debt under the constitution of the State. How was that debt 

 contracted? It was contracted when it was a Territory for money 

 borrowed by that Territory in fitting out troops for the civil war a 

 war claim which has constantly been recognized by the Senate of the 

 United States, but which has been rejected by this body. 



Now, assuming that cession of the lands should be made to 

 Nevada, how could she utilize them? The only thing she could do 

 would be to turn them over to corporations and syndicates, and we 

 would then have a repetition of the land monopoly which now so un- 

 fortunately exists both in California and Nevada as the result of 

 grants to those States by the Government for educational purposes 

 a land monopoly which in itself prevents settlement and which ulti- 

 mately will create indescribable discontent. 



Then, again, the physical conditions of Nevada would prevent the 

 utilization of such cession. Three of the most important rivers of the 

 State the Truckee, the Carson, and the Walker have their sources 

 in the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California, These rivers flow 

 through the western part of the State into great lakes in the sink of 

 the desert, where their waters lie unutilized. The problem is to pre- 

 vent these waters from flowing into these lakes in the lowest part of 

 the desert and to hold them back in the mountains above in artificial 

 reservoirs. 



The plains to be irrigated are in Nevada; the reservoir sites are in 

 California. All the sources of the water supply of these rivers are in 

 California. To cede the plains to Nevada and to cede these mountain 

 lands to California would tend to absolute divorce between the water 



