THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



247 



Since the supreme law-making body of 

 Lurid this country, through a tribunal the fair- 



Press ness and integrity of which no man has 



Attacks had the hardihood to impugn, haa insti- 



Ballinger. tuted an investigation into the so-called 

 "Ballinger-Pinchot controversy," the AGE 

 has deemed it unwise -to comment at length upon the 

 subject, preferring to await the conclusion of testimony. 



It is, therefore, with reluctance that this journal 

 feels an imperative call at this time to make an authori- 

 tative statement upon a matter which, while foreign to 

 the affairs under investigation, must nevertheless exert 

 a direct and powerful influence upon the public mind. 

 It is only after rigid investigation and careful analysis 

 of facts as presented that the AGE enters its protest 

 aijiiiiist distortion of facts by the daily press. 



In the columns controlled by a certain news syn- 

 dicate there recently appeared an article purporting to 

 set forth the facts relating to an opening of Indian 

 lands under the Yuma project in California. This 

 article contained a venomous attack upon the actions 

 and motives of Secretary of the Interior Ballinger in 

 this connection. 



It is useless to discuss at this juncture questions of 

 journalistic ethics; a certain amount of pandering to 

 popular prejudice and of a desire to truckle to the mis- 

 informed may, perhaps, always be expected, and in the 

 busy course of human events must pass unnoticed. It 

 is not to be assumed that a statement of the exact facts 

 as gathered from official records can have any possible 

 influence upon the current of events at Washington, 

 nor would this article be permitted to make its appear- 

 ance at this time were such an outcome to be appre- 

 hended. 



The broad dissemination, however, within a recent 

 period of the scurrilous story referred to can hardly, 

 in the light of its author's preliminary utterances and 

 of the affiliations of its sponsors, be regarded as mere 

 coincidence. The people who have had the manhood 

 to attack the present administration rightly or wrongly 

 in the open and with evident sincerity, and whose 

 knowledge of western conditions is not gleaned entirely 

 from the pages of romance, might well pray "to be 

 delivered from their friends." 



The "Leitmotif" of the story is Secretary Ballin- 

 ger's order "to disregard the line" in flaming head- 

 lines the "line" being that, to Western people, well 

 or. rather, evilly known "line" of strong-arm "push- 

 ers" and freaks of endurance which in the past has 

 managed to monopolize every good opportunity of this 

 kind, to the total exclusion of those physically weaker 

 or unprepared from business or financial reasons to 

 "camp out' 3 in the streets for a month's time and to hire 

 substitutes to "hold a place for them." The editor of 

 this journal may be pardoned if he pronounces himself 



sufficiently in touch with western land laws and condi- 

 tions to pass judgment upon the relative merits of the 

 "line 15 and of the method inaugurated by Secretary Bal- 

 linger for throwing open the "Yuma" lands. No fairer 

 method could have been devised for giving all qualified 

 applicants an absolutely equal opportunity than that 

 used. It is but justice to state that Mr. Ballinger is 

 entitled to commendation for having banished the old 

 "line," with its attendant evils, and for having substi- 

 tuted a method in consonance with modern ideas of fair 

 play and justice. 



The AGE during the past month, with full realiza- 

 tion of the importance of the episode, has instituted a 

 searching investigation of its own, and in another col- 

 umn is enabled to present to its readers FACTS, authen- 

 ticated by a reproduction of official orders and records. 



Private enterprise is in the ascendancy. 

 Private Five years ago the Government's Reclama- 



Projects tion Service strode in such giant steps that 



Absorb the individual was but a pygmy in corn- 



Millions, parison, and, as he plucked off his small 



million-dollar project, he gazed in sheer 

 and unconcealed admiration at federal engineers who 

 dared engage in mighty works where hundreds of thous- 

 ands of acres were the stakes and numerous millions in 

 dollars must be the cost. 



But what a change has developed in the last decade ! 

 How has this underling waxed strong and stronger until, 

 from the high eminence of success, he looks down upon 

 his fellow toiler yet craves no $30,000,000 in added 

 funds to retain his seat or maintain his personal 

 integrity. 



Within the past thirty days news reports have con- 

 firmed the successful organization of two private enter- 

 prises which, if combined in financial proportion, will 

 alone equal nearly one-half the entire expenditure of 

 the Reclamation Service from the day it was created 

 until the year 1910. The American Falls project of 

 the Buhl syndicate, and the Southern Colorado Irriga- 

 tion Company, backed by Dal Deweese, Samuel Brown, 

 Jr., and others, are but forerunners of the several giant 

 companies that are now in process of formation and 

 that may announce a formal existence within a few 

 months. 



Yet with all this procession of huge concerns, there 

 is a retinue of smaller and less conspicuous enterprises 

 that are contributing in even greater proportion to the 

 development of the irrigated west. A glance at the 

 columns of Reclamation Notes and Xew Incorporations, 

 as presented monthly in the AGE, is sufficient proof of 

 the remarkable activity in irrigation affairs. Each new 

 project seems to act as a spur to others, and were it 

 not for the almost boundless areas of arid land it might 



