232 



THE IREIGATION AGE. 



poses, or for public purposes looking to private gain, to 

 apply any remedy which will establish uniformity in 

 the matter of irrigation, because the work to be done 

 is governmental in its nature. 



We are building for the future by taking care of 

 the present. We are on the threshhold of a domain 

 sufficient to maintain from twenty-five to fifty millions 

 of people, and which will be filled with that number 

 of people within two generations. It was not two gen- 

 erations ago when it was difficult to find the city of 

 Chicago, and it was much less than that period of time 

 when a microscope was required to discern the city of 

 Omaha. What is it now, this vast empire, and whence 

 sprang the thousands of towns and cities that were 

 once desert sites without human habitations? All has 

 been created by private enterprise, and now, that the 

 Government comes to the aid of this great empire, 

 is not the building to go on much more rapidly? Shall 

 it be hampered or restrained by private interests? 



This question of irrigation must be regarded from 

 a more enlarged point of view than that of the reclam- 

 ation of arid and semi-arid lands. The humid regions, 

 the States where the rainfall is sufficient to make the 

 soil laugh with a harvest, are studying the problem of 

 irrigation to obviate periods of drouth and to realize 

 unfailing harvests. Large canning interests in the State 

 of Illinois are contemplating the establishment of a 

 system of irrigation and drainage to assure themselves 

 of plentiful, luxuriant harvests. 



We make the problem broad enough to prepare the 

 way for the remedy which will obviate all the evils 

 liable to arise from diverse systems of irrigation, and 

 which, in time, if not provided against now will retard 

 the entire nation, not only the arid and semi-arid 

 States, but every State in the Union, for irrigation is 

 agitating all of them. 



From this viewpoint, the subject of irrigation be- 

 comes one of national importance and significance, not 

 that the Federal Government is concerned in it, but be- 

 cause of questions that may arise between the various 

 States when the water is interstate, as has been already 

 mentioned. As soon as the General Government shall 

 have disposed of its interests in its public lands to 

 private individuals, it will have lost all. interest in the 

 problem of irrigation, it will have ceased to be a factor 

 in their solution, and its active participancy in the set- 

 tlement of questions even arising out of interstate 

 questions will be an unwarranted intrusion upon the 

 rights of the sovereign States, unless the latter, or its 

 citizens appeal to the Federal courts, which is not a 

 very satisfactory way of governing an empire. 



Under our system of government, a representative 

 body of the people is of the most signal influence in 

 providing for the wants of the people. It is the essence 

 of our free government, although we seem to be get- 

 ting away from it and intrusting our rights to private 

 individuals. In this matter of irrigation, which con- ' 



cerns the home, the vital rights of ownership over land' 

 and water, the relations between men and the State 

 and between the latter and the General Government, all 

 of the details of the question split into tens and soon 

 to be split into hundreds of thousands of small side 

 issues, the Federal Government can not be an active 

 party, and the States can not operate beyond their own 

 borders. Conflicting laws and burning questions in- 

 volving the application of twenty inches or half an inch 

 of water upon a given tract of land can not be settled 

 in a manner commensurate with the needs of the par- 

 ties involved, for our present methods of settling rights 

 between individuals and States is slow beyond parallel; 

 the individual is ruined before settlement is made, and 

 the question becomes one of mere principle, which is 

 of no application or merit when the cause demanding 

 it has ceased to exist. 



But if a representative body of the people, such 

 as the American Irrigators' League, of the great body 

 of irrigation farmers carry out the intent of their con- 

 stituents; if that representative body is legalized and 

 empowered to bring about \iniformity in systems of 

 irrigation, and unite with a commission duly authorized 

 by the federal laws, there will be no more clashing of 

 interests, but unanimity must ensue. A uniform sys- 

 tem of irrigation must be adopted, one under which 

 the man in California will receive water in the same 

 legal manner as the man in Colorado; under which the 

 man with a small home and his few acres will possess 

 the same inalienable right to a sufficient quantity of 

 water to maintain him in his independence as the man 

 with a thousand acres. 



There are innumerable watercourses to be diverted, 

 chains of reservoirs to be created to impound the sur- 

 plus, thousands of wells sunk to tap the inexhaustible- 

 water supply lying inert and unused below the sur- 

 face of the most sterile desert. The use of water must 

 be free and regulated only by a governmental body of 

 men, who will see to it that private individuals do not 

 pervert this freedom and convert it into a badge of 

 servitude. 



The national irrigation law as it stands is satis- 

 factory, and the question of irrigation can be easily 

 determined under its provisions until the time shall 

 come when the Federal Government shall have no 

 more land at its disposal ; against the coming of that 

 time there is no provision, and there can be no pro- 

 vision until that time shall have arrived. What can 

 and what should be done is to prepare for it by unify- 

 ing our diverse systems, harmonizing them so that 

 they will fit into their proper place without confusion 

 or irritating discussion. To alter or amend the acts 

 of Congress now, to change the entire aspect of our 

 land laws, is to insert the wedge of unlimited confu- 

 sion and never-ending conflict instead of gradually 

 smoothing the way for a settlement of the land and! 

 water problems. 



