THE IERIGATION AGE. 



199 



Before the organization of the Water Users' Asso- 

 ciation the water right certificates of the I. L. and I. 

 Company passed almost as current among the people, 

 banks and stores in Yuma, as money. After the Be- 

 clamation folks began their campaign of extermination 

 to all private concerns, those certificates became dis- 

 credited. It did not take a prophet to see that, in a 

 conflict between the United States Government, in the 

 hands of men drunk with suddenly acquired power, and 

 blind to individual rights and justice, that there could 

 be nothing but utter ruin to the private concern. These 

 events brought out a few heroes, men who avowed a 

 willingness to stay with the private corporation, that 

 had pioneered the way, and gave the valley its first 

 gleam of real prosperity, and lose all with that com- 

 pany rather than accept the grace held out by the 

 Eeclamation Service as a reward for moral cowardice. 

 But there were others more selfish, and less heroic, 

 who considered it the better part of valor to surrender 

 at once to forces that in the end must inevitably con- 

 quer, whether right or wrong. And so the I. L. and I. 

 Company was bottled up like Butler in Burmuda, 

 unable to go forward or backward, with contracts re- 

 quiring it to furnish water to lands constituting about 

 a tenth part of the entire irrigable district the re- 

 ceipts for maintenance not sufficient to pay the neces- 

 sary expense of keeping the system up to a proper de- 

 gree of efficiency. 



It was first reported that the Eeclamation Service 

 would put a dam 80 or 100 feet high across the Colo- 

 rado Eiver, twenty miles or more above Yuma, and in 

 that way reclaim many thousand acres of Mesa lands, 

 which could not be reached by canals on the natural 

 level of the river; and glowing pictures were held out 

 of an immense power thus to be created, which would 

 be used in transportation and pumping water on still 

 higher levels. The first literature issued among the 

 people in that valley held out alluring prospects, and 

 in that literature and at public meetings, it was broadly 

 intimated that any citizen who would remain loyal to 

 a private irrigation concern, who would still consider 

 himself bound by any previous contract with it, must 

 be regarded as an enemy to his country. 



Irrigation in that valley by private enterprise had 

 theretofore looked good to them. Fifty thousand acres 

 of that rich delta irrigated and cultivated meant much 

 to the people in Yuma County. But this prospect, 

 toward the realization of which more than 5,000 acres 

 had been reclaimed, paled into insignificance in com- 

 parison with that great scheme of raising the Colorado 

 Eiver 80 or 100 feet and converting it into a great 

 power, and carrying the water over the great area 

 which it could thereby reach. When the local enthu- 

 siasm had been brought as high as the proposed dam, 

 and a proper Socialistic sentiment created, to the effect 

 that the Government should forcibly take possession 



of anything it needed to promote its greater enter- 

 prise, and pay nothing for the same, the dam suddenly, 

 and without comment or explanation, shrunk down to 

 one only ten feet high. 



But, whether ten or one hundred feet be the height 

 of the same, the I. L. and I. Company could not cope 

 with Uncle Sam, and early sought an opportunity to 

 say so, and to ask that it be permitted to retire from 

 a field which the Government claimed for its own, and 

 asked to be compensated for its outlay. It was in- 

 formed that the Water Users' Association could make 

 no agreement which would bind the Government; 

 neither could the Eeclamation engineers. The Secre- 

 tary of the Interior was written to for advice in the 

 premises. In this letter of inquiry the Secretary was 

 told of the efforts made by the I. L. and I. Company 

 to find some one to negotiate with, 'and also of the 

 claim that one Morris Bien was making in behalf of 

 the Water Users' Association that all appropriations 

 of water of the Colorado Eiver for irrigation purposes 

 were void, because the river was a navigable stream, 

 and therefore the company had nothing of value. There 

 was inclosed to the Honorable Secretary a brief given 

 the president of the company, reviewing the adjudica- 

 tions of the courts on the subjects of appropriations of 

 water of navigable streams, and as to the extent of the 

 title which the United States has in the navigable wat- 

 ers of the States and Territories. This letter and brief 

 were referred to Mr. Newell's bureau, and in due course 

 a reply came, rebuking the impertinence of one who 

 would deign to lay before the Secretary of the Interior 

 a brief relating to the subject of irrigation in Arizona 

 which did not emanate from Morris Bien, who is an 

 evolution from the engineering service to a legal adviser 

 of that service of the Government. In that brief the 

 question was discussed as to whether it were possible 

 for the waters of the Colorado Eiver to be exempt from 

 irrigation service by private enterprise, because the 

 river is a navigable stream, but when the United States 

 Government wants to appropriate the same water and 

 more for the same purpose, the river becomes a non- 

 navigable stream. The only answer vouchsafed to this 

 question was that it is "irrelevant." In other words, 

 "If s none of your business." 



It would be interesting to quote from subsequent 

 correspondence with that branch of the Government, 

 called "U. S. Eeclamation Service," of which Mr. New- 

 ell is chief, but lack of time and space forbids to follow 

 it further than to say that this correspondence was made 

 necessary in order to find some one, if possible, with 

 whom the I. L. and I. Company could negotiate with 

 preliminary to its giving up that territory, with all its 

 hopes and promises, to the conquerors. In the course 

 of this correspondence the I. L. and I. Company was 

 alleged by the U. S. Geological Survey office to have 

 been accorded a hearing long prior to the time of this 



