1899. AMERICAN FORESTRY ASSOCIATION. 175 



for some of us to understand that we cannot expect to see any more large irriga- 

 tion works built by private enterprise. We here are simply the pioneers. We 

 must create a public sentiment and keep it going. There are of course many 

 projects. One trouble is that private works do not pay. The reason is this : If 

 you have a city of any given number you can calculate that 97 or 98 per cent will 

 take water from the pipes of a water supply system, but if you have a given area 

 of land and a big body of water back of it and bring it down to the land, about 85 

 or 90 per cent of the population will not take the water. 



"This is a strange statement, but it is true. The most rapid rate of settle- 

 ment has been at Redlands, but the rate has not been large enough even there to 

 insure the success of an irrigation company which depended solely on the annual 

 payments for the use of its water. All attempts in India, Europe and the United 

 States to build irrigation works have resulted in disaster. The most rapid rate of 

 settlement will not do it unless the rate of payment for water is so high as to be a 

 bar to settlement. In the next place the majority of settlers on every ditch do not 

 wish to raise oranges and alfalfa. The crop they wish to raise is tender-feet. 

 They want to take out strangers and sell them land. In nearly all cases the profit 

 has been to the land owner and not to the builder of the works. 



"The Government must take up this matter, just as it takes up river and 

 harbor improvements. If not the Government, then the States must do it. Mr. 

 Mead's idea is a good one. It meets the objection that it would cost too much to 

 carry out such a scheme. 



" It has been suggested that the difficulty of building water works could be met 

 by co operation. The first step is that four or five men working together build the 

 ditch, the land furnishing meantime feed and supplies for them and cheir teams. 

 The land has built the ditch. The next step is that some one man comes along 

 with money and bm s a large tract and hires some one to build the ditch; then he 

 sells off the land in lots and gets back the money from the buyers, and when it is 

 all sold he steps out and the land owners own it, and it becomes a land owners' 

 company. If he works it right he will make money; but the difference comes out 

 of the increased value of the land. That is the way almost all the works in South- 

 ern California have been built. There are but four exceptions. Riverside started 

 as a City Water Company. In 1883 they had to turn it into a land- owners' com- 

 pany. Every one of these companies has been a success, while the others are a 

 failure. No one will now plant any large area unless he belongs to a land-owners' 

 company. 



"Another way to accomplish the same thing is by building a ditch and selling 

 the water right, a perpetual right to water, for so much money. It has been par- 

 tially successful, but it cannot be relied upon any longer. Consequently we must 

 look to the State or the Government and we must create a public sentiment. It 

 will take a long time to do it. The great trouble is that the East does not under- 

 stand the question. We must go at it in some way that does not excite their fears 

 of jobbery. There is some reason for this fear. Mr. Olmsted has said that every 

 man on a certain river had a dam site ; but if the Government began buying dam 

 sites it would be found that every one of those men had two for sale." Some dis- 

 cussion followed as to the Los Angeles River and its water supply, participated in 

 by Messrs. Sprague, Hyde and Steele. 



Professor Dudley mentioned some interesting facts in regard to palms, to the 

 effect that he had found palms growing on the desert at the mouths of canons 

 where there was a salty deposit. 



James Boyd strongly advocated keeping sheep out of the forest reserves. Mr. 

 Maxwell thought that in some parts of the country grazing might be permissible 

 in the forests, but that it should be absolutely prohibited in Southern California. 



