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ment is the great land and forest owner; and it must with a strong arm conserve the forests covering these watersheds, and thus protect the water supply. Private capital engaged in lumbering operations is too apt to denude entire mountain ranges and foothills of their forest cover, regardless of the rights of the irrigators in the plains and valleys below.

Seventy-Four Million Acres Irrigable

The President has said in his official messages that the administration of the remaining public lands and of the nation's forests constitutes the greatest of our internal questions; and this statement cannot be gainsaid by any student of the subject. According to the detailed estimates of the Geological Survey, there are some 74 million acres in the West which can yet be reclaimed from the desert by irrigation, if all the available waters of that region are fully utilized by storage and otherwise. The Government still owns in fee simple some 500 million acres in that region; and, while it has been policy to make it easy in every

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CEMENT IRRIGATION DITCH, "LUCKY" BALDWIN'S RANCH, SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA.

No Loss of Water.

and Stone Act, the commutation clause of the Homestead Act, and the Desert Land Act. In spite of the President's statement in his first annual message, that these three laws had, in the interests of the speculator, been abnormally perverted from the intent with which they were enacted, and in spite of his specific recommendation to the present Congress, backed up by the report of a special Land Commission, for the repeal of the Timber and Stone Act, the land speculators and the live-stock interests prevented any final action on these measures. What

ister them rigorously, have recognized their inherent defects and have officially recommended their repeal.

Public Lands for Home-Makers!

The foundation principle years ago laid down by the advocates of the national irrigation movement, proclaimed that, while the great irrigation works of the West, too vast and complicated for private enterprise, should be built by the Government, at the same time the nation should reserve its remaining land for actual settlers; and the laws should be

so readjusted as to preclude speculation in land and water, to the end that the irrigable land should be divided up into small and productive farms for genuine settlers and farmers, who would live upon them and would use the water for

up into 160-acre farms (or less, within the discretion of the Government); and the settler on one of these tracts will have ten years in which to reimburse the Government for his pro rata share of the expense of construction -$3,200, or at the rate of $320 a year. Within ten years this million dollars will all have been

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OPEN IRRIGATION FLUME REPLACED BY REDWOOD PIPE FLUME.
The pipe line allows practically no waste of water.

crop-growing and establish permanent
homes.

The provisions of the Irrigation Law are stringent in this regard, and the speculators have virtually admitted that this law holds out small hopes for them. It provides that no man can acquire title. for more than 160 acres under a modification of the Homestead Law, and then only after ten years' residence, and improvement, and the payment to the Government in ten annual installments of

his share of the actual cost of the irriga

tion dam and main-line ditches from which he receives his water. From this it will also be seen that the law created a revolving fund. The $25,000,000 now available, even without additions, will, in the course of years, reclaim vast areas of land, for it will be used over and over again. As fast as the works are completed and the money paid back to the Government, it will be used over again for the construction of some new project. To cite a hypothetical case:

A dam and a canal cost a million dollars; the project reclaims 50,000 acres, the cost being $20 per acre. This area will be divided

covered back into the "Reclamation fund," and most of it will, by that time, be already employed in the construction of some other dam.

The Government to be Repaid

These provisions of the act thus show a business-like feature, under which the Government is to receive back from the settler every dollar which it invests in these irrigation enterprises. In other words, the expenditure will be of the nature of a government loan to the settler without interest.

Some of the government irrigation works will reclaim only government lands, which will then be entered by the settler under the Homestead Act; in others, some of the land to be reclaimed is already in private ownership. This land must come under the government terms if it is to receive the benefit of the government storage; that is, it must be divided into the government units, not exceeding 160 acres, and pay for its proportionate share of the construction. It is here that the older land laws above mentioned are found to work against the best interests of the home maker and the

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CONSTRUCTING MORENO ROCK-FILL DAM, SAN DIEGO COUNTY, SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA. Explosion, August 4, 1897, of 25 tons of giant powder, displacing 200,000 tons of rock.

FIRST PREPARATIONS FOR BED-ROCK DRILLING ON
COLORADO RIVER.

The full plans of the Government contemplate the Irriga-
tion of about 1,200,000 acres of alluvial land in the
rich semi-tropical basin of the Lower Col-
orado in California and Arizona.

country. Lands which it is thought will probably be irrigated by the Government, are entered under these acts; and title is

acquired without residence or cultivation, or with only a pretense thereat. They are entered by speculators who do not desire to live upon them after they shall have been irrigated, but who propose to stand between the Government and the real settler, taking their profit out of the latter, and endangering the success of the national irrigation policy.

The reason for the failure of so many of the large private irrigation schemes in the West, is traceable largely to the excessive price demanded for the lands and water, shutting out the settler without capital other than his strong arms and resolute heart to enable him to carve a home out of the desert. The consequence has been that the irrigated lands. have not been fully colonized, and the income has been insufficient to keep up the interest on the irrigation bonds, the cost of repairs, and the annual charges on the works. While the Government is in a position where it cannot be forced into foreclosure, the success of its work will depend upon the prompt colonization of the lands when the water is turned upon them, and upon the repayment, by the settlers, of its investment. If the grim speculator stands between, asking an exorbitant price for lands which he has entered under these various land acts by an evasion of the spirit if

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not of the letter of the law, the success of every such government work will be imperiled and menaced.

Government Reservations Insufficient

It is true that the Irrigation Act empowers the Government to reserve from such speculative entry any lands which it is proposed to irrigate; but this can be done only after sufficient preliminary survey to warrant the Government in proclaiming its intention to irrigate. The most extensive and exhaustive surveys throughout the entire arid West must be carried on, not only during the years immediately ahead, but for decades, before all the land capable of ultimate irrigation can be determined upon. In the meantime the shrewd land dealers of the various localities are more or less conversant with the local situations; and, as soon as a government surveyor alights from a train and proceeds to make even a preliminary reconnoissance of some reservoir

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PROPOSED GOVERNMENT CANAL FROM ST. MARY'S RIVER, MONTANA.

site and tributary lands, speculators immediately awake to the possibility of making large fortunes, and assume control of the proposed irrigable lands by means of dummy land entries, which, if

maker as long as these speculative land laws remain upon the statute book.

The days of engineering construction in the West unaccompanied by the vital questions of sufficient water supply and

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