24 BULLETIN 1177, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
this sort met difficulties because settlers failed to arrive in sufficient 
numbers and with adequate means to put the land on a paying basis 
in time to meet the interest charges. The bondholders under such 
circumstances, realizing that to pursue their legal remedies would 
merely result in forcing the settlers off the lands, agreed in certain 
cases to write off a portion of the debt in order to assure ultimate 
payment of the balance. Financial reorganizations involved pooling 
the interests of bondholders on the one hand and landowners on the 
other, negotiations between the two groups, and surrender and 
cancellation of overdue bonds and interest coupons at an agreed 
discount. Bondholders were often widely scattered and some bond- 
holders and landowners were opposed to any compromise, so that 
it was not always possible to bring all interested parties into the 
agreement. The procedure in such event consisted in selling bonds 
and coupons of proper maturities to the landowners for use in paying 
taxes, thus releasing the lands covered by the agreement from the 
lien for those taxes and leaving the bondholders not in the agree- 
ment to obtain satisfaction from the lands not so covered — a solution 
legally possible where the district tax is held to be a soecial assess- 
ment rather than a general tax. 
PRESENT STATUS OF BONDS. 
Figure 4 shows the status of all bonds sold to December 31, 1921, 
segregated by years in which actually sold. The disposition of these 
bonds has been as follows: 
Outstanding Dec. 31, 1921 $104, 921, 223 
Redeemed 5, 091, 070 
Declared illegal 3, 369, 350 
Canceled alter compromise 4, 556, 900 
Discount on bonds refunded after compiomise 497, 900 
Total bonds sold 118, 436, 443 
For purposes of comparison irrigation district history has been 
divided into five seven-year periods and of the total amount of bonds 
sold during each period the percentage paid when due, compromised, 
defaulted, etc., has been ascertained. The results are shown in Fig- 
ure 5. When considered in connection with Figure 4, which shows 
the volume of bonds sold from time to time, tne chart contains a 
striking summary of the history of irrigation district bond integrity. 
The first and fourth periods, as well as the latter part of the third, 
were times when speculation was rife. The more satisfactory situ- 
ation during the fifth period is partly a result of more effective State 
control, State certification of bonds, greater discrimination on the 
part of bond buyers, and more general conservatism in the promotion 
of districts. 
Table 4 contains a summary of the bonded indebtedness of all irri- 
gation districts in the United States to December 31, 1921. The last 
column shows for each State the average outstanding bonded debts 
per acre of all operating districts which are fully financed to date; 
that is, of all districts which are " going concerns" and which have 
secured the necessary funds for their present purposes. 
