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Show (582 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT put by continued and enlarged reclamation projects in the Far West when wheat farmers of the Great Plains and cotton farmers of the South were faced with near bankruptcy prices. At a conference on Reclamation and Land Settlement in Washington in 1925, W. M. Jardine, Secretary of Agriculture, voiced this concern, declaring that in the face of continued overproduction, and the abandonment of many farms in the Northeast which could yield as good returns as many reclamation farms "extensive Reclamation at this time is inopportune."140 Two years later he declared that Federal development of new farmland should be undertaken only when the need was clear. He urged the need for a comprehensive study of reclamation policies and projects now under way or contemplated. Interest free loans, which reclamation policy essentially provided, meant giving the irrigation farmer a large subsidy denied farmers elsewhere and created a special interest group.141 Jardine's successor, Arthur M. Hyde, in 1931 again warned against the unfair subsidy given the settlers on reclamation projects which he found inconsistent with efforts being made to restrict agricultural production.142 At the National Conference on Land Utilization which was called by the Secretary of Agriculture in 1931 it was recommended that the Bureau of Reclamation confine its efforts to completing projects already under way and to rehabilitating those farmers on projects who were economically distressed, but that no new projects be undertaken until the agricultural needs of the country would justify them.143 L. C. Gray, distinguished land economist and agricultural historian and later second in command of the submarginal land retirement program, warned that the Bureau of Reclamation was not only counting on interest free loans to build the great dams for irrigation projects but was now adding to the subsidy the income from power projects which would be used to reduce the water charges.144 With the adoption of the Agricultural Adjustment Administration Act in 1933, the avowed purpose of which was to reduce the output of basic farm commodities, and of the submarginal land retirement program in 1934, the ambiguous position of the government became evident. It was paying farmers to reduce output and buying land to take it out of production while investing large sums of money to bring into cultivation high yielding, and liberally subsidized land in the Far West at the same time. Commissioner Mead took the offensive against this do-nothing policy. He held that except for the California projects, Federal irrigation was not keeping up with the pace of western growth; that its production was needed locally. He denied that the crops grown on irrigation land were those in surplus and held that irrigation land constituted but 3/10 of 1 percent of the land in farm use.145 The West needed the water, the crops, the electric power, the purchasing power of the project settlers, the employment, that reclamation provided. Mead did not entirely overcome the opposition but he had confidence that time, the rapid growth of the West, and the ability of the West generally to act together on questions affecting its needs would assure the well-being and expansion of reclama- 140 New Reclamation Era, XVII (extra, 1925), 2-3. 141 Department of Agriculture, Yearbook, 1927, p. 27. 142 Yearbook, 1931, p. 40. 143 Proceedings of the National Conference on Land Utilization, 1932, p. 243; Department of Agriculture, Yearbook, 1933, p. 57. 144 Yearbook, 1932, p. 460; Richard S. Kirkendall, "L. C. Gray and the Supply of Agricultural Land," Agricultural History, XXXVII (October 1963), 206-216. 146 New Reclamation Era, XX (October 1929), 153; and XXI (February 1930), 18. |