THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



265 



a period covering eight or nine months. In truth, he 

 has become a resident of the valley and the owner of a 

 farm there. And I desire to remark here, parentheti- 

 cally, that in selecting his ranch Mr. Maxwell exhibited 

 characteristic business shrewdness. Knowing the Tonto 

 scheme would be a failure as a storage proposition, he 

 selected a ranch under the Maricopa canal, one of the 

 two oldest canals in the valley, and, therefore certain of 

 water for irrigation purposes, when there may be water 

 in the river, because of its adjudicated prior right 

 thereto. 



The first work performed by Mr. Maxwell, after his 

 arrival in Phoenix, was to organize and incorporate 

 the "Salt River Valley Water Users Association/' and 

 have that organization levy a $35,000 assessment to 

 meet "expenses." This association is composed, to a 

 large extent, of holders of idle and speculative lands, ac- 

 quired by capitalists during the early boom days and be- 

 fore the limit to the water supply in the Salt and Verde 

 rivers had been definitely ascertained by a long series 

 of official measurements. 



In discussing the articles of incorporation of this 

 association in the Phoenix Enterprise of June 3, 1903, 

 Mr. D. B. Heard, of the Bartlett-Heard Land and Cattle 

 Company, of the Salt river valley, says: "There is no 

 question in the world that these articles, if operated un- 

 der by the government, will be greatly to the advantage 

 of the idle, spculative lands and not to the advantage of 

 the farmer who desires to retain and cultivate his land." 

 He terms it "a speculative unloading proposition," and 

 states that "Maxwell's Speculative Plan" would be a , 

 more appropriate title for the organization. Of the one 

 hundred thousand acres of patented land controlled by 

 this Maxwell organization, 28,760 acres are under the 

 Mesa consolidated canal, one of the "boom" creations 

 having such a belated water appropriation that only 

 1,320 of the 28,760 acres under the canal are now cul- 

 tivated, the remaining 27,440 acres being held for spec- 

 ulative purposes. The syndicate owning this canal also 

 owns forty sections, or 25,600 acres, of the land under 

 the canal. And this is the kind of a "water users' asso- 

 ciation" Messrs. Maxwell, Walcott and Newell would 

 have the government build the Tonto dam for out of the 

 National Irrigation Fund. "A speculative unloading 

 proposition," as Mr. Heard terms it. Or, in other 

 words, a scheme to enable a lot of land speculators to 

 unload on unsuspecting strangers, while a government 

 reservoir, that will have no water to store, is in course 

 of construction, a lot of waterless land with which they 

 loaded themselves during the early "boom" period in 

 Salt river valley. This is the "Water Users' Associa- 

 tion" whose articles of incorporation and plan of pro- 

 cedure for the evasion of the provisions of the National 

 Irrigation Act and larceny of the national irrigation 

 'fund has been approved by the Secretary of the Inte- 

 rior, through the very efficient efforts of Messrs. Max- 

 well, Walcott and Newell. 



In last April Director Walcott, of the Geological 

 Survey, arrived in Phoenix. He announced that the 

 purpose of his visit was to personally investigate condi- 

 tions in both the Salt and Gila river valleys with refer- 

 ence to the advantages they offered for the reclamation 

 of public lands through the instrumentality of the San 

 Carlos and Tonto reservoirs. He remained in Phoenix 

 three weeks under the chaperonage of George H. Max- 

 well, whose guest he was, investigating land conditions 

 within the walls of the cosy office of the genial but jug- 



gling Mr. Maxwell and the luxuriant 'environment of 

 the Hotel Adams. After enjoying the lavish hospitality 

 of the Phoenecians for three weeks he was speeded, under 

 the pilotage of the discreet Mr. B. A. Fowler, across the 

 Pima reservation in a Pullman, in the dense darkness 

 of the night, lest he should note the desolation that 

 marks the lands of the deserving and starving Pimas 

 and the sight should touch a chord of pity in his heart 

 and move him to make an investigation of conditions 

 in this val'ey in accordance with his announced original 

 intentions. Passing directly on to Tucson the discreet 

 Mr. Fowler stopped over there a day with his official 

 protege to have him interviewed by the newspapers and 

 announce in those interviews that the San Carlos dam 

 was "'not feasible because of its great depth to bed rock," 

 a deliberate falsehood that I shall fully expose further 

 on in this article. From Tucson Mr. Fowler escorted 

 his official protege, by rail, around through Cochise and 

 Graham counties, then down to the San Carlos dam site, 

 to make sure that he would not get a glimpse of any of 

 the land or conditions under the proposed San Carlos 

 reservoir. They remained at the San Carlos dam, site 

 less than one-half day, then passed on to the Hudson 

 Reservoir Company's Tonto dam site, the dam site 

 recommended to the government by Messrs. Maxwell, 

 Fowler, Walcott, Newell & Company, and for which the 

 government must pay $250,000 if it desires to build 

 the Tonto reservoir. Among the several, this is one of 

 the Ethiopians in the Tonto woodpile. The Hudson 

 Reservoir Company has held legal title to this Tonto 

 reservoir site for over eighteen years. The company is 

 made up, prncipally, by large owners of the idle and 

 speculative lands in Salt river valley, and for all these 

 years they have been trying to induce outside capital to 

 undertake the construction of this dam so that they 

 could unload their idle and speculative lands during the 

 progress of construction work. But capitalists would 

 insist on investigating the water supply before investing 

 their money in so gigantic an undertaking, and investi- 

 gating they would discover that the entire water re- 

 sources of the valley had been appropriated and were be- 

 ing fully utilized in irrigating the patented lands of the 

 valley, and that there was no surplus to store. With 

 these facts before them they would decline to give the 

 Tonto project further consideration. The syndicates 

 owning large blocks of this idle and speculative land 

 were financially able to build the dam, but the cost of 

 building it from bed rock to the surface of the stream, 

 which they would have to do in order to create a boom 

 that would enable them to unload their land at a very 

 great advance over the cost of it, would more than con- 

 sume any profit they could derive from the sale of the 

 land and leave them nothing but a valueless, but costly, 

 piece of dam work. 



Having "investigated" at the Tonto dam site to his 

 heart's content, Mr. Walcott returned to Phoenix for a 

 few days, then left for home. The citizens of this valley 

 sent a committee to Phoenix to interview him and lay 

 the facts of the land and water conditions under the San 

 Carlos reservoir before him. He admitted that this 

 committee had presented .a very strong case, but no 

 amount of persuasion would induce him to visit this val- 

 ley and investigate for himself. 



There seems to be a hypnotic power in the ozone 

 of the Salt river valley, especially when the lungs of a 

 government geological engineer or employe become filled 

 with it. 



