326 



THE IRKIGATION AGE. 



members of that Congress are the homeseekers who 

 are to benefit by the honest and just enforcement of 

 that law. Shall they be ignored and their Congress 

 turned over to any voluntary organization with pri- 

 vate objects in view, an absolutely irresponsible and 

 therefore unreliable organization? The homeseekers 

 of sixteen arid and sub-humid states ask their repre- 

 sentatives for bread and they are given a stone. 



The national irrigation law is passed, but the work 

 of this Congress is still before it. To pause now is 

 to belie their past efforts, to throw down their badge 

 of office, for another to pick up and sway for his 

 own benefit, is to commit an act of cowardice that 

 deserves eternal obloquy. 



We do not believe the Congress will surrender 

 its prerogatives; we do believe that it will continue 

 on and settle all the conflicting problems connected 

 with irrigation ; reconcile conflicts of laws ; interest 

 itself in the location of reservoirs, wells, ditches, canals, 

 and everything pertaining to or belonging to irriga- 

 tion for a multitude of homeseekers and the building 

 up of a vast irrigated empire. There is colonization 

 to be considered, for the day of small farms has 

 arrived, complaints are to be heard, wrongs righted, 

 the rights of the helpless farmer protected, and numer- 

 ous duties and obligations resting upon this Congress 

 of the people of sixteen states which they can not 

 lightly cast aside, or delegate to middlemen. 



. Their labors will not pass unrequited, for there 

 is not an irrigation farmer in the West who will not 

 help hold up its hands, and assist in carrying out 

 the provisions of the irrigation laws to their fullest 

 extent. If the law does not work to advantage, it must 

 be amended, not by those who want a law through 

 which they can drive a wagon load of fraud, but by 

 those who will suffer if not adequate to their needs. 

 and whose little homes will be all the wealth they 

 desire if it goes well with them. 



There is a great principle at the bottom of the 

 problems of irrigation in the great West, a principle 

 of right and justice, it means also the public welfare, 

 the greatest good to the greatest number, the strik- 

 ing from the limbs of the farmer slave of land monop- 

 oly the chains that have been fretting them for years, 

 it means the taking away from private, unreliable, 

 irresponsible schemers the right to dominate land and 

 water, and the privilege of enriching themselves at the 

 expense of the Government and the small farmer. 



What this Congress may do is to issue a procla- 

 mation of emancipation from the slavery of land and 

 water monopolies, and declare to the people of this 

 nation and of the world, that they are invited to aid 

 in building up a great empire and that they may 

 come to it without fear that they will be driven out 

 and lose their homes by any perversion of the irri- 

 gation and land laws. 



Whenever two organizations posses idcn- 

 Merging, tical objects, adopt similar methods to 

 Fusing carry them out, it sometimes happens that 



and Amal- strength is acquired by what is known 

 gamation. as merging, fusing, or amalgamating. 

 It is the community of interest which 

 makes our great industrial combines so powerful. 



But where the objects are not identical and the 

 methods are diverse, a merger, or a fusion, is fatal 

 to one or the other, which must go to the wall, and 

 the party who succumbs is generally the better and 

 cleaner one of the two. It is a house divided against 

 itself, a combine that is contrary to good business 

 principles, unphilosophical, unethical. 



On August 21, ult., the Transmississippi Congress 

 ended its 14th annual session at Seattle, Wash., after 

 passing resolutions to the following effect: Favoring 

 statehood for Oklahoma and Indian Territory com- 

 bined ; a territorial government for Alaska, and plac- 

 ing the consular service under civil service. It will 

 be perceived that the objects of the Transmississippi 

 concern are far-reaching and purely political, and of 

 the quality known as "intermeddling" politics. They 

 may be considered legitimate, however, under our sys- 

 tem of government that admits all kinds of bedfellows 

 under its blanket, but they concern business interests 

 of every kind and complexion, even into boodling if 

 deemed requisite to further those interests. For what 

 other purpose do outsiders mix in local matters? 



On September 15, 1C, 1? and 18. thf Eleventh 

 National Irrigation Congress will meet at Ogden, Utah. 

 The sole great object of this organization has always 

 been and must be irrigation. Its members have fought 

 a good fight for the homeseekers of the country and 

 they have advanced the building up of the empire of 

 the West many decades. Moreover, they have laid the 

 foundation of the only true solution of the problem 

 of irrigation, that it be kept out of private, uncontrol- 

 lable, irresponsible hands. 



It is said that this single minded, specifically 

 created Congress will be asked to merge with the Trans- 

 mississippi concern and become an appendage, a mere 

 tail to its kite. Why? 



The National Irrigation Congress can certainly 

 die a natural death without going through the wretched 

 agony of being asphyxiated with a combination of 

 incompatible objects, and have its vitality sapped by 

 the introduction of an incongruous, unassimilable 

 serum. 



With what wasting disease is the Transmississippi 

 Congress, or the National Irrigation Association, for 

 that matter, afflicted that it needs a transfusion of 

 the blood of the National Irrigation Congress? Is it 

 not a confession of a moribund condition to even ask 

 a merger? Are annual subscriptions falling off, or 

 contributions lessening ? 



If the National Irrigation Congress has expended 



