448 



THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



signed contracts for water and pledged our land and 

 homes for the payment thereof; 



"And, whereas, after these contracts had been secured, 

 based on the estimated cost of the engineers, the reclama- 

 tion law has been so interpreted that the actual cost in- 

 stead of the estimated cost of construction is charged 

 against the land. 



"And, whereas, these liens on the land and homes 

 were given on the estimated cost furnished by the govern- 

 ment engineers. 



"And, whereas, section 4 of the reclamation law 

 specifies that the said charges shall be determined with a 

 view of returning to the reclamation fund the estimated 

 cost of construction and that only; 



"Therefore, be it Resolved, That the estimated cost 

 of projects on which these liens were secured be the 

 amount the settlers and water users should be required 

 to pay. 



General resolutions similar to the following have 

 also been presented by the representatives of several 

 reclamation projects : 



"We further beg to recommend the following changes 

 in the reclamation law: 



"First That the time of payments for construction 

 charges be extended from ten to twenty payments, or in 

 lieu thereof, that the water users be given the use of water 

 for three or five years without charge, or a form of grad- 

 uated payments be adopted to enable the settlers to get 

 the land under cultivation, and on a paying basis and mak- 

 ing it possible for them to meet their obligations. 



"Second- That the first clause of section No. 6 of the 

 irrigation act be interpreted as mandatory, that operating 

 and maintenance charge be paid from the reclamation 

 fund as provided in said section 6. 



"Third That the engineers themselves of reclamation 

 projects be required to make a statement quarterly of the 

 amount expended and for what purpose. 



"Fourth We recommend that the residence restric- 

 tion as imposed by section 5 of the irrigation act be re- 

 moved. 



"Fifth- That the operation of the homestead law be 

 restored, so that final proof may be made either by com- 

 mutation or by settlement, and when so made patents shall 

 be issued therefor, subject to the government lien for con- 

 struction charges. 



"Sixth That the co-operative plan of construction, as 

 heretofore in operation, be legalized and operated under 

 government supervision. 



"Seventh We beg to submit to your honorable body 

 that these recommendations are based on actual experi- 

 ence, and by men who are actual water users and owners 

 of land pledged to the government for the payment of 

 construction charges, and therefore, we trust that these 

 will be given due consideration." 



While the commitee has doubtless been assailed by 

 many improper and unfounded complaints, yet there 

 are involved in the above resolutions problems of vital 

 importance to settlers. Under former administrations 

 they have found no opportunity to make united protest 

 over conditions, and it is to be hoped that the senate 

 committee will take all steps within its power to change 

 the status of affairs where settlers are subjected to heavy 

 expense and impediment in their attempts at home- 

 building. 



TAFT TO OPEN DAIRY SHOW. 



President William H. Taft has accepted the invitation 

 of the National Dairy Show Association and will open the big 

 ten-day exposition of the allied dairy interests in the Audi- 

 torium, Milwaukee, Wis., Thursday evening, October 14, by 

 pressing a button in the El Toro Hotel, Grand Canyon, 

 Colo., which will set the machinery in motion. Accompany- 

 ing the signal which will open the Fourth Annual Dairy 

 Show will come a message to the dairy farmers of the United 

 States by telegraph which will probably be delivered by Colon 

 C. Lillie, president of the National Dairy Show Association. 



HITS BALLINGER'S ACCUSERS. 



President Taft Absolves Secretary of Interior from All 



Blame Shows that There Was no Loss 



of Power Cities. 



For the benefit of those readers of THE IRRIGATION AGE 

 who have not access to publications submitting the full text 

 of the President's letter relative to the alleged water-power 

 trust, and the veiled charges against Secretary Ballinger's 

 policy, as suggested by Pinchot, Pardee and others at the 

 National Irrigation Congress in Spokane, there is herewith 

 presented the full text of this section of his letter : 



"I cannot close this letter without referring to certain 

 other matters connected with your conduct of the Interior 

 Department which have been unfairly used in the public press 

 to support a general charge that you are out of sympathy 

 with the declared policy of this administration, following that 

 of President Roosevelt, in favor of the conservation of na- 

 tional resources, especially in connection with coal lands, with 

 water power sites and with the system of reclamation of arid 

 lands, which are all within the jurisdiction of the Interior 

 Department. 



"In the first place, it was charged on the floor of the 

 irrigation convention at Spokane by former Governor Par- 

 dee of California that you had restored to the public domain 

 for settlement certain lands which had been withdrawn by 

 the last administration for the purpose of conserving water 

 power sites, and that after complaint made thereof you had 

 subsequently withdrawn some of the lands again from set- 

 tlement ; but that meantime, between the one act and the 

 other, an opportunity had been given to the so-called 'water- 

 power trust' to file entries and obtain vested rights in valu- 

 able water-power sites in the state of Montana. 



"At the same time that this charge was made by Gover- 

 nor Pardee there appeared in the public press, in a telegram 

 which seems to have had the widest circulation, a statement 

 quoted from a Montana paper that a water-power company 

 with a capital of $10,000,000 had in the interval between the 

 order of restoration and the order of withdrawal located 

 and obtained vested rights in 15,000 acres of land in Mon- 

 tana, which absorbed for the comoany all the valuable water- 

 power sites in that state, and the statement was accompa- 

 nied by detailed reference to the particular land office and 

 the particular agent through whom this result was accom- 

 plished. 



"The inference which it 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 ; that 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 responsible for the circulation of these 

 charges have done you a cruel injust : ce. The fact was that 

 in January, 1909, in the last administration, executive or- 

 ders were made withdrawing from public settlement 1,500,000 

 acres at the instance of the reclamation service for conserva- 

 tion of water-power sites. 



"Soon after you became secretary of the interior you 

 brought this order to my attention and said that it included 

 a great deal of land that had no water-power sites on it, 

 runnine back many miles from the rivers, and that included 

 much land which ought to be opened to public settlement; 

 that you had applied to the reclamation bureau to know 

 whether it was desired for reclamation purposes and what 

 their recommendation was in the premises, -"'and that they 

 recommended that it be returned to the publ^ domain. 



"You also advised me that it was possible to secure 

 from the geological survey an accurate statement of the 

 water-power sites which were available, and which might be 

 subjected to private ownership, and that you would direct 



