198 



THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



sonable to surmise that they have spent a million or 

 more in aid of those in distress. This may be worth 

 while remembering by those who are habitually inclined 

 to criticize railways and their officials. 



During the past year many complaints 

 Oppressive have come to us concerning the manner 

 Use of Power, in which the Reclamation Service has 

 been handling affairs in connection with 

 development work along the lower Colorado River near 

 Yuma, Ariz. So many complaints were forwarded re- 

 cently that the editor decided to visit Yuma and se- 

 cure data from those interested. A careful study of 

 the situation coupled with talks with individuals in and 

 near Yuma brought out many interesting facts. 



More than two years before the Reclamation Law 

 was passed by Congress the Irrigation Land and Im- 

 provement Company, of Yuma, Ariz., had begun irri- 

 gating lands in the Yuma Valley, taking the water 

 therefor from the Colorado River. It had made ap- 

 propriations of the water of that river, and acquired, 

 by purchase and assignment, prior appropriations, un- 

 der the laws of the territory of Arizona, making the first 

 appropriator in time the first in right. The men who 

 put their time, money and labor into this irrigation 

 work were offered by Arizona the further inducement 

 that such enterprise should be exempt from taxation 

 for the term of fifteen years. Before the reclamation 

 engineers went into that district the I. L. and I. Com- 

 pany had water running in more than forty miles of 

 main canals and ditches, and was irrigating more than 

 4,000 acres of theretofore arid lands. It had submitted 

 to the Commissioner of the General Land Office, for 

 approval, its plat showing its system of canals, reser- 

 voirs, etc., and the same was approved by Secretary 

 Hitchcock on the 30th of October, 1903, thus giving 

 that company title to the land required for said canals, 

 reservoirs, etc., where the same crossed or was on public 

 lands. This approval was given and these rights ac- 

 quired, in the face of opposition which was interposed 

 by the Reclamation Service, the latter claiming that 

 the Government might want to enter that field, and the 

 approval of the plat would confer vested rights to pes- 

 ter the Government in its enterprise. Furthermore, 

 many locators under the desert law were allowed to 

 prove up on their claims in that valley by showing that 

 they had a water right from the I. L. and I. Company 

 for a perpetual supply of water. 



In the Yuma Valley, below the main canals of this 

 company, lie about 50,000 acres of land, for the irriga- 

 tion of which the main canals, reservoirs, settling basin, 

 etc., had been constructed before Newell's men got into 

 Yuma, and organized the Water Users' Association. 

 The work of further extensions would have been, at 

 slight relative cost to the company, and was proceed- 



ing, and would have been continued as rapidly as the 

 settler could get ready to improve his land. 



In the month of February, 1904, the town and 

 county of Yuma were enjoying a prosperity never 

 known before or since, greater than they will know 

 again in the next five years, if the past and present 

 methods of the Reclamation Bureau continue in force. 

 By that time said I. L. & I. Company had expended, 

 in money and labor, on its plant approximately $300,- 

 000. Its engineer and general manager, J. E. Ludy, 

 had then been working for four years, asking and re- 

 ceiving from the company only a bare sustenance, ex- 

 pecting to reap a rich reward in the enhanced value 

 of his large holdings of stock. All the other stock- 

 holders felt the same confidence in the ultimate suc- 

 cess of the enterprise. The writer, at the time of his 

 visit, learns that in those days, farmers marketing in 

 the town oT Yuma their crop of alfalfa, were netting 

 about $50 per acre on their irrigated lands, which were 

 a part of that great Arizona desert less than two years 

 before, when the Reclamation Act was passed. 



At this time, and with a demonstration by private 

 enterprise of what irrigation could accomplish in that 

 valley, Newell's men entered the field, organized the 

 Water Users' Association, and started out on their 

 mission to accomplish the undoing of the I. L. and I. 

 Company. Where slander and libel were inadequate 

 bull-dozing methods were employed. The Standard 

 Oil Company and John D. Rockefeller never employed 

 more unconscionable methods to ruin a competitor in 

 the oil field than have been used by Newell, Lippincott, 

 et al., down in the Yuma Valley. The people were 

 told that private enterprise could not cope with the diffi- 

 culties of that river; that use or appropriations of the 

 waters of the Colorado River, by private persons or 

 concerns, were invalid, because the river was a navi- 

 gable stream; that the Government was going to in- 

 stall a plant which would have the right to use the 

 water, under a system capable of coping with all diffi- 

 culties and that those who did not desert the private 

 concern and agree to take water from the Government 

 would not get water when the private concern had been 

 put out of commission, as it inevitably would be. By 

 such methods further extensions by the I. L. and I. 

 Company became impossible. 



What the poor settler down there needed most 

 was the loan of money on his claim to enable him to 

 improve it. This money, but -for Government inter- 

 ference, would have been furnished. The I. L. and T. 

 Company, at that time, was in such good standing 

 financially that a trust fund of two or three hundred 

 thousand dollars was to be raised on the bonds of the 

 company, and this money loaned to the settler, which 

 would have been the means of rapidly filling up and 

 improving the valley. 



