40 



TWENTY-EIGHTH FRUIT-GROWERS' CONVENTION. 



Thus far the work of making a garden out of a desert here on the 

 Pacific Coast has been confined to individual' capital and individual 

 enterprise. 



The Government owned a large area of worthless land and many- 

 streams of worthless water. It sold the land for a song — more than it 

 was worth — and gave away the water. Private enterprise and private 

 capital took both of them, brought them together and made homes for 

 millions of people and created billions of wealth. 



The people who thus brought the land and the water together rarely 

 made any money out of the enterprise, and frequently they lost their 

 investments; but the settlers generally made what the promoters lost, 

 and the State became much more wealthy for the work done. 



This loss of money by the capitalists back of irrigation enterprises 

 was the result of a combination of causes. Lack of accurate informa- 

 tion relative to how the work should be done was a leading cause; 

 experimental work added to the disastrous results; and slow settlement, 

 occasioned by the greed of promoters, who frequently charged more for 

 water rights than the traffic would stand, thus piling up a large interest 

 account on the wrong side of the ledger, being the cap sheaf that would 

 call for the appointment of a receiver, frequently forced the settlement 

 of the business in bankruptcy proceedings. 



Incidental to this method of procedure, a high rate of interest paid 

 for borrowed capital and exorbitant prices paid for work done, lands 

 purchased, and material bought, because of lack of funds, were other 

 items that tended to cancel supposed large profits. 



In looking over the field, we find several different stages of develop- 

 ment work. 



Under the old Mexican regime, prior to the annexation of California 

 to the United States, irrigation systems were very crude and the legal 

 machinery for their ownership and management was very simple. 

 Neighbors got together, dug their cheap ditches, and then took turns in 

 cleaning them out and distributing the water. Very little or no cash 

 changed hands in this simple process. 



Under American occupation, Yankee ingenuity sought out many 

 inventions, and one of them was to incorporate a water company for 

 profit, construct a system of canals and ditches, and then charge the 

 land-owners under the system for the water used by them. The more 

 they charged for the water, the larger the dividends they could declare; 

 and sometimes they went beyond the limit of the land-owner's ability 

 to pay. 



At this stage of the proceedings, the Legislature stepped in and passed a 

 law requiring Boards of Supervisors of counties and the governing bodies 

 of incorporated cities and towns to fix water rates that might be charged 

 by water corporations, whether the water was used for domestic or irri- 



