OBSTACLES TO DEVELOPMENT. 35 



resorted to in dealing with this subject. There never was a time when 

 doubtful or controverted policies should have been evaded by the law- 

 makers and thi-ust on the courts for settlement. There is as great need for 

 specially qualified officers to determine the amount of the water supply and 

 regulate its distiibution as there is to survey the public land and prepare 

 maps by which the different tracts can be identified. There is as gi'eat, if 

 not greater, need of a bureau to supervise the establishment of titles to 

 water as there is for land offices to manage the disposal of public land. 

 Wh)' have we recognized the need of one and ignored the other? The 

 answer is to be found in the inheiited jurisprudence and prejudice of our 

 race, which for centuries has regarded water as something to be got rid of 

 rather than a resource to be transferred and measured and stored, and 

 finallv absorbed in use. That is the status of water in California, where 

 sti-eams are of greater actual value than all the gold in the hills or the 

 oil in the valleys. 



The discovery of gold in California and the use of water in ii-rigation 

 brought the people of that State face to face with two new issues. One of 

 these was the enactment of laws for the control and use of the land which 

 contained placer gold; the other was the creation of laws and customs for 

 the orderh- determination of ownership of streams and for their distribution. 

 In their efforts at solving one of these problems, California achieved a 

 satisfactory if not striking success. The code of mining laws provides for 

 a final and definite determination of title to a particular tract of land. The 

 steps through which this evolution was accomplished are of historic and 

 economic interest. Thev beeran in a common agreement that a claim should 

 embrace only the area a man could work, and this was fixed as the distance 

 in each direction he could reach with a pick, and made the claim about 8 feet 

 square. There was no attempt to establish ownership of the land itself; the 

 right endured during occupation onl v. Wlien one individual ceased to work 

 a claim, anvone else could relocate it and take possession. With increase of 

 population and the employment of capital other measures were necessary, 

 and a working code of laws was evolved to meet the changed conditions. 

 This code of laws provided for notices of location, for the recording- of these 

 notices, and a .simple procedure, before specially qualified officers, to prove 

 compliance with the law, which proof is followed by the issuance by the 

 Government of a patent to the claim which is as stable and certain an 

 evidence of ownership as a patent to a homestead. This law limits the acres 

 which can be filed on. It determines the shape of a full-sized claim and 

 makes provision for properly qualified officers and engineers to carry out 



