THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



137 



chances of ruining the reputation of their bonds before 

 the investing public. Our office has made some few loans 

 under this project even since the lien was recorded, but 

 we have continually and uniformly refused to make any 

 loans under irrigation districts. It is not, we believe, a 

 difference in the form of the indebtedness, or, as Mr. 

 Hayden says on page 129, a hocus pocus distinction that 

 should count or will count, but whether or not there be 

 such indebtedness for which the land is liable in any 

 form, be it irrigation district or otherwise, that would 

 threaten the security, that will govern investors including 

 Farm Loan Board. Indeed, I have in mind a school dis- 

 trict in Colorado which by reason of the failure of cer- 

 tain mines so great a reduction has been made in the 

 assessed valuation that the bonds for erecting a large 

 school house needed when the mines were prosperous has 

 now produced such a condition that by suit in mandamus 

 the board is being required to levy from 30 to 50 mills 

 special per annum to pay annually towards these defaulted 

 bonds. It takes a period of about 10 years with these high 

 assessments to pay out the indebtedness. We would not, 

 nor would any careful investor, we believe, including the 

 Farm Loan Board, make farm loans in such a district. It 

 lacks but little, and it requires no stretch of imagination 

 to conceive of a case where school bonds might be such 

 a burden as to prevent loans. Therefore, in my opinion, 

 it is clear that the distinction or criterion must be the 

 burden, not the form of the indebtedness. And this 

 brings us to the proposition that I wish to present to 

 your consideration. It applies not only to the Uncom- 

 pahgre Project, but nearly all, if not all, of the projects. 

 By reason of the under estimate of the costs, the 

 government has its $90,000,000 invested in projects that 

 were estimated to cost only from one-third to one-half 

 that amount. It is useless to discuss how or why this 

 happened. It is not only true of government engineers, 

 but all engineers we have met. It does not seem to be 

 practical to obtain from an engineer's estimate reliable 

 data for the cost of moving a cubic yard of earth a given 

 distance. But it is true, as Mr. Norris states, that from 

 a business and financial standpoint if an investor has 

 made a loan on security that does not, and cannot pay 

 out, that the investor must endeavor to find the most 

 available common sense remedy. If there was ever a 

 time that that financial common sense was necessary to a 

 superlative degree it is now and here. Then assuming, 

 which I believe to be true, that there is no desire or inten- 

 tion on the part of the settlers to repudiate; that there is 

 a great desire on the part of the reclamation service, the 

 Interior Department and Congress to keep the reclama- 

 tion fund intact as far as possible, that it is practically 

 impossible from a business standpoint, and it would be 

 really useless and inefficient for the government to waive 

 its lien to one department of the government in favor of 

 another department of the government, and which would 

 bring no relief to the settler who must in the end pay 

 it all, and though temporary relief might be gained it 

 would still leave all the problems unsolved. Is it not 

 then clear and apparent that the real need is for an ex- 

 tension of time? On this project, and so far as I know, 

 on all projects, the average land cannot pay more than 

 one dollar per acre per annum on the cost charges, in 

 addition to the annual cost of maintenance and operation. 

 All of the settlers here, and so far as I know, throughout 

 the projects, are willing to pay what they can. There- 

 fore, if the government will amend the reclamation act 

 so as to require only the payment of one dollar per acre 

 per annum toward the construction charges, I believe you 

 will have solved the entire difficulty. The settlers will 

 maintain and operate their projects. Let them take them 

 over at once. They can save probably 50 per cent of the 

 cost of maintenance and operation under government 

 control. There will ensue immediately a feeling of cheer- 

 fulness, hope and prosperity in place of the present con- 

 ditions of depression, dissatisfaction and destitution; in- 

 stead of such failures as the North Dakota Pumping Plant 

 Project, the Garden City Project, the Hondo Project, 

 which have been practically abandoned, according to the 

 reports of the reclamation service, and are useless to the 

 settlers and hundreds of thousands of dollars lost to the 

 government and the Lower Yellowstone and the Butte 

 Elephant Dam Project, where the conditions are such, I 

 am reliably informed, that it is doubtful without imme- 

 diate change of policy, whether the government will ever 



be returned one dollar of their investment and the dozens 

 of other projects where it will be impossible for them to 

 repay the construction charges within the 20 years' period, 

 as required by law. And the people by reason of the 

 present policy and the law and the regulations are rap- 

 idly being discouraged and caused to give up their hold- 

 ings, and all are laboring in fear and trembling. There 

 will be an immediate solution of the difficulties and resur- 

 rection of all of the hopes and expectancies of the original 

 ideals entertained and advocated on the passage of the 

 Reclamation Act. 



The only objection to the irrigation district with us, 

 and we believe with many other projects, is that such a 

 district is an automatic machine by which the people are 

 asked and if they adopt it, will annually execute a large 

 percentage of their fellow settlers through the tax office, 

 and the selling of delinquent lands, and ousting of the 

 non-paying settlers in no manner helps the situation, as 

 the burden is placed over on those who do pay, thereby 

 increasing them to such an extent that annually a new 

 class of delinquents are placed on the list, until the entire 

 project is wiped out by the impossibility of payment of 

 unreasonable and impossible assessmnets. 



The original act for payment in 10 years was made 

 without due consideration. The 20 year act was adopted 

 as a relief, and accepted as being because of inability to 

 get a better period at that time. The "experts" who have 

 done most of the figuring for the reclamation depart- 

 ment have not been practical farmers, and do not know 

 the rule recently announced in our association directors' 



Close-Up View of 8-in. Calco Auto-Drainage Gate Discharging Storm 

 Water From Gutter Into Irrigation Canal (P. 130). 



meeting by the most successful farmer of the directory, 

 who says: "I have found that in all farming you can first 

 carefully and conservatively ascertain the probable income 

 and divide it by two, and then carefully and liberally esti- 

 mate the cost of production and marketing, and multiply 

 that by two, and you will not be far from the actual 

 results." 



If such an extension amendment were passed there 

 would be no objection on this project, nor any other, I 

 believe, to immediately adopt the irrigation district plan, 

 which will be an. automatic self-working, inexpensive col- 

 lection agency by which the cost charges will be collected 

 and returned to the government. In case of any failures 

 to pay the foreclosure will be by the arbitrary and inex- 

 pensive method of tax sale, with liberal period of re- 

 demption, and all contentions, objections and expenses of 

 ordinary foreclosures avoided. 



The debt burden thereby being extended to a prac- 

 tical and satisfactory period, there will be no apprehen- 

 sion on the part of the farm land board. It has already 

 adopted the rule to loan on projects where included in an 

 irrigation district, and though, as I have above explained, 

 this rule unless accompanied by such conditions that the 

 debt burden can be met and prosperity returned, is unwar- 

 ranted from an investor's standpoint. But by the fore- 

 going suggested amendment you will have brought all 

 irrigation projects within the farm loan bank methods of 

 loaning. The settlers get the full credit to which they 

 are entitled. The government will have returned to it its 

 full investment. The settlers will pay their maintenance 

 and operation as they go, will gradually reduce their 

 cost of construction debt burden, and even though a 



