54 



THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



DEBATE BETWEEN JUDGE WILL R KING AND JUDGE CARROLL 



B. GRAVES BEFORE INTERNATIONAL IRRIGATION 



CONGRESS, EL PASO, TEXAS 



RESOLVED, THAT ARID- AND SWAMP-LAND RECLAMATION CAN BE UNDER- 

 TAKEN MORE ADVANTAGEOUSLY BY GOVERNMENT ACTIVITY 

 THAN BY PRIVATE ENTERPRISE 



Introduction by Mr. Richard F. Burges, President of the Congress 



Washingto 



In announcing the debate this eve- 

 ning, I said something about the con- 

 testants on either side of me, but 

 after taking my seat I got to think- 

 ing about an untimely incident in the 

 life of an honored lawyer in this 

 State, back in the early days in East 

 Texas, when men lost their tempers 

 and sometimes undertook to settle 

 their differences in court, if the sher- 

 iff was absent and only the court, in 

 person, was present to preserve or- 

 der. Upon this occasion two lawyers 

 engaged in a very fierce altercation, 

 and finally, in their wrath, each of 

 them grabbed upon a chair and started 

 for the other. That was in the old 

 days, when the leather-bottom chair 

 was, fortunately, still in use, instead 

 of the heavier ones of modern make, 

 and as the two assailants rushed at 

 each other a third lawyer rushed in 

 between them with hands outstretched 

 in either direction and said, "Gentle- 

 men, gentlemen, remember where 

 you are." At that moment both of 

 the chairs came together with con- 

 siderable force, and each of them 

 knocked out a round on the interven- 

 er's head, who gathered his head be- 

 tween his hands and backed off and 

 said to them, "Now, if you gentlemen 

 will excuse me for butting in, you can 

 beat each other to death." (Laugh- 

 ter.) 



Now, admonished by his experience, 

 the chair has decided not to sit be- 

 tween the contestants; he is going 

 over here and sit on one side, and 

 metaphorically speaking, of course, 

 the congress would be glad to see the 

 contestants beat each other to death. 

 (Laughter.) 



I have the honor of presenting, first. 

 the Hon. Will R. King, chief counsel 

 of the United States Reclamation 

 Service, who will open the debate in 

 favor of the proposition that irriga- 

 tion and swamp-land reclamation can 

 be undertaken more advantageously 

 by government activity than by pri- 

 vate enterprise. Ladies and gentle- 

 men, Mr. King. (Applause.) 

 Opening Argument by Judge King 



Judge King: Mr. Chairman, gentle- 

 men, brother congressmen, and sister 

 congresswomen. You see in these 

 progressive days we have to recognize 

 the ladies as well as the gentlemen. 

 I must say that in listening to the 

 charming music furnished this eve- 

 ning I almost forgot that I was to 

 speak, and am afraid that I will forget 

 what I intended to say, or rather, 

 what I should say. 



I want to say, however, my friends, 

 that I esteem it a distinguished honor 



Judge Graves 

 Seattle, Wash. 



to have the opportunity of addressing 

 the International Congress upon this 

 occasion and under these circum- 

 stances. 



I am also gratified to' see, even 

 though Judge Graves and I are to be 

 the victims here, that the congress is 

 awakening to the fact that it is well 

 to hear from both sides on important 

 controversies. 



I liave often envied ministers in the 

 pulpit, who in the exercise of their 

 usual freedom, are able to speak with- 

 out any opposition and can address 

 audiences that naturally take it for 

 granted that everything they may say 

 is necessarily right and logical, or at 

 least the speakers think so, because 

 no one in their audiences, dares ques- 

 tion their position. And I fear that 

 in this great country of ours, in the 

 last 30 or 40 years, since debates have 

 been on the decline, there has been 

 developed among the people the same 

 weakness in connection with the aver- 

 age speaker, of imagining that be- 

 cause no one opposes what he says 

 that, therefore, what he says is the 

 law and gospel. 



It is much easier, as all of us know 

 who have made the experiment, to 

 speak when we know that no one is 

 going to oppose us and that when we 

 go home and lie down to pleasant 

 dreams we may allow those who de- 

 sire to criticise us to do so in our ab- 

 sence. 



But when one goes before an audi- 

 ence, as I am doing here, without a 

 previously prepared written address, 

 and knowing before hand that he 

 has one of the most distinguished 

 critics and able lawyers and jurists of 

 our great western country in opposi- 

 tion to him, he realizes that he must 

 be very careful in what he says. 

 Hence, I am more likely to say too 

 little, at least so far as my intentions 

 are concerned, than to say too much, 

 for I know that Judge Graves will 

 stand ready at any time to call me 

 down should I make a misstatement 

 of fact or become illogical in my argu- 

 ment and be caught in the effort. 



As was said by Secretary Jones in 

 his masterly address at the dedication 

 of the Elephant Butte Dam, we have 

 reached a critical stage in the recla- 

 mation work and one demanding care- 

 ful consideration. I am reminded by 

 this of an incident occurring during 

 the Battle of Waterloo, when Blucher 

 with his army was marching to the 

 relief of Wellington, at a time when 

 Napoleon was on the verge of vic- 

 tory. The army came to where two 



roads forked and not knowing which 

 one to take, the general in charge 

 asked a little barefoot boy standing 

 by the wayside which road led to Wa- 

 terloo. The boy, pointing, said: "Go 

 this way." The army acted on his 

 directions, and as a result Welling- 

 ton won and the map of Europe re- 

 mained unchanged. Now, I feel that 

 I am only the little boy who will at- 

 tempt to tell you tonight which way 

 the people who desire to reclaim the 

 arid and swamp lands of our country 

 should go, and Judge Graves is the 

 larger boy, who will endeavor to tell 

 you to take the other road. At least 

 I assume so by reason of the fact that 

 he is on the negative side of this ques- 

 tion. 



I now want to call your attention 

 to the fact that the question, as stated, 

 includes both swamp lands and arid 

 lands. It reads: 



"Resolved, That irrigation and 

 swamp-land reclamation can be un- 

 dertaken more advantageously by 

 government activity than by private 

 enterprise." 



Of course, we must take the past 



more or less as an evidence of what 



may be done in the future on the 



theory that we can, as a rule, judge 



the future largely by the past. 



In debating a question there are al- 

 ways certain things upon which both 

 sides agree. One of them in this case 

 is that we have about sixteen states 

 in the West which, with but one or 

 two exceptions, would still remain 

 territories were it not for the recla- 

 mation of their lands by irrigation. 

 Were it not that we have the oppor- 

 tunity to reclaim and have the water 

 with which to irrigate the lands all, 

 except possibly Oregon, Washington 

 and California would still be terri- 

 tories. 



In Washington, the state in which 

 Tudge Graves lives, and in Oregon, the 

 one in which I live, the western parts, 

 which comprise about half of these 

 states, have ditches to run the water 

 off the land, while the eastern parts 

 have ditches to run the water on the 

 land. Hence, regardless of irriga- 

 tion, thbse two states, so far as the 

 western halves are concerned, would 

 each have been a success without irri- 

 gation, as would also northern Califor- 

 nia. But when you take the southern 

 part of California and the eastern part 

 of Oregon and Washington and all the 

 Rocky Mountain States they would 

 still have been territories and prac- 

 tically worthless except for the pur- 

 pose of raising stock on a limited 



