OCR Text |
Show RECLAMATION OF THE ARID LANDS 683 tion.14G Never were opponents of reclamation able to develop as strong a sectional vote in opposition as its advocates generally marshalled. In February 1933 attacks upon Reclamation by agricultural authorities were becoming sharp and there was much talk about economy and cutting government appropriations. It appeared that Congress would declare a moratorium upon construction payments, and payments of settlers into the revolving fund, thereby drying up funds available for construction. Mead was driven to desperation by the fear that all work would have to be suspended. He warned the people of the Far West through New Reclamation Era that they were up against the keen hostility of many who were clamoring for the "curtailment or the discontinuation of Federal reclamation. Such curtailment would be a national loss, would be suicidal; never was the need for reclamation as great as now when scores of reservoirs were needed, numerous projects were only half built and many others that were privately owned needed rehabilitation." An organization is needed, said Mead, to educate the country as to the importance of reclamation and to correct the misstate-ments being made about it. He suggested the appointment of a lobbyist in Washing-ton to disseminate information and "to rally the West to repulse attacks" and marshal support. Borrowing from the experience of the irrigation congresses he succeeded in organizing the National Reclamation Association to serve as "an educational influence," to show the East the ruinous scarcity of water in western projects, the vital need for additional reservoirs, that reclamation was self-liquidating, and that complete water basin development instead of the scattered type of projects should be adopted. He made much of the relief reclamation opportunities were providing to dry land farmers being forced off the land by the catastrophic drought. Over and over Mead and the speakers he marshalled denied that reclamation farmers were in competition with staple crop agriculture of the Middle West and the South.147 Mead may have thought he could put a final quietus on opposition by agricultural authorities to Federal reclamation activities by appointing an outside group to investigate and report on them. Unfortunately, he selected men whose economic and professional relationships were with reclamation and their interested opinions could carry little weight with independents. What was much more telling was the continued support President Roosevelt gave to the expansion of reclamation, almost from the day he assumed the Presidency.14S The Problem of Speculators Mead continued to be troubled by the fact that private landholders had drawn the most benefit from the building of the reclamation projects and he talked about holding down "the dryland price of these lands ... to a non-speculative basis," the difference being $11 for the former and $150 for the latter. He cast aside all concern officials earlier had entertained, and indeed Secretary Ray Lyman Wilbur still did, about the generation of hydro-electric li6New Reclamation Era, XXIII (March, October, 1932), 47-48, 167. 147 Secretary of the Interior, Annual Report, 1930, p. 19; New Reclamation Era, XXIV (February 1933), 17-18; XXV (January 1935), 1-5. This journal was the most important and effective organ in inculcating favorable ideas concerning reclamation. New Reclamation Era, XLII (February 1956), 4-5. 148 In the eulogy the Bureau of Reclamation prepared on its past operations for Congress in 1939, 10 quotations of Roosevelt are included, clearly showing that he accepted the view that reclamation did not add to the surplus, and rejected the opposite view entertained by the Department of Agriculture. S. Doc, 76th Cong., 1st sess., Vol. 1, No. 36 (Serial No. 10315), p. 13. |