88 



THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



in Idaho, have in the past few years been purchased 

 by very conservative banking concerns in Portland. 

 Seattle and Spokane. These communities stand 

 proven and their bonds secured by a lien on the 

 land find a good market. 



These improvements are worked out by the 

 engineer of the district and made at cost without 

 the profit of a promotion company, nor the heavy 

 overhead cost of some organizations. 



3. Places Control of Entire Project in Hands of 

 the Landowners 



Under district law a director must not only be 

 a landowner, but must be a resident of the district ; 

 by this means the most progressive and influential 

 men are usually selected as directors. These di- 

 rectors then select the secretary-treasurer and man- 

 ager from persons who have notable qualifications 

 in their respective directions, all of whom are re- 

 sponsible to the directors. One director is elected 

 each year to serve for a term of three years. The 

 collection of assessments in the districts is prac- 

 tically the same as the collection of state and county 

 taxes. The above are the three additional argu- 

 ments in favor of the district plan. 



4. Stimulates Development of Raw Land 



Owing to the fact that all land under the system 

 is subject to the bonded indebtedness and must pay 

 interest charges whether cultivated or uncultivated, 

 it behooves the owner of raw land to put such land 

 on a paying basis in order to meet these annual 

 charges and thus there is more of a check upon 

 speculation and more of an incentive to bona fide 

 development than under a private corporation where 

 no land can be assessed unless the owner chooses 

 to obligate himself. Cases can, of course, be cited 

 where land is held for speculation, but the point is, 

 that an irrigation district offers a less fruitful field 

 under the same conditions. 



The holding of all irrigable land for mainte- 

 nance and operation expense also tends toward this 

 end. The Idaho law permits these costs to be de- 

 frayed by (1) levies on all land (2) tolls or charges 

 for water actually used (3) a combination of both. 

 To promote the development of raw land, uniform 

 levies would be desirable, but to promote economy 

 in the use of water, charges according to the quan- 

 tity used would seem productive of the best results ; 

 hence where both ends are to be attained the most 

 practicable system appears to be a combination of 

 the two methods and this is in some places used, 

 fixed expenses like maintenance of the main canal, 

 betterment work and. repairing the breaks, being 

 defrayed by annual levies on all the land ; and oper- 

 ating expenses, salaries of water delivery force, 

 etc., being paid from tolls for water actually used. 

 The theory of this division is, that the former ex- 

 pense must go on whether any water is delivered 

 or not to the vacant lands, and consequently all 

 should share the burden, but the expenses that are 

 not fixed and are incidental to the delivery of water, 

 should be charged to the users only. 



Sometimes, of course, development is not stimu- 

 lated to the extent expected ; for example in East 

 Fork and Hood River irrigation districts of Oregon, 

 where all land is assessed alike, it is stated that 

 the owners of undeveloped land are paying assess- 

 ments and are not disposed to bring their lands 

 under cultivation any faster on that account, but 



this I think would be found to be an exceptional 

 case and manifestly is not good business practice. 

 The only raw land in districts of eastern Idaho are 

 lands which belong to some estate which is in liti- 

 gation. 



5. Tends Towards Breaking Up Large Holdings and 

 Substitutes Intensive for Extensive Agriculture 



This point would probably be more sharply 

 drawn in California than in Idaho for this reason : 

 I will deal with California development rather than 

 Idaho. California started out to be a state of large 

 holdings when Spanish grants were made and to 

 some extent the same thing holds true today. The 

 condition that gave rise to the Wright Act in Cali- 

 fornia was the desire of the Modesto section to 

 obtain a water supply for irrigation in spite of the 

 opposition of large land owners, and in this respect 

 Modesto was only representative of a number of 

 communities. It was the desire for real develop- 

 ment that started the irrigation districts idea in 

 all the arid and semi-arid states that now have the 

 district law upon their statutes. The history of 

 nearly all of these states is similar to the history 

 of Idaho in that the first district laws were not 

 thoroughly workable and constitutional ; however, 

 Idaho district law is now probably the best of any 

 of the states. 



Where, therefore, in a given section the senti- 

 ment of the community is in favor of irrigation 

 development, the district form of organization pro- 

 vides a feasible method of forcing an obstructing 

 minority to submit, and where this minority holds 

 large tracts of land which are needed for inclusion 

 in the district in order to cut down the acreage cost 

 to a reasonable figure the tendency is toward break- 

 ing up of these holdings, for an acreage cost ap- 

 plied to five hundred or a thousand acres reaches a 

 figure which can hardly be taken care of on a dry 

 farming basis. The result is that these holdings 

 are divided, and so intensive farming under irriga- 

 tion takes the place of dry farming on a big scale. 

 This was exactly the situation in California. 



From the beginning of the nineteenth century 

 grain farming on a vast scale was the rule in the 

 Sacramento Valley and in the San Joaquin Valley 

 as far north as the rainfall would permit. These 

 holdings reacned 25,000 acres in many cases, and 

 often much more. As time went on and the fertility 

 of the soil was reduced by constant cropping, the 

 profits naturally decreased until finally a large farm 

 could hardly be operated at any profit. Neverthe- 

 less those big land owners were absolutely opposed 

 to any change, and it was these men who furnished 

 the backbone of the opposition to the irrigation dis- 

 trict law in California during the many years pre- 

 ceding its final acceptance as a workable law. In 

 some states the mistake was sometimes made of 

 trying to force a district where the community was 

 really opposed to it. It was possible to do this, for 

 the original law permitted fifty or a majority of the 

 land owners to propose a district and permitted 

 organization if two-thirds of the votes cast were in 

 favor. That is, a bare majority of land owners who 

 might own one acre each,- could propose the district 

 and two-thirds could carry it. This percentage 

 might consist of an irresponsible section of the 

 populace, where the real interests involved were 

 opposed and such irresponsible persons could vote 



