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THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



with all the corroborating evidence possible ; if each 

 association presents itself as a united body, the 

 third and deciding member of each board the rep- 

 resentative of Secretary Lane must prove a very 

 narrow-minded person if he denies the Water Users 

 full justice. 



Besides, the writer believes, Secretary Lane 

 will give much care in his selection of his repre- 

 sentatives on these boards. If he picks high class, 

 honest men, the Water Users may not have as much 

 cause for complaint as was generally expected, when 

 the Secretary first announced his plan. 



The Secretary, it is understood, has practically 

 decided to charge off all overhead expenses against 

 the projects, such as those of the Washington office 

 a total of more than $3,000,000. This will be 

 assessed to the general fund instead of the projects. 



The opportunity of the Water Users to obtain 

 a complete settlement and, at least, a partially satis- 

 factory settlement of the financial problems of their 

 projects is at hand. It is the duty of every Water 

 User to make the most of this opportunity and to 

 work for full justice for himself and his fellow 

 Water Users. 



BUSINESS MEN MUST AID IRRIGATORS 



By FRANCIS G. TRACY 



(Carlsbad, N. M.) 



EDITOR IRRIGATION AGE: I wish emphatically 

 and heartily to congratulate you upon the April 

 issue of the IRRIGATION AGE, and especially upon the 

 two articles entitled "Real Development Follows 

 Burst Boom" and "Put Your Association to Work." 

 In these articles I believe you have struck right at 

 the foundation which must be laid for future prog- 

 ress. 



The conclusion I reached from careful atten- 

 tion to the proceedings of the Denver conference is 



that our own people 

 have not yet begun to 

 look close enough at 

 home for the causes 

 and effects of the burst- 

 ing of the irrigation 

 boom. 



It is true that many 

 blunders have been 

 made both by eastern 

 investors, private en- 

 gineers, the Reclama- 

 tion Service and by the 

 irrigation and land in- 

 vestment promoters. It 

 is also true that a cer- 

 tain proportion of these 

 mistakes have been the 

 direct result of individual unscrupulousness. 



But the irrigation problem is a stupendous one 

 and at the time of the passage, both of the Carey 

 act and the Reclamation act, was an entirely new 

 one in all of its larger phases. 



Small wonder that big blunders have been 

 made in which the settlers have had their share. 

 Let us admit that we have all blundered together 

 and together take credit each for the other that the 

 great majority of the blunders have been honest 

 mistakes and have arisen from lack of experience 

 and for want of precedent. 



Experience has come now and there is no long- 

 er excuse for a repetition of past mistakes. We will 

 make plenty of new ones. The problem before us 

 now is to analyze as calmly as may be our present 



conditions, and perfect as far as possible the foun- 

 dation already laid before we proceed to build 

 further. This cannot be effectively done in a 

 spirit of suspicion or mutual recrimination. 



Therefore I congratulate you heartily upon the 

 broad view taken in the particular articles men- 

 tioned, but I congratulate you also and chiefly 

 because these articles go further and point out to 

 us duties close at home. 



Are we ourselves in no way to blame for mis- 

 fortunes about which we complain most bitterly? 



It appeared to me, as I listened in Denver, to 

 appeal after appeal for help for the settlers from 

 both National and State government, and heard 

 eloquent statements of the duty of cooperation be- 

 tween states and .nation and between nation and 

 settler and the insistent call for more credit and 

 cheaper money, that any stranger sitting in that 

 convention, or reading the press reports, would 

 conclude that the irrigationists of the west were 

 not only impoverished, but were a lot of helpless 

 beggars waiting for a handout from whatever 

 source, and utterly hopeless without it. 



We all know that this is not the case and that 

 the great majority of our farmers are greatly suc- 

 cessful and those who are not ask nothing to which 

 they are not entitled and that they would be the 

 first to resent the actions of any mistaken friends 

 which would justly give any other impression. 



But are not we, especially the business men 

 and the townspeople of the western communities, 

 largely if not chiefly to blame for the "bursting of 

 the irrigation boom ?" 



Have we ever sufficiently appreciated our own 

 responsibilities for the guidance and control of the 

 boom itself and for the proper reception and subse- 

 quent care of the new settlers brought among us 

 with so many false impressions and impossible 

 expectations? 



Have we not entirely failed ourselves to see 

 that back of all the other problems, engineering, 

 financial, agricultural, has lain all the time the 

 fundamental problem of all. without whose success- 

 ful solution, failure is inevitable the problem of 

 marketing the products of the soil? 

 (Continued on Page 318.) 



