THE IKEIGATION AGE. 



Ill 



And we're forced to pay the salaries of these gen- 

 tlemen, too. 



"These 'doctrines' mean simply that some 

 young civil service employe shall be permitted to 

 tell sturdy, clear-brained American citizens : 



"\\ hat crops he shall raise. 



"How he shall plant his crops. 



"When and how he shall irrigate them. 



"What kind of ditches and structures he shall 

 build. 



"And they also provide : 



"That the supply of water given to the farmer 

 shall be contingent entirely upon the theoretical 

 money value of his crop. 



"That in supplying the water, the general good 

 of the whole nation shall be considered before that 

 of the farmer, who is probably staking his all to 

 create for himself a home. 



"But let us analyze these resolutions. All of 

 us, who know anything at all about irrigation, 

 know that the several states in the semi-arid west 

 have fixed by statute the law of 'beneficial use.' 

 The decisions of the courts have upheld these acts, 

 making them firmly settled doctrines of irrigation 

 law that is to say, the ownership of public waters 

 is limited to a beneficial use. 



"The Newell resolution on 'beneficial use' be- 

 gins : 'A water user with a vested right, limited to 

 beneficial use, is entitled to that amount of water 

 that will render him a reasonable amount of good, 

 with a reasonable economic handling of water.' Just 

 why the word 'vested' is injected into the resolution 

 is hard to understand, unless it is intended to inflict 

 more stringent rules and conditions upon those who 

 have only initiated a right to acquire water and have 

 not made final payment. 



"As I understand a vested right it is a right 

 which has been determined and fixed by law, and 

 therefore cannot be taken away from its owner. 

 Therefore the 'laws' laid down by the water mas- 

 ters cannot affect those with vested rights, and 

 therefore we have a right to suspect the motive be- 

 hind the inclusion of this word 'vested' in these 

 resolutions. 



"Now let us see what an actual farmer on any 

 of the United States projects has to contend with 

 under this new doctrine of beneficial use. 



"On each project we have a water master or 

 superintendent of irrigation, who controls the sup- 

 ply of water let into the ditches for irrigation and 

 designates when it shall be used. He is a civil serv- 

 ice employe, generally direct from Washington, 

 D. C. He is a most important personage, with an 

 automobile and other accessories of his high office. 



"On most projects, under recommendations of 

 Newell and his engineers, the government has al- 

 ready sold far more water rights than there is water 

 to supply, hence perhaps this new 'doctrine' to per- 

 mit further selling 'short.' To illustrate, let me cite 

 my own case on the Truckee-Carson project, where 

 they have been carrying out these 'doctrines' now 

 put down on paper. 



"I have suffered a loss of more than $2,000 dur- 

 ing the past two years as a result of these theories. 

 There comes a shortage of water, but my crops need 

 irrigating. I order water. The water master comes 

 around and says : 'You can't have water for that 



piece of alfalfa, because it has not enough fall. It 

 takes too much water to irrigate it. You will have 

 to plow that up and relevel it before you can get 

 water.' 



"If he doesn't say that, he may insist that you 

 should use the furrow system instead of the check- 

 ing system or that your rows are too long, causing 

 too much seepage, and you cannot have any water 

 until you alter it. 



"It is possible after my five years of experience 

 that if I releveled my homestead and put in a new 

 irrigation system throughout, I would save some 

 water. How many settlers on our project or any 

 other one can afford to do this? Besides the United 

 States is under contract to deliver me three acre-feet 

 of water each year, and that contract doesn't say 

 anything about the whims of a water master, or 

 provide that he can deny me my water at will. 



"I may order water turned on in the morning 

 for a special patch of potatoes and figure it will take 

 about twelve hours to irrigate them. The water 

 master comes around and says : 'You'll have to 

 irrigate those spuds at night, as there is too much 

 evaporation during the day.' 



"After waiting just as long as the crop will 

 stand it, I order three second-feet of water for three 

 days. The water master probably will insist that I 

 take six-second feet for twenty-four hours, insisting 

 this is a more economical method of irrigation. I 

 tell him my ditches won't handle such a big head of 

 water and then he replies that I should build them 

 so that they can handle the larger amount. 



"If after my potatoes are irrigated, I cultivate 

 them to conserve the moisture, two to one I will 

 have plenty of moisture still when the next rotation 

 of water comes to my land. But under the high and 

 mighty rulings of the water master I must take 

 water then or wait another eight days or so. It is 

 a case of losing my crop by flooding it out or risk- 

 ing drought and second growth. 



"There you have the Newell theory of 'bene- 

 ficial use' of water, as it has been practiced on the 

 Truckee-Carson project and as now put into law and 

 doctrine for us by these self-constituted legislators. 



"But they have gone even further. They have 

 now created an additional doctrine of 'economical 

 use.' 



"This theory is based purely upon the worship 

 of the almighty dollar. It says in very plain Eng- 

 lish that in order to get water you must grow those 

 crops which theoretically are most valuable in dol- 

 lars and cents. Onions and beets pay more than 

 alfalfa or grains, therefore if the man growing 

 onions needs water, I must go without it for my 

 alfalfa. This is unjust because it is necessary to 

 get a stand of alfalfa in our project before anything 

 else will grow on the land. Furthermore, in some 

 parts of the project grains are especially adapted to 

 the soil and wheat and barley are grown almost 

 exclusively. 



"The homesteader with eighty acres at the end 

 of his third year on the land may have twenty acres 

 of second crop alfalfa, twenty acres of grain and 

 young alfalfa, three acres of potatoes, an acre of 

 onions and three acres of sugar beets. When July 

 comes around the water master sends out a circular 

 (Conintued on page 119) 



