THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



153 



enables an irrigation district to issue bonds for 

 forty years, in sufficient quantity to build the works, 

 to pay interest on the bond during the construction 

 period and four years thereafter. It also provides 

 for a sinking fund of 2 per cent to be established 

 after the eleventh year, which invested at 4 per Cent 

 interest, compounded each year, will, at the end of 

 forty years, retire the entire bond issue. 



We believe that this is a step forward in the 

 irrigation district laws. Our old district laws were 

 designed for small projects, such as were usually 

 well along towards settlement before the district 

 was formed and one that usually could be com- 

 pleted within the period of one year. They made no 

 provision whatever, for the payment of interest out 

 of capital during the construction period, thus re- 

 quiring that assessments be levied upon the land- 

 holder prior to the time of receiving water. In most 

 instances these charges are so great that it is im- 

 possible for the landowners to make their first pay- 

 ments from the product of their lands. The conse- 

 quence is that a great many district projects through- 

 out the country have, in the last few years, gotten 

 into financial difficulties. 



Land speculation is a curse, that seems in- 

 herently attendant upon every irrigation project. 

 Wherever the development of an arid tract has been 

 decided upon, there the speculator is in evidence. 

 At normal prices he quietly acquires control of the 

 most eligible portions ; then begins a campaign of 

 inflation. He adroitly manipulates this into wild 

 exaggeration of values which at its zenith of feverish 

 excitement, he deftly unloads, en masse, upon inci- 

 pient boomers. Adding liberally to these fictitious 

 values, these retail boosters proceed to parcel out 

 to the home-builder. They take all his cash, and a 

 mortgage which is promptly discounted and sold, 

 and which ultimately is foreclosed. The discour- 

 aged and bankrupt farmer sincerely believes that 

 irrigation is a failure, and that farming is a fizzle. 

 Rarely does he ascribe failure to the true cause. 

 Rarely does he realize that he was buncoed in his 

 original purchase. 



This deplorable condition is met on every proj- 

 ect. No man has a moral right, and should have 

 no legal right to hold out of use, any portion of a 

 body of land for the reclamation of which great 

 community outlay has been made. He should not 

 be permitted to share in profits he never helped to 

 create. The enhanced values arising from the de- 

 velopment of his neighbor's contiguous property, 

 should not be legally his, any more than they are 

 morally his. The unearned increment belongs right- 

 fully to those who made it. 



I believe this great evil can be cured ; at least 

 in all organized irrigation districts. Such districts 

 are public-service municipalities, with power of emi- 

 nent domain. That power should be invoked, and 

 any lands owned in the district and held without 

 use and for speculative purposes, should be con- 

 demned and sold at a reasonable price to those only 

 who will cultivate them. 



Government federal, state and county invites 

 its citizens to occupy the public lands and convert 

 them into homes. Publicity funds in large amounts 

 are annually expended with a view of increasing the 

 rural population. But by some strange mental 

 strabismus, as soon as the country homeseeker has 



moved upon and commenced the development of his 

 ranch, there begins at once an oppressive system of 

 taxation destructive of incentive, courage and hope. 

 It is both morally and legally wrong to require a 

 settler to pay a tax upon property he does not own. 

 The chief item of value on the irrigated homestead 

 is its water right, and no title thereto passes to the 

 settler, until he shall have made full payment there- 

 for. Indeed, even the settler's land is conveyed in 

 trust until all water obligations shall have been ex- 

 tinguished. Under this aspect of his status, the 

 statutory fiat to pay taxes is all he can, of a cer- 

 tainty, lay positive claim to. Modern practice really 

 places double taxes upon the settler's water right ; 

 for the ditch people own this water-right, and pay 

 taxes on what they own ; and the settler pays taxes 

 again on the same water right. 



Justice demands suitable relief against this 

 species of public extortion. Such relief should be 

 provided by placing the project settler in the same 

 category with other taxpayers, viz. : assess his land 

 at first at no higher valuation per acre than neigh- 

 boring arid land is assessed outside of the project. 



Do not limit the man on the land to any specific 

 area, but let him have all the land he can cultivate. 

 Make conditions favorable for his highest productive 

 power. Encourage the use of modern farm imple- 

 ments by imposing no restrictions upon the farm 

 unit other than good tillage. Encourage him in 

 growing a wide diversity of such products as flourish 

 in his latitude, not forgetting that conspicuous in 

 such diversity, there should be a crop of new farm- 

 ers grown on the soil, and firmly attached thereto by 

 the ties of childhood and home. 



Another item connected with the planning of 

 an irrigation project, and a most important one, is 

 the duty of water. The tendency has been hereto- 

 fore for engineers to provide more water than is 

 necessary. It certainly looks like a waste of energy 

 and money to go to the expense of carrying water 

 into a district, and then later on be compelled to 

 build drainage works to take it out. In most of 

 our arid regions we have considerable precipitation, 

 and in a great many instances all that is required is 

 a few more inches than Nature gives, in order that 

 crops may be grown bountifully. The mistake of 

 providing excess water is the most natural one when 

 we come to consider the fact that in our early at- 

 tempts at irrigation throughout the west, we in- 

 variably picked the lands easiest to put water on. 

 These lands lie along streams, and are sandy and 

 gravelly in nature, and in most instances are under- 

 laid with wash gravel. These soils will absorb a 

 great quantity of water. I have reports of lands in 

 certain projects in the west that have been known 

 to take as much as 42 acre-feet of water per year. 

 This, of course, is absurd, and lands that require 

 such a quantity of water should never be irrigated 

 at all. There is no dearth of land in the western 

 states that should be watered ; there is, however, 

 a great shortage of water and the object of the en- 

 gineer should be to secure the greatest possible pro- 

 duction per acre foot of water. 



I have ofttimes said, and still say, that could 

 we have reversed our mode of operation in the west, 

 that is. could it have been possible for us to irri- 

 gate our higher lands to begin with, leaving those 

 low-lying lands above mentioned without water or 



