386 
imum  that  might  be  developed  were  the  profit  feature  eliminated. 
Furthermore,  this  development  along  the  lines  of  least  resistance 
may  make  unavailable  for  an  indefinite  period  the  lands  excluded 
from  the  private  enterprise ; whereas,  they  might  well  have  been 
included  in  the  original  construction  plans  had  not  the  argument 
of  greatest  possible  profit  on  investment  controlled  the  construc- 
tion. There  are  other  elements  too  that  enter  into  the  argument 
in  favor  of  making  irrigation  and  conservation  enterprises  public 
functions.  Among  them  being  the  greater  permanency  of  con- 
struction and  the  better  type  of  building,  which  are  believed  gen- 
erally to  be  features  of  well-managed  Government  construction. 
At  any  late,  the  point  seems  to  have  been  reached  in  this  Terri- 
tory where  it  is  believed  that  Reclamation  should  be  undertaken 
by  the  representatives  of  the  public.  It  was  long  before  this  stage 
in  irrigation  development  was  reached  on  the  mainland  but  it 
came  at  last  in  1902,  when  the  Federal  Government,  by  the  passage 
of  the  Reclamation  Act,  entered  the  field  as  a builder  of  irriga- 
fion  projects.  Other  governments  had  long  ago  undertaken  pub- 
lic work  of  this  character.  For  instance,  the  British  Government, 
111  its  monumental  irrigation  work  in  the  Nile  Valley  and  in  India, 
so  that  the  principle  was  not  new. 
On  the  mainland  of  the  United  States,  where  the  passage  of  the 
Reclamation  Act  represents  the  culmination  of  a battle  of  twenty- 
five  years  between  the  pro  and  the  anti  Federal  irrigationists,  those 
entrusted  with  the  administration  of  the  law  do  not  consider  that 
its  operation  will  put  an  end  to  private  construction  or  indeed, 
seriously  interfere  with  it,  but  rather  that  it  will  stimulate  private 
enterprise  by  erecting  in  many  parts  of  the  west,  monuments  to 
the  value  of  irrigation,  and  by  the  solution  through  the  coopera- 
tion of  its  large  and  efficient  corps  of  engineers,  of  many  of  the 
heretofore  unsolved  problems  of  irrigation  engineering  and  irri- 
gation administration.  Furthermore,  by  the  examples  it  sets  of 
well  planned,  high  grade  work,  it  will  make  more  difficult  the  at- 
tempts of  the  ill-financed  promoter  to  dispose  of  poorly  planned, 
short-lived,  and  inferior  systems.  Thus  the  operation  of  the  Rec- 
lamation Act  is  not  only  opening  directly  to  settlement  millions  of 
acres  of  the  arid  and  semi  arid  portions  of  the  West,  but  is  indi  - 
rectly stimulating  private  enterprise  to  develop  other  smaller  pro- 
jects in  better  fashion  than  before  the  law  was  eaacted. 
As  I have  said,  the  passage  of  the  Reclamation  Act  was  the 
fruition  of  a movement  that  had  been  underway  for  many  years. 
The  desert  land  law,  approved  March  3,  1877,  encouraged  recla- 
mation by  individual  effort  by  conferring  title  to  320  acres  of  arid 
lands  instead  of  160,  as  under  the  Homestead  Law,  providing  cer- 
tain conditions  as  to  irrigation  were  complied  with.  In  1879, 
Major  Powell  issued  his  famous  report,  in  which  he  insisted  that 
the  irrigation  problems  of  the  West  were  of  such  a nature  as  to 
require  government  action.  This  report  caused  much  discussion 
and  was  the  source  of  a growing  interest  in  the  problem,  that  pro- 
