DRAINAGE 155 



cases the county assumes the entire or partial cost of 

 drains, and in other cases the state furnishes part or all 

 of the means with which to carry out a large amount of 

 drainage work. Wherever the county or state furnishes 

 part of the means for constructing the drains, it wisely 

 retains at least partial supervision of the expenditures 

 and of the future maintenance of the drains. 



Private drains. Legal questions often arise in making 

 private drains. As a general legal proposition, no one 

 has a right to interfere with natural drainage in a way 

 that shall injure the property of another. Thus, no 

 farmer has the right to discharge the water from a drain 

 upon the land of another in such a way that the flooding 

 of his lands shall be increased or occur at a different 

 time, or in a different place, than would naturally occur. 

 Neither has one person the right to make embankments 

 to prevent his own lands flooding and thereby retard the 

 water flowing naturally from the fields of his neighbor. 

 Bitter litigation and neighborhood quarrels of a most 

 disagreeable and disastrous kind often arise from the 

 failure of neighbors to adjust properly these matters of 

 drainage in a friendly and peaceable manner. In matters 

 of this kind, there is entirely too much effort to get the 

 better of the neighbor, or too much anxiety lest the 

 neighbor get the advantage. It is far wiser to con- 

 cede much more than is fair than to become involved 

 in a quarrel, and possibly in legal difficulties, which will 

 destroy the peace of the neighborhood, and surely cost 

 both parties many times as much as either one would 

 have had to sacrifice in effecting a peaceable adjustment. 

 Arbitration is becoming much more popular in the world, 

 and here is one of the places where it should nearly 

 always prevail in case of disagreement. Persons asked 

 to serve as arbitrators in difficult matters of this kind 

 have an opportunity to do a patriotic service, not only 

 to the parties involved, but to the neighborhood, and 



