THE IRKIGATION AGE. 



407 



thing in regard to the government, any more than the 

 first filing, until they get water. 



Mr. Newell: They pay nothing for the filing fees 

 until the water is there, and they have to be two pay- 

 ments back before they are forfeited. That is to say, 

 two annual installments are charged up against them, 

 and that is why one million and a hundred thousand and 

 so is marked up on the government books as due, but not 

 yet collected. They have that leeway in paying for the 

 water. 



Mr. Fairweather: They say the field work already is 

 being pushed as fast as is consistent with the experi- 

 ence of the government and with the money in hand to 

 complete the work already begun. 



Mr. Newell: That gets on pretty delicate ground. 

 I do not think, frankly, that we are pushing it as fast 

 as good business would dictate, but we are pushing just 

 as fast as we can get the money. Now, it is up to you, 

 gentlemen, citizens and tax payers and voters, to say 

 how fast we shall get money more than the rate at which 

 we are getting it. We are pushing the work as rapidly 

 as we can, but if we had twice as much money we could 

 go twice as fast and satisfy twice as many people. Now, 

 as it is, at the conference at Portland last week of the 

 reclamation service engineers, each man brought in the 

 claims of his particular part of the country, and those 

 claims aggregated $27,000,000 for work that ought to be 

 taken up right away, and we had to shave that $27,000,000 

 down into $11,000,000, so that after the conference was 

 over each man individually came to me with a tale of woe 

 that he was absolutely ruined if he could not have what 

 he ought to, and felt that I had some particular grudge 

 against him because I did not give him more money. 

 Of course, I was not the man that was handing it out, 

 but I am the man that gets the blame. So that to answer 

 Judge Fairweather's question, if we had more money, we 

 could, of course, complete more work in quick time. Now, 

 we have large investments made which are practically 

 dormant. In Wyoming it is tied up and only a portion 

 of the water being used now. The Gunnison tunnel 

 is just finished in Colorado, and we cannot utilize that 

 to the fullest extent immediately because more money 

 must be had for extending the system. The condition is 

 exactly as it is in your own private affairs or business, 

 where if you had twice or three times as much money 

 you would use it. 



Mr. Bennett, of Oregon: Mr. Newell, are we to in- 

 fer that all of the projects are being settled as rapidly 

 as you think they ought to be settled? 



Mr. Newell: They are going forward with that 

 rapidity that all public lands are taken up. Out of 5,000 

 farm units we will say, there are less than 500 left, those 

 being in Montana, Wyoming and Nevada. Now, the 

 people are taking those up at the rate of two, three and 

 four families a week, about as many as our men on the 

 ground can conveniently handle and point out a desirable 

 location. 



Mr. Bennett: One other question, how many of these 

 men that take these lands do you call homesteaders? Do 

 you call a man a homesteader who goes on a piece of 

 arid land I am talking now about the Hermiston project. 

 Do you call a man who goes on there and pays $350 an 

 acre for the land and $60 more for the water do you 

 call that man a homesteader? 



Mr. Newell: If he takes it up for a homestead, he 

 is legally one. He may be anything else in fact, but 

 under the law he is a homesteader. 



Mr. Bennett: Then from your side of it, you exclude 

 the men who buy the land? 



Mr. Newell: The private land, of course, that we 

 have nothing to do with. 



Mr. Bennett: Is it not true that in a good many of 

 these projects more money is put in private land Tike the 

 Hermiston project? 



Mr. Newell: It is now. 



Mr. Bennett: Then you do not consider the Hermis- 

 ton project is settled as rapidly as you would like to see? 



Mr. Newell: We would like to see that private land 

 subdivided and sold and put in the hands of men who 

 will cultivate it in small tracts, but being in private own- 

 ership, of course, we have no control over the disposition 

 of it. 



Mr. Fairweather: One more question. What is the 

 actual rate that the Government is charging for the land 

 independent of the water, under this plan? 



Mr. Newell: The government land is given away. 

 That is to say, the government gives it away under the 

 terms of the Homestead Act, and the government simply 

 recovers the estimated cost of the water. 



Mr. Fairweather: And charges just for the filing? 



Mr. Newell: Yes. 



Mr. Fairweather: And that is all there is to it? 



Mr. Newell. That is all. 



At the conclusion of this discussion, Prof. E. A. 

 Bryan, of the Washington State College gave an inter- 

 esting paper on the "Irrigation Situation in Washington," 

 in which he drew a word picture of the topographical out- 

 line of the state. Stating that the eastern and western 

 belts had first attracted attention from an agricultural 

 standpoint, he traced the development of other sections of 

 the state and the engineering works now nearing com- 

 pletion for the reclamation of great tracts. 



The speaker deplored the lack of co-operation be- 

 tween the state and federal governments in the matter 

 of reclamation work, and suggested changes in the ex- 

 isting state laws to protect the rights of those land owners 

 who had by industry and expenditure of money, increased 

 the value of their holdings, and had taken the first great 

 step toward development of hitherto unproductive land. 

 Further, he excoriated the state and national lawmakers 

 .who had refrained from grappling with the problem of 

 providing a legal cure for existing evils. In the dis- 

 cussion following his paper Mr. Bryan declared that an 

 irrigation code for the state of Washington would assist 

 materially in preventing contest and injury to irrigators. 



Sledge Tatum, topographer of the U. S. Geological 

 Survey, gave an interesting paper on "The Reclamation 

 of Swamp and Overflowed Lands in the United States." 

 His words were listened to with great attention by dele- 

 gates from certain southern states, where drainage is 

 an important factor in the reclamation of wet lands. He 

 asserted that the United States government has given 

 serious consideration to great engineering works for 

 drainage purposes, but as yet there is insufficient or- 

 ganization and system for carrying forward the mam- 

 moth projects outlined. 



In his discussion of the drainage problems confront- 

 ing South Carolina, E. J. Watson, Commissioner of Agri- 

 culture, Commerce and Industry, for that state, said: 



We have fertile soils and fine forests, but both are being 

 hourly Irreparably damaged by wanton deforestation. We 

 have magnificent navigable waterways from the heart of our 

 respective states along the Atlantic seaboard, flowing down 

 from the mountain tops and into the Atlantic, but deforesta- 

 tion and lack of proper care are ruining: them for every 

 practical commercial purpose. We have thousands of acres 

 'of as fertile land as the Valley of the Nile can boast of, 

 which needs only the employment of intelligent drainage 

 methods, to render it habitable and healthy. 



In the eastern portion of the United States there are 

 77.000.000 acres of wet lands, an area sufficient to make an 

 empire as large as the British Isles, an area as large as 

 six of the New England States, New York and the upper half 

 of New Jersey: an area, as some one has said, that would 

 make a strip of territory 133 miles wide, reaching from New 

 York to Chicago, and which, if divided into farms of 40 acres 

 each, would provide homes for 1,925,000 families of people. 



But this Empire, I might call it, for when you consider 

 the richness of the soil it is an Empire, is lying idle and 

 unproductive while American citizens are flocking into Canada 

 to seek homes, at the rate. I believe last year, of over 65.000, 

 and bear in mind when we speak of these lands requiring 

 drainage, that the malarial mosquito is not confined to our 

 south Atlantic coast, but is just as common In the wet sec- 

 tions of Minnesota as in the worst sections of South Carolina 

 or North Carolina or Georgia. 



TUESDAY MOKNINCr. 



When the session was rapped to order an unusually 

 large number of delegates were in their seats. The sub- 

 ject of the session had been announced as "Forestry," 

 and through the early morning hours it had been whis- 

 pered openly about the hotels and among delegates 

 that Forester Pinchot, fearing official decapitation unless 

 heroic means be taken to direct suspicion at his chief, 

 and thereby delay investigation of operations in the for- 

 estry bureau, had planned to hurl defiance at Secretary 

 Ballinger. It was averred that, because of the all-night 

 activity of his agents in preparing for the capture of 

 sentiment for the following day, the morning session 



