JOHN \VKS1.1-V POWKlvL DAVIS 



southern Nevada, southern Arizona, and southern New Mex- 

 ico, where broad stretches of land are naked of vegetation; 

 but in ascending to the higher lands the grass steadily m- 

 creases" (20). The threefold classification therefore seems 

 to have been for the sake of simplicity; surely the confident 

 assertion of value in the larger part of the arid region as a 

 cattle-raising country has been abundantly verified. The 

 sparse growth of herbage on the grazing lands demanded large 

 farm units; Powell advised that the minimum be set at four 

 square miles, or 2,560 acres. He further advocated a some- 

 what ideal plan of settlement, in which the ranchmen's homes 

 should be grouped around irrigable tracts, so as to secure the 

 benefits of social organization, and, as he thought that fences 

 would not be used, he inferred that the herds must roam freely 

 under local communal regulations. Practice has not always 

 verified these anticipations ; roaming heads have been common 

 on open public lands ; but large areas of private lands are now 

 enclosed by long fences of barbed wire, hardly known in 1879. 

 J"""Work for a generation was laid out in jPp wall's far-sighted 

 treatment of the irrigable districts. ^He showed that their total 

 area must be small in relation to the vast extent of the whole 

 arid region ; he studied the amount of water that an irrigated 

 farm would need, and concluded that a continuous flow of one 

 cubic foot of water per second would serve from 80 to 100 

 acres ; he. advised, a better construction of canals to prevent^ 

 the excessive waste that was then almost universal. Streams 

 must be gauged to determine how much land they can serve; 

 reservoir sites must be reserved against the time when thejcA 

 will be needed to save the winter run-ofLjlBut the most sig- 

 nificant sentences in this part of his remarkable report concern 

 the danger of monopoly in the ownership of water, and in this 

 respect Powell showed himself a pioneer conservationist^jHe. 

 doubted the wisdom of too rapid enterprise, prompted by the 

 intense desire for speedy development on the part of first- 

 comers, who give little heed to "philosophic considerations of 

 political economy or to the ultimate condition of affairs in 

 which their present enterprises will result. ... If, in the 

 eagerness for present development, a land-and-water system 

 shall grow up in which the practical control of agriculture 



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