70 



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 



Judge King 

 Washington, D. C. 



Judge Graves Takes the Negative 



Judge Graves: Mr. Chairman, la- 

 dies, and gentlemen. A glance at the 

 map of the North American continent 

 will show that these United States 

 constitute a huge parallelogram, ex- 

 tending north and south approximate- 

 ly 1,500 miles and east and west 3,000 

 miles, bounded on the south by the 

 semitropics and on the north by the 

 semiarctic regions; bounded on the 

 east by the restless Atlantic and on 

 the west by the constant urge of the 

 mighty Pacific. 



In the very northwest corner of 

 that parallelogram lies the state of 

 Washington, and I came here, travel- 

 ing the last few days by rail and car 

 about 2,500 miles, to discuss this ques- 

 tion. 



The people living in the western 

 part of that parallelogram, comprising 

 over one-half of the territory of these 

 United States, yet to be reclaimed or 

 dependent on the reclamation of the 

 lands, are vitally interested in these 

 momentous questions. As I traveled 

 my mind wandered into the quiet cor- 

 ridors of memory and I recalled that 

 the distinguished chief counsel for the 

 Reclamation Service and the very 

 eminent lawyer who just addressed 

 you was so fortunate as to be born 

 within the limits of the then terri- 

 tory and now state of Washington, 

 and he is one of the treasured recol- 

 lections we have of the young men 

 who have gone forth from that state. 

 I have the honor of being only an 

 adopted son of that state. 



There was some suggestion that 

 this debate was to have two debaters 

 on each side; in fact, the telegrams 

 that I received from your distin- 

 guished president and the efficient 

 secretary of this congress led me to 

 believe that when I came down here 

 there would be somebody to assist 

 me in sustaining this negative, and 

 that the whole burden would not be 

 thrown upon me, but here I have to 

 meet the onslaught of Judge King 

 alone and unaided; but I have the 

 consolation of remembering that it is 

 related that the humbler knights of 

 England, though they knew they were 

 going to be overthrown, yet esteemed 

 it an honor to break a lance in the 

 lists with King Richard Coeur de 

 Lion, and so if I go down in defeat 

 in this argument it will be with honor 

 to myself. (Applause.) 



The distinguished counsel for the 

 Reclamation Service has debouched 

 into the realm of figures, but I may 

 not follow him there; I have not those 

 figures at my command; I have not 

 the statistics, and I can not argue 



(Continuation from February Issue) 



from them. But I do know the utter 

 valuelessness of them. 



It was Zeno, the Sophist, of Greece, 

 of the School of Sophists, who sought 

 by figures and by logical statements 

 to put to rout the most fundamental 

 principles upon which men formulate 

 their action. It was Zeno who said 

 that to take a hare and a tortoise, and 

 assume that the hare will progress ten 

 times faster than the tortoise, and 

 give the tortoise 10 miles the start of 

 the hare, can the hare ever overtake 

 him? He said when the hare has 

 gone 10 miles the tortoise will have 

 gone 1 mile, and when the hare has 

 covered the 1 mile the tortoise will 

 have gone one-tenth of a mile, and 

 so on ad infinitum. By his figures no- 

 body has been able to disprove that, 

 but our own senses know better. 

 (Laughter.) 



And when Judge King here says to 

 you that these reclamation projects do 

 not cost the settler anything and that 

 they are a success, and sustains his 

 statement with figures, I can not com- 

 bat them, but I know by my own 

 senses and by my own experience, 

 and every man who has lived on one 

 of them knows, that they are not a 

 success, as he says they are. Now, 

 that is all there is to it, and we might 

 as well approach the subject from a 

 different angle. 



Now, what I am going to say, mark 

 you, ladies and gentlemen, is not by 

 way of criticism of any individual, nor 

 yet of any officer. It has been my re- 

 ward, beyond all merit, to be brought 

 into close touch with many of the 

 officers of our government. I have 

 found them high-minded, high-pur- 

 posed, men, but the measure of poli- 

 cies controls in such matters, and not 

 the measure of men; the urge of a 

 certain policy, the demand of certain 

 economics, overreach and overwhelm 

 the purposes of any man, however 

 honest or however able he may be. 



You will pardon me if I now turn 

 to something which I have set down 

 with a reasonable amount of care, so 

 that I may not be misunderstood in 

 this discussion, and that is, that in the 

 consideration of this question, whether 

 the work of reclamation and I shall 

 consider it largely from the stand- 

 point of the reclamation of arid lands 

 rather than the reclamation of swamp 

 Jands, although that will be considered 

 incidentally may be best advanced 

 through government activity or by 

 private enterprise, there must of ne- 

 cessity be some preliminary definition 

 and certain limitations placed upon the 

 scope and range of the subject, and 



Judge Graves 

 Seattle, Wash. 



certain factors must be conceded and 

 assumed. 



We shall, for example, assume that 

 government activity is not to be re- 

 stricted to the reclaiming of public 

 lands, and shall concede for the argu- 

 ment that the United States may in- 

 vade and occupy the province of pri- 

 vately owned land reclamation with- 

 out constitutional limitation or inhibi- 

 tion. Upon the other hand, we shall 

 define the question to mean, and as- 

 sume that the term "private enter- 

 prise" means, all forms of activity not 

 comprehended in the expression "gov- 

 ernment activity," and to include the 

 enterprise or activity of private per- 

 sons, either individually or in associa- 

 tion, private corporations with public 

 obligations, as well as quasimunicipal 

 organizations, formed by private land- 

 owners under state laws, such as irri- 

 gation districts and drainage districts. 



Government activity has heretofore 

 been employed through the agencies 

 created by the reclamation act and 

 supplementary legislation, and it may 

 safely be assumed that it will continue 

 along similar lines. In private enter- 

 prise, work has heretofore been car- 

 ried on, first, by the individual or in 

 association with his neighbors, being 

 the ideal and most satisfactory meth- 

 od yet employed, where feasible; sec- 

 ond, by the mutual water corporation, 

 in which the shares of stock represent 

 interests in the water and not money 

 dividends, and in which the corporation 

 is under no obligation to render service 

 to others than its stockholders; third, 

 the well known business corporation 

 organized for profit, performing given 

 public duties, and subject to public 

 regulation and state control; and, last- 

 ly, by a public or quasi-municipal cor- 

 poration, authorized under state law, 

 vested with the taxing power, and ex- 

 ercising local control and regulation 

 as distinguished from governmental, 

 departmental, and bureau authority, 

 and of which class the irrigation dis- 

 trict is best representative. 



Beyond all doubt the days of small 

 things and independent modes of life 

 are the happiest estate of man. The 

 early settler and small farmer, enjoy- 

 ing a condition where the water and 

 land were adjacent, had only to draw 

 upon his own efforts and means to 

 unite the water and soil and the chem- 

 istry of nature did the remainder. He 

 was unhampered by restrictions, as- 

 sessments, high charges, or heavy 

 financial burdens. The fact remains 

 that those conditions have changed, 

 that nearly all the easy and small 

 projects have been utilized, and that 

 large bodies of arable land with dis- 



