OBSTACLES TO DEVELOPMENT. 41 



If it can be maintained and speedily extended to Califoi'nia, it will not only 

 relieve this State of many existing complications but will put Iter img-ation 

 system in accord with the best thought and experience of the time. 



These views are based on eighteen years' personal contact with users 

 of water in States where ditch owners are the water owners and in States 

 where water rights are inseparable from the land. The result of that 

 experience shows that attaching water to land makes for peace ; attaching it to 

 the ditch owner makes for war. So long as ditch owners are the appropriators 

 they have to maintain a dual conflict. They must strive with other ditch 

 owners for control of the stream and with water users over the quantity 

 and price of the water delivered. On the other hand, where ditches are 

 made earners of water and appropriations attached to the land, the expense 

 of the struggle over a fair division of streams does not fall, as it does in Cali- 

 fornia, solely on the owners of canals. It falls on the landowners, and it 

 has not taken long in the States where users have to bear the cost and loss 

 of an unfair division to end this expense and uncertainty by putting streams 

 under State control. Where appropriations attach to the land ditch owners 

 have no responsibility except to deliver what comes to the headgate. For 

 this service they are entitled to fair compensation, and come neai'er receiving 

 it than do the ditch and water owners of California, where rates are fixed 

 by a tribunal and a procedure which makes the practical confiscation of 

 investments more than a possibility. The doctrine of private ownership of 

 water has not thus far in this countrj- worked to the benefit of the ditch 

 owner. On the contrary, it has been the greatest evil with which he has 

 had to contend. It has been a potent source of hostile public sentiment; it 

 has led to retributive legislation, of which the laws for fixing water rates in 

 California and Colorado are signal illustrations. What may be the oppor- 

 tunities of this policy in the future as water becomes scarcer and more 

 valuable it is impossible to say, but the dangers to ditch companies are fully 

 as pronounced as are the possibilities of increased profit. Whatever views 

 may be held regarding this matter, there is one thing about which there can 

 be no dispute, and that is that the present uncertainty should be ended. 

 So long as it continues California is in no condition to either solicit develop- 

 ment by private capital or aid through State or national appropriations. 

 Private control of streams is infinitely to be preferred to no control. Taking 

 the most extreme view of speculative rights which would give to each of 

 these recorded notices its face value, it would at least give investors a basis 

 on which to build canals and extend the distribution of streams which now 

 run to waste. On the other hand, if rights are. to be measured by actual 



