6 BULLETIN 1257, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 
forth iii a circular sent by the Commissioner of the General Land 
Office to registers and receivers of the United States district land 
offices, under date of August 5, 1889. It reads in part as follows : 
The object sought to be accomplished by the foregoing provision is unmis- 
takable. The water sources and the arid lands that may be irrigated by the 
system of national irrigation are now reserved to be hereafter, when redeemed 
to agriculture, transferred to the people of the territories in which they are 
situated for homesteads. 4 
That the act contemplated a " system of national irrigation " as 
stated in this circular, was both asserted and denied many times in 
the debates in Congress; and that it contemplated the withdrawal 
of all public lands in the arid region from entry was most emphati- 
cally denied by those active in obtaining its passage. 
The whole discussion seems to leave no doubt that Congress in 
providing for these surveys did not intend to establish a system of 
national irrigation, and that the advocates of such a system, in 
the Department of the Interior, defeated their purpose by enlarging 
the scope of the reservation provided for far beyond the intent of 
Congress. This destroyed what might have grown into a nationally 
controlled development of the arid lands of the West, and restored 
or reinstated the policy of leaving unobstructed the course of private 
development. 
The Carey Act.— The Carey Act (act of August 18, 1894) was 
the next step in Federal aid to reclamation. It was enacted for the 
express purpose of curing the weakness of the desert land act and 
provided for making the cost of reclamation a lien on the land. 
The act granted to each of the States containing arid land a 
limited area (1,000,000 acres), on condition that the States provide 
for its reclamation. The details were left to State legislation. None 
of the States has provided for making the cost of reclamation a di- 
rect lien on the land, and consequently the law has not met the 
situation entirely. However, the State laws have corrected some of 
the faults of the desert land act. 
The plan of operation under the Carey Act is for the States to 
contract with construction companies for building the works to re- 
claim specific areas of public land to be claimed by the States. These 
contracts provide that the construction companies may sell " water 
rights " to reimburse themselves for the cost of construction, while 
the States sell the land, but only to parties who have contracted for 
the purchase of water rights. Thus the land and the water are tied 
together. 
The weakness is in the financial features of the plan. For securing 
funds for construction the construction companies have depended on 
advance water-right sales and bond issues based on settlers' notes for 
deferred payments on water rights. Settlers have no title to the land 
until they can show actual reclamation, and until they get title, their 
notes are not liens on the land. Consequently, the bonds issued are 
not secured by the land. _ 
In selling both water rights and bonds, the fact that the Carey Act 
projects are undertaken under Federal and State laws was made the 
basis of representation that the projects were in some way guaranteed 
by the Federal and State governments. It was also represented that 
*Sen. Ex. Doc, 1st Soss-., Hist. Con-, No. 136, pp. 2 and 0. 
