106 IRRIGATION INVESTIGATIONS IN CALIFORNIA. 



the person who acquires title to it, as much as his horse or cow, and the public has 

 no more concern with it than with any other commodity belonging to a private 

 individual, except that where water is appropriated for "sale, rental, or distribution" 

 the public has retained the power to iix the rates at which it shall be disposed of. 

 This would be unfortunate enough if it applied only to those who had acquired title 

 under some semblance of beneficial use, but the California doctrine of private water 

 ownership does not stop there. Riparian owners are entitled to '"the natural and 

 usual flow of all the water, unless where the quantit}' has been diminished as a 

 consequence of the reasonable application of it by other riparian owners," and such 

 "reasonable application" includes "a reasonable use of the waters of the stream for 

 purposes of irrigation." True, one part of the State code says that "the right to 

 the use of running water flowing in a river or stream or down a canyon or ravine 

 may be acquired bj' appropriation." But another part of the code distinctly provides 

 that the rights of riparian proprietors are exempted from the operations of this law 

 of appropriation. In its decision of the famous case of Lux v. Haggin, from which 

 the above interpretation of riparian rights is taken, the supreme court of California 

 laid great emphasis upon the fact that the rights of appropriation conferred bj- the 

 code could not and did not affect riparian rights as established by the English common 

 law. The California statutes, and all the decisions based upon them, make riparian 

 rights paramount to rights acquired by appropriation and actual beneficial use. This 

 amounts to carrying the doctrine of private ownership to its last extremity. 



The experience of other States and of all foreign countries has demonstrated that 

 this doctrine is untenable in arid lands. It is recognized that water is a form of 

 natural wealth, which in the best interests of society must never pass beyond public 

 control. World-wide experience and world-wide authorities agree that there can be 

 no private interest in water save that which inheres in actual beneficial use. The 

 community has an interest in every drop of water which enters at the headgate or 

 escapes at the end of the canal. This is so because in an arid land the extent of the 

 water supply is the measure of the country's possible wealth and of its ability to 

 support the social and economic structure. To a very marked degree water control 

 must be socialistic in its nature. This has been recognized in the legislation and 

 plans of administration adopted in other States and countries. Where the most 

 enlightened laws prevail title to water rests not in individuals, but in the lands to 

 which it was originally and jjerpetualh' dedicated. Land and water are treated as 

 inalienable. The one can not be disposed of without the other. There can no more 

 be traffic in water than in sunshine or air. ' All three are alike essential to the existence 

 of human and vegetable life in arid lands. A monopoly of one of these elements 

 would be as inimical to the public good as a monopoly of either of the others. Air 

 and sunshine are diffused without human effort. Water must be controlled and 

 directed, and since there is much less than enough to suppl}- the demand there must 

 ^»' laws providing for the protection of those who have acquired the rights to its use. 

 But these laws must recognize the paramount public interest and must see that it is 

 distributed with the same scrupulous I'egard for the inherent rights of humanity as 

 the scanty provisions of a besieged city. Such is the doctrine of the most enlightened 

 communities which have dealt with irrigation. To hold to the private ownership of 



