OCR Text |
Show THE WESTERN WEB 15 pate on the record, but the latter's great influence would be felt. At the hearing table this humid June morning, how- ever, were the two Arizona senators - Carl Hayden, the "old fox" of the Appropriations and Rules Com- mittee, and Ernest W. McFarland, who would be field marshal of the bill's supporters in the long fight just beginning. Although they were the authors of the proposed legislation, Senators Hayden and McFarland were not there only to speak in favor of it. They were there, as well, to defend new reclamation laws and programs which already had come under attack by the fourth man at the table. The fourth man was Senator Sheridan Downey of California. Well informed as to the situation, he could see clearly the shape of things to come. He understood there was little, if any, likelihood that the subcommittee would fail to vote the bill out to the full Senate Com- mittee on Public Lands, and that the full committee would speed it on its way to the floor of the Senate. If that did not happen in the present Congress, it would happen early in the one to follow. In the face of this discouraging knowledge, Downey had gathered all the forces and material at his com- mand, and he had entered the hearing room with his small figure bending under the weight of documents, records and statute books. He was prepared to launch the hardest and most important fight of his career, and he did not know that it was to be the final battle of his life in public office. Having been for years the leader in conflicts waged against unsound western reclamation and hydroelectric |