THE 1RRIGA1ION AGE. 403 



would require a readjustment of the range stock business as it exists 

 at the present time. But I do not believe it would greatly promote 

 the creation of homes; it would add immensely to the security and 

 value of the irrigated farms, because you get 50 or 100 miles away 

 from a railroad or very large town, mining towns, and ability to use 

 the range in connection with your irrigated land is just about as nec- 

 essary as a water supply to make it profitable. You can not grow 

 hay 50 miles from a railroad and haul it to market; it does not pay. 

 As it is now, the men who do thai,, sell their oats and hay to the range 

 stockman, but it would be a better plan if they could each one of them 

 have a little interest in the grazing lands for their own stock and feed 

 their own products to their own stock. 



"To show how legislation without any expenditure of funds can 

 promote both the development of a country and its propensity after it 

 is settled, we have an illustration of that in what is known as the 

 Carey land law. The Carey act gave to each state the right to con- 

 trol one million acres of land if they would accept the conditions of 

 the grant; and five states accepted it. The reason for this was to 

 overcome a difficulty in the existing land laws. You can take a, 

 country like along these canals there that is subject to the operation 

 of the public land laws, and you began to survey a ditch, and before 

 the survey ended there was a .filing on that land. The minute that 

 you begin to set your stakes out there it becomes manifest that a 

 laige portion of public land is going to have a canal, that uhere is go- 

 ing to be an expenditure of several hundred thousand dollars to build 

 that canal, and the expenditure of that money adds to the value of 

 every acre of that land. The very minute that it is seen that it is go- 

 ing to be irrigated under the homestead law, now men will rush in 

 who never have been farmers, who do not expect to be farmers and 

 who simply seek to share in the unearned increment. They file on 

 that land, and when the canal has been completed the land is all filed 

 on, and it is very largely filed on by people who have no other object 

 but to be bought off. They are perfectly willing to sell out for a con- 

 sideration, or they will hold on in the hope of selling, but the result is 

 that the lands are kept out of the hands of men who would settle on 

 them. It is directly a tax on the inan who does come in to occupy 

 them. He has to pay more for them, or the canal company has an en- 

 terprise on its hands with no revenue coming from it because the 

 lands are held by noncultivators. Now that is the objection to the 

 homestead law and its operation in the arid region. It does not re- 

 quire, in addition to living, cultivation; if it did, the homestead law 

 would be an ideal law. Now, two of the states, in accepting this 

 grant, framed what I believed to be the true land law of the arid 

 resrion. 



