of the streams among irrigators, should be left to the settlers themselves, in conformity with state laws and without interference with those laws or with vested rights. The policy of the National Government should be to aid irrigation in the several states and territories in such manner as will enable the people in the local communities to help themselves and as will stimulate needed reforms in the state laws and regulations governing irrigation. The reclamation and settlement of the arid lands will enrich every portion of our country, just as the settlement of the Ohio and Mississippi valleys brought prosperity to the Atlantic States. The increased demand for manufactured articles will stimulate industrial production, while wider home markets and the trade of Asia will consume the larger food supplies and effectually prevent Western competition with Eastern agriculture. Indeed, the products of irrigation will be consumed chiefly in upbuilding local centers of mining and other industries, which would otherwise not come into existence at all. Our people as a whole will profit, for successful home-making is but another name for the upbuilding of the nation. The necessary foundation has already been laid for the inauguration of the policy just described. It would be unwise to begin by doing too much, for a great deal will doubtless be learned, both as to what can and what can not be safely attempted, by the early efforts, which must of necessity be partly experimental in character. At the very beginning the Government should make clear, beyond shadow of doubt, its intention to pursue this policy on lines of the broadest public interest. No reservoir or canal should ever be built to satisfy selfish personal or local interests, but only in accordance with the advice of trained experts, after long investigation has shown the locality where all the conditions combine to make the work most needed and fraught with the greatest usefulness to the community as a whole. There should be no extravagance, and the believers in the need of irrigation will most benefit their cause by seeing to it that it is free from the least taint of excessive or reckless expenditure of the public moneys. Whatever the nation does for the extension of irrigation should harmonize with and tend to improve the condition of those now living on irrigated land. We are not at the starting point of this development. Over two hundred millions of private capital has already been expended in the construction of irrigation works and many millions of acres of arid land reclaimed. A high degree of enterprise and ability has been shown in the work itself, but as much can not be said in reference to the laws relating thereto. The security and value of the homes created depend largely on the stability of titles to water, but the majority of these rest on the uncertain foundation of court decisions rendered in ordinary suits at law. With a few creditable exceptions, the arid states have failed to provide for the certain and just division of streams in times of scarcity. Lax and uncertain laws have made it possible to establish rights to water in excess of actual uses or necessities, and many streams have already passed into private ownership, or a control equivalent to ownership. Whoever controls a stream practically controls the land it renders productive, and the doctrine of private ownership of water apart from land can not prevail without causing enduring wrong. The recognition of such ownership which has been permitted to grow up in the arid regions, should give way to a more enlightened and larger recognition of the rights of the public in the control and disposal of the public water supplies. Laws founded upon conditions obtaining in humid regions, where water is too abundant to justify hoarding it, have no proper application in a dry country. In the arid states the only right to water which should be recognized is that of use. In irrigation this right should attach to the land reclaimed and be inseparable therefrom. Granting perpetual water rights to others than users, without compensation to the public, is open to all the objections which apply to giving away perpetual franchises to the public utilities of cities. A few of the Western states have already recognized this and have incorporated in their constitutions the doctrine of perpetual state ownership of water. The benefits which have followed the unaided development in the past justify the nation's aid and coöperation in the more difficult and important work yet to be accomplished. Laws so vitally affecting homes as those which control the water supply will only be effective when they have the sanction of the irrigators; reforms can only be final and satisfactory when they come through the enlightenment of the people most concerned. The larger development which national aid insures should, however, awaken in every arid state the determination. to make its irrigation system equal in justice and effectiveness that of any country in the civilized world. Nothing could be more unwise than for isolated communities to continue to learn everything experimentally, instead of profiting by what is known elsewhere. We are dealing with a new and momentous question, in the pregnant years while institutions are forming, and what we do will affect not only the present but future generations. Our aim should be not simply to reclaim the largest area of land and provide homes for the largest number of people, but to create for this new industry the best possible social and industrial conditions; and this requires that we not only understand the existing situation, but avail ourselves of the best experience of the time in the solution of its problems. A careful study should be made, both by the nation and the states, of the irrigation laws and conditions here and abroad. Ultimately it will probably be necessary for the nation to coöperate with the several arid states in proportion as these states by their legislation and administration show themselves fit to receive it. Under the stimulus of the vigorous message of President Roosevelt and of his personal interest, the principal one of the series of reclamation bills, which had been reintroduced by Mr. Newlands at the opening of the session, was passed by both houses of Congress and became law on June 17, 1902. By the terms of the act, the Secretary of the Interior was authorized to locate and construct irrigation works, including artesian wells in sixteen states and territories, embracing all of the United States west of the first tier of states west of the Mississippi, except Texas. The funds for the construction of these works were to be obtained from the sales of the public lands in those states and territories, the Secretary being directed "so far as may be practicable and subject to the existence of feasible irrigation projects to expend the major portion of the funds arising from the sale of public lands within each state and territory . . . within the limits of such state or territory." Prior to the beginning of the surveys for any contemplated irrigation works, the Secretary was authorized to withdraw from entry "any public lands 'The text to the act is printed in Appendix 5, p. 103. believed to be susceptible of irrigation from said works" and thereafter such lands were to be subject to entry only under the provisions of the homestead laws, in tracts of not more. than 160 acres; but the Secretary of the Interior was further authorized to limit the area of entries to such acreage as in his opinion might be "reasonably required for the support of a family upon the lands in question." The Secretary was further authorized to impose upon all lands, including those already in private ownership, which might be irrigated by the waters of the project, a proportionate part of the cost of the construction of such project, and to fix the number of annual installments, not exceeding ten, in which such charges should be paid and the time the payments should commence. All these items the Secretary was further required to announce publicly upon his determination that any irrigation project was practicable. The Secretary was further authorized to operate and maintain all reservoirs and irrigation works constructed until repayments had been made "for the major portion of the lands irrigated from the waters" of such works, whereupon the management and operation of the works, but not the reservoirs, was to pass to the owners of the irrigated lands, to be maintained at their expense under the supervision. of the Secretary. Entrymen upon lands to be irrigated were required to reclaim at least one-half of the total irrigable area of their entries for agricultural purposes. With reference to land in private ownership, it was provided that no right to the use of water for such land was to be sold for a tract exceeding 160 acres to any one land owner, nor unless such land owner was an actual bona-fide resident or occupant of such land. Novel as were the substantive policy and the method of financing provided by the act, the wide discretion vested in the Secretary of the Interior in the determination of the methods to be used in carrying out the intent of the act was equally novel. Not only was he entrusted with complete and sole responsibility for locating and passing upon the practicability of projects, but with reference to the actual construction it was provided merely that "eight hours shall constitute a day's work" and that "no Mongolian labor shall be employed," all matters of organization and procedure being left entirely to the Secretary. He was, moreover, authorized to acquire, by purchase or by condemnation, "any rights or property" necessary for carrying out the act. Origin and Development of the Reclamation Service. Within a few weeks after the passage of the Reclamation Act, the Secretary of the Interior, Ethan Allen Hitchcock, upon the recommendation of the Director of the Geological Survey, Charles D. Walcott, ordered the creation of an organization to be known as the Reclamation Service, to be under the jurisdiction of the Director of the Geological Survey but not to be a part of the Survey. In the preceding section account was given of the appropriation by Congress, in 1888 and 1889, of $350,000 for surveys of the arid regions by the Geological Survey, and the appropriations to that service, beginning in 1894 and increasing yearly, for gauging streams and determining the water supply of the United States. In the expenditure of the funds thus appropriated there had been created in the Geological Survey a Division of Hydrography. The staff of this division, composed of men familiar from long experience with the conditions of the arid regions, was now used as the nucleus for the new Reclamation Service. The chief of the division, Frederick Haynes Newell, whose activities in connection with the enactment of the Reclamation Act have already been referred to, was appointed head of the Service, with the title of Chief Engineer, and his assistants also were largely drawn from the hydrographic division. For about five years after its establishment, the Reclamaion Service remained under the direction of the Director of the Geological Survey. On March 9, 1907, it became an ndependent service, subject to control only by the Secretary |