14 



THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



been lost in irrigation enterprises. Still greater sums 

 are endangered. Water titles are uncertain. The liti- 

 gation is appalling." 



The paragraph in Secretary Wilson's report, which 

 Mr. Maxwell attacked, did not affect the passage of the 

 National irrigation act. It did not suggest delay in the 

 passage of this act. It did recommend that the act should 

 contain a clause requiring the arid States to accept its 

 conditions and pass laws providing for public control 

 over the distribution of water thus made available. I 

 believe that such a provision would have been a wise one 

 and that future events will demonstrate this. 



It does not matter on what grounds Mr. Maxwell 

 bases his statement that I opposed the passage of the 

 National irrigation act. It is not true. For twelve years 

 I have been an advocate of National aid for Western irri- 

 gation. I was consulted by a number of members of the 

 committee of seventeen who framed the National act, 

 and every one of these will bear testimony to my support 

 of the measure from beginning to end. Among these are 

 Senators Warren and Dietrich, Congressmen Mondell, 

 Burkett, Sutherland, Newlands and Shafroth. While 

 I did not regard it as ac perfect measure I advocated its 

 passage, believing that future legislation would cure its 

 defects. I challenge Mr. Maxwell to name a single mem- 

 ber of either house of Congress to whom I ever spoke in 

 opposition to this act. He cannot do this, because there 

 was no such opposition either in word or thought. 



There is no foundation whatever for the statement 

 that I am attempting to force other States to adopt the 

 Wyoming code of water laws. I have urged that titles to 

 water should be established by some systematic and order- 

 ly procedure, as land titles are, that the water of Western 

 rivers should be under public control and be divided by 

 public officials, that rights to their use should be limited 

 to the actual needs of users, and that with every irri- 

 gated farm should go a right to the water which makes 

 it productive. In doing this, I am simply advocating 

 policies which the experience of all irrigated lands has 

 shown indispensable to enduring peace and success. So 

 fas as the Wyoming irrigation code embodies these prin- 

 ciples, it is a good law, and the same is true of the Colo- 

 rado irrigation law, the Nebraska irrigation law, the 

 Canadian irrigation law, the Australian irrigation law, 

 and the irrigation codes of Egypt and Italy, in all of 

 which these features are found in large measure. 



As was explained in my statement to the convention, 

 a large part of the irrigation work of the Department 

 has to do with the practical questions which confront 

 farmers, but it is also gathering and publishing the 

 facts which show the character of different irrigation 

 codes and the results which have attended their operation. 

 We are doing this to protect rather than injure the pres- 

 ent users of water, and the appeals of Mr. Maxwell to 

 the fears and prejudices of those who do not understand 

 the Department's work have no basis in fact. 



Because of Mr. Maxwell's dislike for me personally, 

 he has in his publications, in letters, and otherwise, mis- 

 represented the work of the Agricultural Department 

 and my views and acts. Before this personal difference 

 arose, Mr. Maxwell repeatedly commended the work of 

 th,e Department's Irrigation Investigations. In the 

 National Advocate of October, 1900, he wrote as follows : 



"The excellent work which Elwood Mead, of the 

 Department of Agriculture, and his assistants are doing 

 throughout the West along irrigation lines, is becoming 

 well known. As State engineer of Wyoming, Mr. Mead 

 achieved for his State such an enviable reputation in the 



irrigated region that his broader work of investigation 

 under the General Government is meeting with much 

 favor and is being watched with deep interest. His first 

 annual report on 'Irrigation Investigation' is just is- 

 sued, and will be found of great value to the West." 



He wrote differently in February, 1902 : 



"Mr. Mead goes out from Wyoming to California 

 to tell the people of California what they must do to put 

 themselves in shape to get appropriations from Congress 

 for national irrigation works, and he finds the horrible 

 hobgoblin of riparian rights in the way. He prepares a 

 careful dissertation on the laws of water in California in 

 relation to riparian rights, but overlooks the celebrated 

 case of Fifield v. Spring Valley Water Co., 62 Pacific 

 Reporter, 1054, where the Supreme Court of California 

 has established it as the law of that State that a riparian 

 owner can not prevent the storage of flood waters above 

 him, and their appropriation to beneficial use. The 

 magnificent reservoir of the Spring Valley Water Com- 

 pany, on San Mateo creek, from which it supplies water ' 

 to the city of San Francisco, stands today as a living 

 refutation of Mr. Mead's theories as to conditions in 

 California." 



No one in public position should object to candid 

 and truthful criticism, and I have always welcomed 

 it, but the paragraph just quoted is not fair to myself 

 or to the public. One would suppose from reading it 

 that I had gone to California on my own motion and 

 had prepared a report with especial relation to the 

 securing of appropriations from Congress. Nothing 

 could be further from the truth. The report in ques- 

 tion was prepared in response to a- petition to the 

 Department of Agriculture, asking that I conduct the 

 investigation and promising to pay a large part of 

 its expense, which was done. The facts were gathered 

 by some of the leading irrigation authorities of this 

 country, including the professors of civil engineering in 

 the University of California and Stanford University, 

 and such civil engineers as James D. Schuyler and Edwin 

 M. Boggs, of Los Angeles, C. E. Grunsky and Marsden 

 Manson, of San Francisco, and such students of the 

 legal and economic phases of irrigation as William E. 

 Smythe, of San Diego, and Prof. James M. Wilson, of 

 the University of California-. These gentlemen were 

 unanimous in their conclusions and I am willing that 

 Bulletin 100 of the Office of Experiment Stations shall 

 stand as an answer to the criticism quoted above and to 

 those made by Mr. Maxwell at Colorado Springs. Since 

 its publication a commission having among its mem- 

 bers the chief justice of the California Supreme Court, 

 an ex-justice of that court, a distinguished member of 

 the California bar, the presidents of Leland Stanford 

 and California universities, the professors of civil engi- 

 neering in these two unversities, Mr. F. H. Newell, 

 of the U. S. Geological Survey, and myself, has been 

 asked to frame an irrigation code to carry out the re- 

 forms recommended by this report. Mr. Maxwell sought 

 to convey the impression in his address at Colorado 

 Springs, and in the extract above quoted, that the water- 

 right problems of California had been substantially set- 

 tled, but the Commission asked to frame this law think 

 differently. They have recently issued a report from 

 which the following is quoted: 



"If it be the unalterable law of this State that 

 an owner of riparian land may, as at common law, 

 prevent any one above him from taking any water 

 out of the stream for beneficial use, merely that the 

 stream shall flow past his place undiminished in quantity, 



