54 IBRIGATION IKVE8TIGATIONS IN CALIFORNIA. 



iinwaiTanted interruption," which means that they will continue to divert 

 the stream until some rival appropriator blows up their dam. This 

 stipulation against probable violence has never been noticed in water 

 contracts outside of California. In Colorado, Wyoming, Nebraska, and 

 Idaho, there is no further need of resorting to force because an appeal can 

 be made to the State by anyone who thinks his rights are being encroached 

 upon. The water commissioner in these States takes the place of the gen- 

 tlemen from Arizona or of the mob. The result is peace and good will 

 among neighbors and order and economy in the use of water. California 

 needs the water commissioner as much as either of these States. Once 

 tried, his services will never be dispensed with. 



California also needs a law which will stop all further claims to water 

 where the entire supply is now appropriated. Every ditch which can not 

 be filled, every pump which can not be operated, every acre of land pre- 

 pared for irrigation which is in excess of what the stream will serve, means 

 either a loss of the money invested or the robbing of an earlier user; some- 

 times it means both. So long as the right to make new appropriations is 

 unrestricted, so long will old rights be insecure. 



Already disputes over the surface flow have extended to underground 

 waters. Men cut off from the supply by surface ditches build galleries to 

 drain it off through the ground, and call it developing water. Sometimes 

 it is developing water and sometimes it is stealing it. Men who can not 

 get artesian supplies tap and lessen these supplies with pumps. Upland 

 wells are drained by lowland wells. Pipe lines in one orchard are empty 

 because those in another are full. On one section inspected orange trees 

 were dying for lack of water, on an adjoining one new groves were being 

 planted, and the processes of appropriation and disappropriation were going 

 on almost side by side. 



The advantages of public control which would restrict the construction 

 of additional works until it had been demonstrated that there was water 

 for their use and provide for a just division among the works already in 

 existence seemed so obvious that I sought from those directly interested an 

 explanation of why an attempt had not })een made to secure it. The reply 

 in every case was practically the same. All classes of water users and 

 water claimants united in saying the State government did not offer any 

 prospect of remedy and that they could not afford to take any chances but 

 prefeiTed tf) come to an agreement among themselves. 



It is not believed that this fear is well founded. It wouid take remark- 

 ably corrupt officials to create evils equal to those now existing. The 



