IRRIGATION PRACTICE AND HIGHWAYS 321 



gation, to undertake a general irrigation law which 

 would establish public rights and abolish private 

 wrongs. Such a law was never passed nor even 

 widely agreed on and yet agitation for public owner- 

 ship of water and distribution of it fairly and benefi- 

 cently continued. Societies were organized and pub- 

 lic assemblies held to promote the popular conception. 

 Sometimes it has been urged by genuine reformers 

 and publicists, sometimes by rival interests to get 

 some advantage over each other, but it has never 

 been achieved in the dramatic way in which it has 

 been dreamed of. It, or the ends it aims at, may 

 perhaps still be possible of attainment in some more 

 round-about way. 



In 1887 the legislature passed what has since been 

 known as the Wright Irrigation District Law. The 

 apparent purpose of the enactment was to restrain 

 large holders of land who did not desire to meet the 

 cost of providing irrigation for them, or those who 

 already had both land and water of their own, from 

 preventing other owners of land in the same com- 

 munity from also securing irrigation by cooperative 

 enterprise. The plan was to enable a certain num- 

 ber of those owning dry land to act together and 

 force others to take part with them in a community 

 organization which would be empowered to acquire 

 water, construct irrigation works and assess the cost 

 on all the property benefited, roughly as a district 

 is empowered to acquire a site, build a school-house 

 and establish education within its own boundaries. 

 This achievement was much more easily attained 



