THE. IRRIGATION AGE. 



the million mark, but the project seems no nearer com- 

 pletion than five years ago in fact the company has 

 been chiefly pouring out gold to keep the work so far 

 done in repair. Should the government secure the 

 property and complete the reservoir a very large acreage 

 could be placed under cultivation. Denver Field and 

 Farm. 



Tne following communication from the pen of 0. V. 

 P. Stout recently appeared in the Omaha Bee under the 

 heading, Mistakes made by Maxwell. 



Omaha seems to have been chosen by Mr. George 

 H. Maxwell, otherwise the National Irrigation associa- 

 tion, as a center from which he will hurl his thunder- 

 bolts. An address delivered by him there not long ago 

 has been placed in the hands of western editors and has 

 to some extent been quoted. This address attacks the 

 system of state control and administration of public 

 waters which is in force in our own and some neighbor- 

 ing states. In making this attack, he absolutely ignores 

 the facts which serve to intrench those laws in the favor 

 of those who have acquired or who expect to acquire 

 water rights under them. He undertakes to prejudice 

 the minds of those who may not be fully informed, using 

 to this end such terms as "a corps of state ditch tenders 

 appointed by state officials." He states that the system 

 in force "puts the control of the distribution of the 

 waters of a state in the hands of a great political-irri- 

 gation machine, controlled by the state politicians," 

 and presumably expects no one to recognize the fact that 

 a similar statement might be framed in regard to any of 

 our affairs the administration of which is intrusted to 

 state or national authority. 



He takes up "home rule in irrigation" as a "slogan," 

 and with the same abandon which he assumes when he 

 assured th.e delegates to the irrigation congress at Colo- 

 rado Springs that when the government built its reser- 

 voirs and irrigation works, there would be "plenty of 

 water for everybody," he now brushes aside all difficulties 

 in the way of a system of water administration which 

 would permit "everv drainage basin, every irrigated 

 communitv, every canal system, and the whole body of 

 irrigators on any stream" to "control its or their affairs" 

 independent of any central state authority. On this 

 point, does it seem that the local control of the North 

 Platte and Platte rivers would be simpler than the pres- 

 ent state control ? Mr. Maxwell must imagine that 

 nothing would be easier than for the people of Scotts 

 'Bluff county and those living several hundred miles 

 nearer to the mouth of the river to get together in the 

 town meeting and fix up their affairs. 



He sneaks of the "complicated code of state laws," 

 in the face of the fact that the more completely the ele- 

 ment of state control of streams has been embodied in 

 the constitution and statutes of the irrigation states, 

 the more simple and inexpensive is the process of ad- 

 judication of priorities of right to the use of water and 

 the more definite and secure are those rights. 



Mr. Maxwell says that the codes of state water laws 

 "would complicate and retard beyond calculation the 

 operations under the national irrigation act," and, fur- 

 ther, he limits what the states should do in this matter 

 to the establishment of "a few fundamental principles by 

 constitutional amendment and judicial decision." 



President Roosevelt says that a majority of titles 

 to water in the west already "rest on the uncertain 

 foundation of court decisions rendered in ordinary suits 

 at larw. With a few creditable exceptions the arid 



states have failed to provide for the certain and just 

 division of streams in time of scarcity," 



Note the radical departure of Mr. Maxwell from 

 the opinion entertained by the president in regard to the 

 desirability of judicial decisions as a foundation for 

 water rights. Moreover, who can doubt that Nebraska 

 and Wyoming were foremost in the mind of the presi- 

 dent when he noted that there were creditable exceptions 

 to the general rule that states had failed to provide 

 efficient laws for the distribution of water. 



In Mr. Maxwell's own state of California his pro- 

 gram has been ignored. There a representative com- 

 mission, composed of three leading members of the 

 California bar and some of the foremost economists and 

 engineers of the state, headed by a chief justice of the 

 supreme court, has framed a bill for putting into effect 

 a law in that state which follows precisely the lines which 

 Mr. Maxwell condemns. 



There are now indications that a campaign has 

 been inaugurated which will center around the legisla- 

 tures of those states which have not as yet reached firm 

 ground in respect to irrigation legislation. This cam- 

 paign will be one of agitation and misrepresentation, 

 having its origin in private selfishness and personal spite, 

 and will be directed to the end of preventing that dis- 

 passionate and unprejudiced study of what has been ac- 

 complished and the lessons which have been learned in 

 other states and other countries, and which should pre- 

 cede any wise move in the formulation of irrigation 

 laws. The campaign will have the support of every 

 lawyer of that class which has everything to gain and 

 nothing to lose by the creation of conditions of chaos and 

 anarchy in those states. 0. V. P. STOUT. 



President Roosevelt made the lollowing reference 

 to irrigation in his annual message : 



Few subjects of more importance have been taken 

 up by the Congress in recent years than the inauguration 

 of the system of nationally aided irrigation for the arid 

 regions of the far West. A good beginning therein 

 lias been made. Now that this policv of national irri- 

 gation has been adopted, the need of thorough and 

 scientific forest protection will grow more rapidly than 

 ever throughout the public land states. 



Legislation should be provided for the protection 

 of the game,_and the wild creatures generally, on the 

 forest reserves. The senseless slaughter of game, which 

 can by judicious protection be permanently preserved 

 on our national reserves for the people as a whole, 

 should be stopped at once. It is, for instance, a serious 

 count against oiir national good sense to permit the 

 present practice of butchering off such a stately airl 

 beautiful creature as the elk for its antlers or tusks. 



So far as they are available for agriculture, and to 

 whatever extent they may be reclaimed under the na- 

 tional irrigation law, the remaining public lands should 

 be held rigidly for the home builder, the settler who 

 lives on his land, and for no one else. 



BUILDING OF HOMES. 



In their actual use the desert-land law, the timber 

 and stone law, and the commutation clause of the home- 

 stead law have been so perverted from the intention with 

 which they were enacted as to permit the acquisition of 

 large areas of the public domain for other than actual 

 settlers, and the consequent prevention of settlement. 

 Moreover, the approaching exhaustion of the public 

 ranges has of late led to much discussion as to the best 



