THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



cattle rustling, which passed out more than half a de- 



cade ago, has broken loose again. 

 encourages the lawlessness. 



An "open" range 



IRRIGATION UNDER THE CAREY ACT IN CON- 

 TRAST WITH GOVERNMENT 

 RECLAMATION. 



WE plead forgiveness for calling attention to Mr. 

 Roosevelt's contribution to the recent campaign fund, 

 and Chairman Sherman's acceptance thereof, which was 

 a violation of the Civil Service law, with heavy penalties 

 attached. The "forgetfulness" on the part of one who 

 was many years a member of the Civil Service Commis- 

 sion, and who is now its head, struck official Washing- 

 ton as a joke. But while "Washington chuckles" over 

 this unlawfulness, it is no joke when an infraction of 

 federal laws occurs west of the Missouri. Nothing short 

 of prison stripes and bars, with accessories of heavy 

 fines, are the penalties for ignorance of law, or forget- 

 fulness here. 



MR. PRESIDENT, many of us in the West can hardly 

 reconcile ourselves to a belief that you, with your many 

 splendid attributes, can wish us harm. We believe you 

 have been imposed upon by members of your official 

 family. You are creating havoc, wrecking our pillars 

 of progress, and shattering home altars which were 

 builded at tremendous sacrifice. 



I have seen children of these pioneers playing in the 

 sand with naught but sand and gravel for their play- 

 things. I have seen them hungry for the sound of a 

 human voice, stand and shout to hear their own voice 

 come back from the hills. Hungry for human compan- 

 ionship, they named the echo, and endowed the golden 

 rod with imaginary personality. The fathers of these 

 children, who have braved the loneliness and solitude of 

 isolated valleys of the sand hills, are battling for their 

 liberty, because they thought God and their country would 

 encourage, and not persecute, them. 



MR. PRESIDENT, it is wrong all wrong. You are 

 destroying respect for government. These children are 

 growing into maturity full of hatred for some terrible 

 monster which is persecuting their fathers a Thing 

 overshadowing their young lives which is as inexplicable 

 to them as it is to us. If they grow and abide by the 

 laws of our country, under such conditions, it will he 

 a reverence born of fear. 



THE offenses are not sufficient to justify the prosecu- 

 tions. Offenders can be brought to a realization of un- 

 lawful acts, with civil action, and no Americans exist, 

 who will more quickly respond to and obey the law, 

 than the people of the west, when once they understand 

 the law. Custom has almost made these so-called 

 offenses common law, and if you make criminals of 

 these so-called offenders, neither they, their neighbors, 

 or their progeny, can ever have the original profound 

 respect for our country or its institutions. 



Renew your subscription for the 

 IRRIGATION AGH for 1907. Send us 

 Post Office or Express money 

 order for $1.00. 



BY WALTER H. GRAVES. 



The reclamation of the arid lands of the United 

 States by irrigation has been, in progress now for more 

 than half a century and during that period many valu- 

 able lessons have been learned by those engaged in the 

 field of irrigation. Of all such lessons perhaps none 

 has been so thoroughly taught by experiment and learned 

 by experience as that concerning the relationship exist- 

 ing between the land and the water in the proper ad- 

 ministration and successful operation of an irrigation 

 scheme. 



In the final analysis in differen- 

 tiating between success and failure in 

 any irrigating project, it will be found 

 that the land and water are insep- 

 arable and must be under one control, 

 and that the owner of the land must 

 also be the owner of the ditch that 

 supplies the water. Any system or 

 scheme of reclamation that contem- 

 plates the separation of either the 

 _^^^ ownership or the administration and 

 Mr. Waiter H. Graves, control of land and the irrigation sys- 

 Boise, Idaho. ^em that supplies it with water is 

 doomed to failure, and offers ample provision for future 

 loss and interminable controversy. 



Of course this idea of combined ownership and 

 control of both land and conjunctive irrigation facili- 

 ties implies the obligation of the first cost for the con- 

 struction of all the necesary irrigation works, and also 

 the expense of operation and perpetuation, which must 

 naturally be borne by the land owners or the bene- 

 ficiaries. 



These statements are easily recognized as irrigation 

 axioms. 



The irrigation development of the country began 

 with individual effort. The settler having located his 

 holding under the provisions of the homestead or desert 

 land act, constructed, owned, controlled, operated and 

 maintained his ditch, and this embodied the whole rec- 

 lamation problem in its simpler form and met all its 

 requirements. The next stage in the process of develop- 

 ment involved the first complicating element, namely, 

 the principle of association or unification of effort 

 which was derived from the very necessities of the case, 

 and yet the theory of combined ownership and control 

 of both land and ditch was not called in question. 



By this time hydro-agriculture had advanced to a 

 stage where reclamation upon a scale even too great for 

 community effort became a necessity, for it was not to 

 be supposed that the emigrant or settler who found it 

 necessary to seek a home in the isolated regions of the 

 arid domain would have the means or by combining with 

 any number of similarly situated neighbors would unit- 

 edly have the means to undertake the construction of the 

 costly irrigation works that would be necessary to meet 

 the requirements of the case. 



At this point in the process of reclaiming the arid 

 lands it became apparent that the investment of capital 

 upon a large scale would be required to meet the de- 

 mands of advancing settlement, and as the demand for 



