TWENTY-EIGHTH FRUIT-GROWERS' CONVENTION. 



43 



Before such a law could be enacted, the State Constitution would 

 have to be changed. 



If the bonds were voted, the State could then sell its own bonds and 

 then buy the district bond issue. Three per cent State bonds could be 

 sold at par, and 3-J per cent district bonds could then be purchased by 

 the State, and the State would thus receive one half of one per cent on 

 all district bond issues for its work of managing or supervising the 

 affairs of the irrigation districts and financing their bond issues. In 

 this way the district would save 10 per cent on the sale of the bond 

 issue and 2-J per cent interest each year. 



One of the weakest points of the law as enacted was, that the con- 

 struction of irrigation works reaching up into hundreds of thousands 

 of dollars was placed in the hands of men entirely unfitted for such 

 work; for, as a rule, only men of very limited means and more limited 

 business experience were usually to be found residing, on dry claims 

 which must be irrigated before they could produce a living for a family. 



Another weak point was found in the law in the fact that the heavy 

 burden of taxation had to be met by these poor men who only owned 

 poor, non-productive, dry ranches, that were worthless without water, 

 before these worthless ranches could be made productive or before 

 portions of such ranches could be sold. 



For these reasons most of the districts formed have been failures, and 

 have passed out of existence; a few have compromised their indebted- 

 ness, some have been declared illegally organized, a few are yet working 

 their way through the courts, and an occasional one, under favorable 

 conditions, has met with moderate success. 



The mutual water company system, formed under the general incor- 

 poration laws of the State, is the only form of irrigation system owner- 

 ship left to the people of California to-day that is worthy of public 

 confidence and adoption. This law is flexible and can be suited to all 

 conditions that may be encountered, while the Wright district law is 

 non-flexible, and must be followed to the letter or its securities are of 

 little or no value, and its very existence is jeopardized. Nearly all the 

 irrigation systems of Southern California are to-day in the hands of 

 mutual water companies. 



As an indorsement of this mutual co-operative system, it is a noted 

 fact that the United States officials connected with the geological survey 

 having in charge the preparatory work of constructing irrigation 

 systems for the Government, when they were looking over the entire 

 irrigation interests of the United States, in order to find a perfect system 

 from which to make a model to place on exhibition at the St. Louis 

 World's Fair in 1904, selected a system here in Southern California 

 owned and operated by a mutual water company, thus giving govern- 

 mental indorsement to this plan of co-operation as against all other 

 systems adopted by the various States of the arid West. 



