THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



295 



month to month, with information as to the means of 

 procuring them, we feel that we are publishing data of 

 real value. 



The "United States Reclamation Service Record" will 

 contain all items of interest relating to the United States 

 Reclamation Service, appearing in the Official Monthly 

 Record of that department. These items will appear un- 

 der this classification from month to month, or as its 

 interest to the public may require. Much of this infor- 

 mation has heretofore been presented under the caption 

 "Reclamation Notes," but hereafter the field will be more 

 thoroughly covered and the interest of. a large part of the 

 public more efficiently served if segregated in this manner. 



The "Decisions of the Public Land Office and the 

 Department of the Interior," being issued at irregular in- 

 tervals, their appearance in each succeeding issue cannot 

 be guaranteed. No attempt will be made to reproduce all 

 decisions; the publication will be confined to those of inter- 

 est to the land-seeking public generally, and except in 

 cases of more than usual interest, the syllabus only will 

 be presented, together with date of the decision and title 

 of the case upon which resting. Many of the decisions 

 bear upon lands under government reclamation projects, 

 and for that reason may be reproduced under the caption 

 "U. S. Reclamation Service Record." 



In the present issue, we have carried our records in 

 the three divisions back to the beginning of the present 

 fiscal year, or to the date of publication of the last pre- 

 vious volume dealing with the subjects. This presentation 

 will prove, we trust, of especial value to Engineers, Attor- 

 neys and Land Agencies. 



Farm Land 



The overture to a drama of national impor- 

 tance was rendered at Chicago on April 

 18th, when the "Conference Committee" of 

 the Farm Land Congress of last November 

 still fresh in the public mind by unani- 

 mous resolve decreed that the movement inaugurated at 

 that time should become a dynamic factor in the un- 

 folding of national activities, and created a permanent 

 organization, to be known as the "National Farm Land 

 Congress." By the reappointment of the officers whose 

 energy and acumen were responsible for the phenomenal 

 success of the last gathering, a glorious future for this 

 movement is assured. Under their regime the varying 

 and divergent forces evolved from the present movement 

 toward the country's farm lands will be marshaled under 

 one controlling and directing influence. 



For years the greatest obstacle in the path of the 

 aspiring "homeseeker" the man intelligent enough to 

 "sense" the importance of impending events and forceful 

 enough to desire to grasp the opportunities afforded has 

 been the lack of an agency for concentering information 

 bearing upon the country's varied agricultural resources 

 their disadvantages as well as their merits whether in- 

 trinsic or relative. That this statement is founded upon 

 truth will be conceded by all who are familiar with pres- 

 ent-day conditions, and this utterance will pass muster 

 without, in any sense, reflecting upon any of the forms 

 of government, state and railroad activities which must 

 in the future remain as a mainspring in knowledge of this 

 character. 



Under the ultimate plan of the Conference Committee 

 it is proposed to make all the data, heretofore supplied 

 piecemeal, available as a whole, to institute a "clearing 

 house" of authentic information, to act when called upon 

 as a "consulting bureau," where all who desire to find the 



conditions best suited to their peculiar bias or individual 

 circumstances may gain the service and counsel of ex- 

 perts. 



The keynote of the movement and its "declaration 

 of independence" of selfish influences is contained in the 

 resolution unanimously adopted by the committee, assert- 

 ing, in effect, that "no congress" managed by private in- 

 terests, as a money-making enterprise, and to advance per- 

 sonal or business ends, can be of permanent usefulness 

 in the great work of inculcating the "back to the land" 

 spirit, or accelerating the movement, and that, in fact, it is 

 absolutely dangerous in that the interests of honest home- 

 seekers cannot be guarded under such management from 

 the gross misrepresentations of interested persons and 

 unreliable land men." 



The support of the Exposition, as advocated by the 

 Farm Land Congress, is practically assured from the out- 

 set, by the support of the newly organized "Exposition 

 Association of Seventeen Irrigated States," which was 

 represented at the conference meeting by Mr. C. J. Sinsel, 

 the president of the organization. 



A complete report of this gathering appears in an- 

 other column and the announcement of the personnel 

 of the Executive Committee will be made by President 

 Farnsworth. 



Western 

 States Form 



Upon the stage of western development 

 "One event doth tread upon another's heels 

 . . so fast they follow," and historians of the 



xposi ion f uture may marve i at tne process whereby 

 a land of infinitely varying natural condi- 

 tions, approximating in area the whole of civilized Europe, 

 was, in the span of an average lifetime, redeemed from 

 savagery to the highest type of civilization. A bit of 

 moralizing may be pardoned in one who has observed, 

 for a quarter of a century, the changes wrought west of 

 the 97th meridian, and who can say, like the historian of 

 old, "All of this I saw and much of it I was." The stu- 

 dent of economy and sociology, familiar with the climatic 

 conditions of the west, must see in the evidences of super- 

 abundant energy a striking parallel to the creative energy 

 displayed by the peoples of the pre-Christian era, inhabit- 

 ing the arid regions of Eastern Asia and Northern Africa. 

 The interesting feature of this modern world-move- 

 ment is to be found in the evidences of access of vitality 

 and energy, which even a few years of residence in the 

 rarefied atmosphere of the western plateau region, with 

 its accompaniment of life-awakening sunshine, will impart 

 with the certainty of fate to the most debilitated off- 

 spring of the humid east. Physiologically these changes 

 are well understood and easily explained, but this is not a 

 medical brochure. 



These reflections are forced upon one in reminiscent 

 mood as the result of the announcement of the latest 

 step taken by the people of the arid west to attract to 

 their bountifully dowered land the one element lacking 

 to round out the scheme of things into a perfect whole 

 the virile manhood whose presence in greater numbers is 

 essential to the moral and physical well being of many a 

 sparsely settled community. The lusty infant of the west 

 has never been chary of advertising its resources; indi- 

 viduals, communities, even states have spent of their ac- 

 cumulated hoard toward this end, but heretofore almost 

 entirely in an effort to bring the dissatisfied easterner 

 to the west, to see the evidences where they grow, and 

 in this endeavor they have been assisted by the railroads 

 in a manner most laudable. This process, for varying rea 



