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Show 36 WAR FOR THE COLORADO RIVER anyone from buying land in a project. It followed, Downey pointed out, that the Commissioner of Recla- mation could tell the farmers how to vote, and if they did not obey him, their water would be shut off. There would be no such thing as individual liberty in the West under a 9-e Contract. If we look upon the past as prologue, as Shakespeare proclaimed it to be, the history of water development in the West is important to an understanding of the Colo- rado River Controversy. The new program of the Reclamation Bureau began to take shape during World War 11, early in 1943. While it was not proffered as a war measure, its develop- ment was speeded by conditions born of the war. The intensified agricultural program, war profiteering and the misuse of water resources provided material of which the designers of the plan took advantage. At the time, Harold L. Ickes was Secretary of the Interior, Abe Fortas was Under-secretary, Michael W. Straus and Oscar W. Chapman were Assistant Secretaries. More important than paternity, however, is knowledge of the past events and conditions that, through the years since western reclamation became a national policy, opened the way for such a radical departure from long- established standards and statutes. Long before the white man set foot on the North American continent there were irrigation projects in the West. The modern traveler, remarking upon the wonders wrought in the desert areas by reclamation engineers, was surprised to learn that many of the twentieth century irrigation canals followed routes laid out hundreds of years before. With stone tools and bare hands the primitive westerners constructed their |