SCOPE AND PURPOSE OF INVESTIGATION. 21 



of water rights on the sti*eam or streams, and the methods employed in the 

 distribution and use of the water supply included within his particular field. 

 To obtain these facts they searched through many thousand pages of 

 miscellaneous records to find out how much water was claimed, and the pur- 

 poses for which it was claimed; they overhauled the court dockets to learn 

 what litigation had determined regarding the nature of rights to water and 

 the awards decreed to the different appropriators. Their field investigations 

 included measurements of the flow of streams, size and location of ditches, 

 and the areas of land irrigated, so that their reports show the actual use of 

 water by farmers, and over against it the decreed and claimed volumes of 

 appropriations. Taken together these reports present the imgation situa- 

 tion in California in a concrete form. While the lessons drawn are based 

 on researches in restricted areas, they apply with equal force to the entire 

 State, because the streams studied are typical ones. Nor are these reports 

 of value to California alone. The principles which should govern the owner- 

 ship and distribution of rivers are universal in their application, and the 

 experience of irrigators in the San Joaquin and Sacramento valleys is not 

 unlike that of irrigators in other States where similar conditions pi'evail. 



DUTY or INVESTIGATORS. 



The situation demands that those in charge of these studies should be 

 more than reporters. It is their province to interpret the facts gathered and 

 state fearlessly the views held on each important issue involved. It is not 

 expected that their opinions or the measures reconnnended for adoption will 

 be approved by all. For a half century development has gone on without 

 direction or public control. Every appropriator of water has been left free 

 to claim what he pleased, and as a result there are about as many views 

 regarding the nature of a water right as there are users of the water. Enter- 

 prises have been organized on conflicting theories, so that it is now impossi- 

 ble to secure any adjustment which will not aff'ect some one injuriou.sly. 

 This renders it all the more important that those who attemj)t to unravel 

 these complications should not only study them with open minds, but should 

 state their conclusions without restraint. This privilege will be exei'cised 

 in this introduction by the writer in giving his personal experiences and 

 impressions, as well as of presenting the conclusions reached by reading the 

 reports of his associates. Some of the Aaews herein expressed are known to 

 be opposed to those of gentlemen whose judgment is held in high regard; 

 but no one ought to object to a candid, temperate statement of convictions, 

 reached after much study and expressed with a desire of pi-omoting the 

 State's development. 



