THE IRRIGATION AGE 



VOL. XXIV 



CHICAGO, OCTOBER, 1909. 



No. 12 



THE IRRIGATION AGE 



With which is Merged 



MODERN IRRIGATION THE DRAINAGE JOURNAL 



THE IRRIGATION ERA MID-WEST 



ARID AMERICA THE FARM HERALD 



IRRIGATION AGE COMPANY, 

 PUBLISHERS, 



112 Dearborn Street, 



CHICAGO 



Entered u Moond-clui Batter October (. 1897. at the 

 Chicago, 111., tinder Act of March 8. 1879. 



D. H. ANDERSON, Editor 



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Official organ Federation of Tree Growing Clubs of 

 America. D. H. Anderson, Secretary. 



Official organ of the American Irrigation Federation. 

 Office of the Secretary, 212 Boyce Building, Chicago. 



Interesting to Advertisers. 



It may interest advertisers to know that The Irrigation Age is th 

 only publication in the world having an actual paid in advance 

 circulation among individual irrigators and large irrigation corpo- 

 rations. It is read regularly by all interested in this subject and has 

 readers in all parts of the world. The Irrigation Age is 24 yean 

 old and is the pioneer publication of its class in the world. 



With the cool, unbiased decision of a 

 Taft's judge upon the bench, yet with all the 



Report force of his office as chief executive of the 



Upholds nation, President Taft has exonerated his 



Secretary. Secretary of the Interior from censure in 

 connection with the restoration and with- 

 drawal of lands from settlement during April and May 

 of this year. 



The text of his letter, presented elsewhere in this 

 journal, clears the atmosphere surrounding this con- 

 troversy and by statement of fact disproves the asser- 

 tion, as advanced before the irrigation congress, that 

 the department of the interior had favored the alleged 

 water power trust. 



Coming from the mouth of the President, before 

 whom records and evidence had been submitted, the 

 statement of facts is unequivocal and positive. Even 

 his enemies must give him commendation for his 

 thorough and prompt investigation and decision. 



The following excerpt from his letter is of espe- 

 cial interest to delegates and others who are conversant 

 with the proceedings of the Seventeenth National Irri- 

 gation Congress: 



"The inference which was sought to have drawn 

 and which was drawn by newspapers hostile to you, was 

 that you had brought about the restoration to settlement 

 of the land upon which were the water power sites for 

 the purpose of enabling private water power companies 



to acquire vested interests; and after doing so you had 

 then withdrawn what remained of the public settlement, 

 and that you took this course because you were out of 

 sympathy with that policy of conservation of national 

 resources and were in favor of the corporate control of 

 such water power sites. When the facts are examined 

 in this regard it will be found that the persons responsi- 

 ble for the circulation of these charges have done you 

 a cruel injustice." 



Those delegates to the irrigation congress who were 

 involved in or responsible for this controversy should 

 pause to consider the effect of their work. In courteous 

 language the President has declared that falsehoods were 

 uttered upon the floor of that congress. Indirectly he 

 has charged that certain accredited delegates were en- 

 abled to so hoodwink their fellows that the congress be- 

 came a judicial tribunal and passed decision on the 

 policies of the present chief executive. 



Following the session of this congress in August 

 THE IRRIGATION AGE asserted that as a convention of 

 irrigators the National Irrigation Congress had outlived 

 its usefulness. In view of the outcome of the water 

 power trust investigation, a matter that ought not to 

 have found place in the irrigation congress, this view 

 is fully vindicated. 



Pueblo has doubtless absorbed a valued lesson from 

 Spokane's experience. Government officials who seize 

 upon the irrigation congress for the play of petty and 



