166 OUR FEDERAL LANDS 



Yet this situation had come about naturally. 



From 1896 on, reclamation had been a much 

 discussed subject. As soon as it was accepted as a 

 national policy, every western state instantly de- 

 manded numerous projects. The original law re- 

 quiring as broad an allocation of the funds as possi- 

 ble, the government started four projects in 1903, 

 seven in 1904, and nine in 1905, representing all the 

 states except California, Idaho, and Wyoming; and 

 projects were started in these states in 1906. Still 

 others, to a total of twenty-nine, of which several 

 have since been abandoned, followed rapidly. 



Politically, it probably was good policy to sat- 

 isfy demands of all the states as rapidly as possi- 

 ble, but many blunders and much human misery 

 would have been avoided had Roosevelt's advice 

 been followed. "It would be unwise to begin by do- 

 ing too much," the President had said in his first 

 message to Congress on reclamation, "for a great 

 deal will doubtless be learned as to what can be and 

 cannot be safely attempted by the early efforts which 

 must of necessity be partly experimental in char- 

 acter." 



Begun in this wholesale way, experience, stated 

 Secretary Work's Committee of Special Advisers in 

 its report of 1924, "was of course gained in the 

 overcoming of the difficulties that arose from time 

 to time, but it was practically impossible to utilize 

 this body of knowledge for the benefit of the system 

 as a whole. Moreover, once having begun these 



