174 



THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



under that law. Wyoming was the first state to require 

 intending appropriates to submit their plans to state 

 officers and secure their approval before making the 

 diversion. To men who had always looked upon water 

 as something to be taken and used with the same free- 

 dom as air, a law which required them to ask the con- 

 sent of the State to make such diversion seemed like im- 

 pertinence and I had a number of busy years in con- 

 vincing them that, while this policy imposed some pres- 

 ent hardships, it was essential to their future security 

 and to the ultimate peace and progress of the whole re- 

 gion. 



The first trip of the water commissioner on any 

 stream is a trying experience. He is usually met by the 

 dog and threatened with the shotgun, but as irrigation 

 extends and the older rights are threatened by later 

 comers the water commissioner in time comes to be re- 

 garded as the most essential factor in agricultural suc- 

 cess. 



I think the early attitude of the irrigators of Col- 

 orado and of Wyoming is the attitude of irrigators in 

 every state when public control is first exercised. It is 

 illustrated by a conversation which I had recently with 

 one of the best men in California. I told him of the 

 peace and security which the public control of streams 

 have brought to the Rocky Mountain states which had 

 adopted it. He answered that this might do for the peo- 

 ple of Colorado, but it wouldn't do in California. He 

 said : "We are a high spirited people and the first time 

 a water commissioner undertook to fool with our head- 

 gates we would fill him so full of holes that he wouldn't 

 make a shadow." One by one, however, the states have 

 departed from the primitive idea. Some have gone 

 farther than others, but in all the progress has been 

 made slower and more difficult by the prejudices brought 

 by immigrants from their former homes. The early 

 irrigators of Colorado only accepted public control 

 when private regulations had failed. So long as the 

 ditch owners of Greeley could tear out the dams of the 

 ditch owners farther up the stream they were content 

 with private control, but when the irrigators above 

 dropped their shovels and took to the shotgun the vol- 

 untary regulators began to cast about for aid in the 

 regulation of human conduct. 



The foundation of those distinctive features of 

 western civilization, which we call irrigation institu- 

 tions, grew out of the overshadowing importance of 

 streams. During the past year an area larger than 

 the state of New York, which otherwise would have 

 been barren and arid, was made fertile and productive 

 by irrigation. To do this every acre had to be watered 

 from one to six times. To reach this land the water 

 had to be carried through tens of thousands of miles 

 of main canals and through a still longer mileage of 

 laterals. The division of this water between these thou- 

 sands of irrigators involved the adjustment of the di- 

 verse and conflicting interests of individuals, communi- 

 ties and states. The snows of the mountains had to be 

 divided in thousands of canals. This meant that head- 

 gates had to be closed, and the water let run past fields 

 that were parched with drought at the time in order 

 that the rights of the earlier users of the water might be 

 protected, and their work saved from ruin, by the en- 

 croachments of later settlers. Everywhere the .value of 

 land, the results of the fanner's labor, depends on the 

 right to use the stream and securing the water which 



this right gives. Farmers under irrigation must learn 

 to associate together and must learn to submit to regu- 

 lations, of which farmers in humid lands know nothing. 

 Irrigated agriculture is an organized industry. Until 

 this fact is accepted every farmer's work is distressed by 

 anxiety and every community divided by quarrels. But 

 with titles to water established so that each user is se- 

 cure in his supply, irrigated agriculture becomes the 

 most orderly, the most satisfactory, and the most cer- 

 tain way of growing crops known. And it is the working 

 out of the principles and the methods of enforcement of 

 those principles which constitutes the evolution of irri- 



Three-Year-Old Apple Tree near Clifton, Colo., on Denver & Rio Gram 



gation institutions. The first step in this was the abro- 

 gation or practical disregard of the old common law 

 doctrine of riparian rights, the purpose of which is to 

 maintain the integrity of streams. Under the riparian 

 rights doctrine only such diversions are allowed as will 

 not impair the flow. The needs of arid land is to pro- 

 vide for the diversion of all the water that can be taken 

 out without injury to prior rights, or supplying those 

 higher needs of communities, like water for drinking 

 purposes and other domestic uses. These rights being 

 essential to the very existence of civilized life, should be 

 always maintained, and whenever the diversion of 

 streams threatens them it should be stopped. 



The principles which govern the diversion of 

 streams for irrigation are these : That the first user of 



