10 PTJBLIO LANBS COMMISSION. 



furnish him a home. The desert-land law should be a means of 

 settlement, and actual bona fide residence should be rigidly required. 



The actual production of a valuable crop should be required on not 

 less than one-fourth of the area of the entry. At present, as a rule, 

 the greater part of the desert entries are never actually watered. 

 Hundreds or desert entries were examined by members of the Com- 

 mission in the last year, and the great majority of them were found 

 to be uninhabited, unirrigated, uncultivated, and with no improve- 

 ments other than a fence. This applies both to desert entries upon 

 which final proof is now being offered and to other entries to which 

 title has been given. 



It is a fact that a very small proportion of the land disposed of 

 under the terms of the law has actually been reclaimed and irrigated, 

 and scrutiny of many hundreds of desert entries now passing to final 

 proof shows that in the majority of cases these lands are not actually 

 utilized, but are being held for speculative purposes. Owing to 

 several causes, among which are the laxity of some of the State laws 

 governing appropriation of water for irrigation purposes, and the 

 insufficiency of the water supply, considerable difficulty has been 

 encountered in administering that provision of the desert-land laws 

 which requires a claimant to have a permanent water right based on 

 prior appropriation. Very often the waters of a stream are ex- 

 hausted by other appropriators before the time when the claimant 

 goes through the form of posting notices, recording his claim, and 

 complying with other essentials of the State law. Notwithstanding 

 this, he furnishes the testimony of two witnesses that the water 

 thus appropriated has been used in reclaiming his land, and that 

 the supply is adequate for that purpose. While this showing, on 

 its face, indicates a compliance with law, the fact remains that the 

 water supply, if any at all, is not sufficient to permanently reclaim 

 the land. 



The ownership of stock in a projected irrigation ditch which does 

 not exist in fact, or the ownership of a pump temporarily installed, 

 has often been accepted, in connection with such testimony, as proof 

 of the possession of water. Many alleged irrigation ditches or 

 reservoirs are familiar to members of the Commission which are 

 utterly inadequate to irrigate a square rod, and upon the strength of 

 such works patent has frequently issued to 320 acres of land. 



Frauds committed through conventional forms of perjury and 

 through lack of proper verification of the facts as to the reclamation 

 of the Jand justify the taking of immediate and radical steps in the 

 revision of the law. The law should absolutely require an actual 

 adequate water supply, and the limits as to quantity should be defined, 

 defined. 



In short, the law should render impossible the continuance of the 

 practices by which desert lands without water, without cultivation, 

 and without crops are passed into the possession of claimants. 



GRAZING LANDS. 



The great bulk of the vacant public lands throughout the West 

 are unsuitable for cultivation under the present known conditions 

 of agriculture, and so located that they can not be reclaimed by irri- 

 gation. They are, and probably always must be, of chief value for 



