134 



THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



pioneering harder than did your ancestors, and you 

 did not falter. Neither did your good wife nor your 

 children. 



Are you going to quit now, Mr. Federal Water 

 User? Of course not. This is the time to fight, not 

 to snivel or skulk away. You have shown the stuff 

 you are made of by your courage in tackling the 

 desert. You are not going to let a Reclamation Ser- 

 vice, or a Department of the Interior, or a congress, 

 or even the whole administration at Washington 

 frighten you. You are going to fight and fight hard 

 for the rights to which you are entitled; for the jus- 

 tice that belongs to you. And you are going to get it. 



This government is founded upon justice. It 

 has lived and thrived because its very life blood is 

 justice. There is justice for you at Washington 

 and you must get it. It cannot be withheld from 

 you, once you unite with your brother water user; 

 stand with him and with every other man on your 

 project, shoulder to shoulder, and in common voice 

 make known your demands. Don't waste your fire. 

 Concentrate it. No battle was ever won by desul- 

 tory firing. Go to the meetings of your local water 

 users' association. Get your neighbor to go. Make 

 it a live, red blooded organization that means some- 

 thing to the project; whose voice will be the voice 

 of real votes, when it speaks to your congressman 

 or senators or to the administration at Washington. 

 See that your water users' association belongs to 

 the National Federation of Water Users' Associa- 

 tions; see that it contributes its share of the funds 

 needed to keep the national organization right up 

 in front and fighting seven days a week. 



The government census figures show 1,0000,000 

 people in the zones of the Federal reclamation proj- 

 ects. Your water users' associations represent 

 most of these. One million people. Present your- 

 self, through your National Federation officials, in 

 Washington as the true and thoroughly organized 

 voice of this million of people, and the administra- 

 tion, no matter what may be its politics, will be 

 only too glad to see that justice is done for you and 

 yours. There will be no flimsy excuses of promises 

 made by men, now mostly dead or gone, by which 

 tremendous costs are assessed against you and your 

 lands to pay for the mistakes of incompetent rec- 

 lamation engineers. No one will dare to try to per- 

 petuate for another generation the army of pay- 

 rollers who are now ruling your project and adding 

 each year to the cost of your farm. No one will 

 have the audacity to stand up and declare you 

 should go on paying the tremendous overhead 

 charges now assessed against you to keep sleek, 

 whiskered gentlemen on handsome salaries. No 

 one will try to heal your wounds by honeyed words 



or ask you to adjudicate your rights in a packed 

 court. 



The opportunity to clear the decks of all the 

 burdens of Federal bureaucracy under which you 

 have labored and struggled is here. Take off your 

 coat. Roll up your sleeves. Fight ! Somebody hit 

 the smirking Reclamation Service an awful jolt when 

 they let the Smith Reclamation Extension bill get 

 into congress. The man who drew that bill ought 

 to have a monument erected to him by the Water 

 Users. The man who induced Secretary Lane to write 

 his letter telling what he would do for the Water 

 Users and to the Water Users if the Smith bill passed 

 is also entitled to a monument. 



Those two documents have spilled the beans 

 and spilled them good. There is no longer any 

 reason for not telling the truth and the whole truth 

 about what you have been bumping into ever since 

 you settled on a government project. Tell congress 

 the whole truth about your own case; have your 

 association tell congress about the struggles of 

 every man on your project, and about their burdens ; 

 have your association, if it is not already a member, 

 join the National Federation so your voice will be 

 part of the united whole a voice that will echo and 

 re-echo in the halls of that old white marble capitol 

 down there in Washington. 



Do this and it won't be the dust shaking from 

 the cobwebs in the dome of the capitol that you 

 will see. No! brother, it will be the dust of the 

 administration, of the senators and the congressmen 

 racing to be first in giving you a square deal. 



Get out and fight, Mr. Federal Water User. 

 This is no time to quit. They've almost put them- 

 selves out by bumping their heads on the Smith bill 

 and the Lane letter. Amid their gasps they have 

 written the "Conference" bill. All that is needed now 

 is one good, hard crack on the solar plexus by the 

 united Water Users, and you'll get all you and your 

 neighbors are entitled to in justice and equity from 

 congress and the administration. Give it to 'em ! 



Some 

 Real 

 Facts 

 Dodged 



Under title of "Reclaiming the 

 Great American Desert," a number 

 of newspapers have recently carried 

 a half page story, with a handsome 

 layout of pictures. The stories and 

 picture-layouts are all alike, thus 

 once more proclaiming to the world the tremendous 

 ability of some man, whom P. T. Barnum over- 

 looked, to put over press agent stories about the 

 United States reclamation service. The identity of 

 this press agent should be revealed. 



This half page story relates among other things : 

 "In a period of ten years of actual construe- 



