90 IRRIGATION INVESTIGATIONS IN CALIFORNIA. 



do not state whether this means water for one crop of alfalfa or for three. These 

 vague arrangements are not supplemented by measurement of the heads of water 

 turned into consumers' ditches. Everything is left to the superintendent and ditch 

 riders, who try to apportion fairly the water that may be in the canals and reservoirs. 

 These superintendents do remarkably well under the circumstances. There can be 

 no justice in water distribution under such a plan. Indeed, injustice is the only 

 possible result. The man who makes loudest complaint receives most water, while 

 the one who is most patient and considerate is the certain sufferer whenever the 

 supply is short. The trouble is due to the absence of any common agreement upon 

 the reasonable duty of water. In other parts of the arid region there is such common 

 agreement, established by custom and enforced by law. 



THE DISTRIBUTION OF WATER. 



The California statutes make no provision for the distribution of water among 

 rival ditches or different consumers from the same ditch. Aside from the brief 

 paragraph on priority — '"first in time, first in right" — there is nothing which bears 

 even remotely upon the matter. Everything is left for the irrigators to settle among 

 themselves. This results in confusion and in bitter quarrels among neighbors. This 

 condition of affairs must grow constantly worse as more land is put into cultivation, 

 ditches extended, and appropriations increased. Each man manages his own head- 

 gate. His object is to get all the water he possibly can. We have already seen 

 that he has no means of obtaining exact information in regard to the status of 

 appropriations or the duty of water. All he knows — all he can possibly know under 

 the circumstances — is his own necessity. Even as to this he is liable to be led astray, 

 since nothing has been done to give the people of this remote locality the benefit of 

 lessons which modern science has so generously conferred on many other communities. 



The sins of the law are visited on unoffending neighbors. Enterprise is balked, 

 and investment brought to ruin. One neighbor shuts down the headgate of another 

 and stands over it with a shotgun. Retaliation follows upon provocation, and the evil 

 passions so aroused invent new provocation and devise new methods of retaliation. 

 A reservoir is built in the mountains to store the flood waters that they may be 

 turned later into the channel of the stream and then diverted upon the lands of those 

 who made this prudent provision to supplement their share of the perennial flow. 

 But when the water is turned down, old dams are raised to intercept the increased 

 supply and the water thus lost to those who furnished it. Costl}^ works of divei'sion, 

 built without injunction and even with the apparent approval of the community, are 

 attacked and rendered useless by men who act upon the advice of their attorneys. 

 It has come to be practically recognized that there is no law but force, and that when 

 this law has exhausted the resources of its physical demonstration by overt acts the 

 final resort is to the courts. We shall see how inconclusive and unsatisfactorj^ a 

 method this furnishes of settling the endless disputes, and how, after costly lawsuits 

 and hurtful agitation, the quarrel travels back in a circle until it comes again to the 

 point of physical violence. 



"Because the good old rule 

 Sufficeth them, the simple plan, 

 Tliat they should take who liave the power 

 And they should keej) who can." 



