THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



117 



GIFTS OF LAND AND WATER POWER 



HOMER REED POINTS OUT NEW MOVES TO STEAL NATURAL WEALTH, IN COMMUNICATION TO KANSAS CITY STAR 



An Inexhaus 



The magnifi- 

 cent fight led by 

 Pinchot and his 

 associates saved 

 the Alaskan coal 

 fields, at least 

 temporarily, from 

 the Guggenheims. 

 It led also to the 

 adoption of a gen- 

 eral public land 

 c o n serva tion 

 policy by Con- 

 gress, which was 

 supposed to be 

 permanent. How- 

 ever, the game of 

 robbing the peo- 

 ple of the United 

 States of their 

 natural wealth for 

 the last fifty years 

 has been so easy, 

 so fascinating and so lucrative that the operators 

 evidently have only been lying low for Pinchot and 

 conservation to drop a little out of the public mind 

 before they attempted other raids on Uncle Sam's 

 natural resources. 



These plunderings always come in the guise 

 of "developing our resources" or to pay for some 

 bewhiskered claim for public highways or for edu- 

 cational purposes. The essence of the game is al- 

 ways the same. A grant to a state, a state lobby 

 to order the lands transferred for the building of 

 a road or a school building, or a sale for cash under 

 such conditions that only the money combination 

 promoting the scheme has a chance to buy at a 

 fraction of their real value. Then the lands are 

 retailed, like the Texas school lands, at an immense 

 profit and the people of the state get a trifling bene- 

 fit and the promoters and manipulators make hand- 

 some profits and Uncle Sam for the dear people 

 gets nothing. 



The present raid is as follows : Senate Bill No. 

 2520 was introduced by Senator Key Pittman of 

 Nevada, on December 16, 1915. It was reported out 

 of committee the next day. The bill grants seven 

 million acres of public lands to the Nevada legis- 

 lature for the benefit of public schools and the state 

 university. 



Up to date thirteen other bills calling for free 

 grants of lands to the various states have been in- 

 troduced and referred to the public lands committee, 

 in all proposing to give away thirty million acres 

 of the public domain. Of these, one introduced by 

 Senator Smoot of Utah is unique. It proposes to 

 give to Utah one million acres of public land in 

 compensation for expenses incurred in suppressing 

 Indian disturbances of 1865 to 1868, the selection to 

 be made "from any lands that belong to the United 

 States government within such state, whether such 



lands be within or 

 without reserves." 

 The little impedi- 

 ment of a "forest 

 reserve" which 

 had been worked 

 out at great labor 

 and expense by 

 the government 

 was not to be con- 

 sidered, as those 

 fine timber lands 

 were just what 

 they most needed. 

 Senate Bill 

 No. 732, intro- 

 duced by Senator 

 Warren of Wy- 

 oming, provides 

 for a gift of one 

 million acres each 

 to the states of 

 Arizona, C o 1 o- 

 rado, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah 

 and Wyoming, the proceeds to be used in the repair 

 and maintenance of public roads. Senate Bill No. 

 897, introduced by Senator Pittman, asks for a gift 

 of two million acres to Nevada, the proceeds to go 

 to public schools. Senate Bill No. 1215, introduced 

 by Senator Shafroth of Colorado, asks a gift of one 

 million acres to be "selected by the governor from 

 any lands that belong to the United States within 

 such state, whether such lands be within or with- 

 out the forest reserves." 



It will be also noticed that no mineral, forest or 

 other rights are saved to the United States. 



This is a sample of the plundering policies of 

 Congress for the past fifty years. It gives away 

 millions of acres of land and billions of dollars' worth 

 of oil, coal, iron and lumber, but at the same time, 

 to pay the running expenses of the government, 

 taxes babies' cotton shirts and stockings and little 

 girls' hair-ribbons, and the sugar that every man, 

 woman and child must use as food regardless as to 

 whether their earnings are $3 per week or $3 per 

 day. 



Look at that monumental thievery by which 

 a prominent Westery railway company, through 

 grants fraudulently obtained, got possession of 160,- 

 000 acres of oil lands in Southern California, which 

 the United States is trying now to regain in the 

 courts. This 160.000 acres of land is now valued 

 at one billion dollars, equal to the national debt. 

 It is of such staggering values as these that the 

 people of the United States have been robbed. The 

 Hill group of iron mines in the Lake Superior dis- 

 trict are valued at 400 million dollars, for which the 

 United States received a few thousand dollars at 

 $1.25 per acre. 



The Democratic platform of 1912 has a con- 

 (Continued on next page) 



