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Show THE WESTERN WEB 31 To most people, reclamation was something that "happened" in some remote western places. Few per- sons in the East, the Midwest and the South knew much about it, and presumably cared less. The factory worker in Trenton, the farmer in New England, the bank clerk in Ohio, the storekeeper in Alabama, generally speaking, knew as much about reclamation policy as they did about the Quantum Theory. Why didn't they know? Probably the chief reason was that in those areas water and electricity were taken pretty much for granted. Water was something that ran out when you turned a spigot. It fell from Heaven at inconvenient times, and it was useful for bathing, cooking and mixing with bourbon. Electricity mysteri- ously came out of a wire when you snapped a switch. It ran the radio, the washing machine and the perco- lator. Who could be sure where it came from? Maybe from that big ungainly plant down by the river. As long as you paid your bill each month, you had it. California took the position, as did a number of prominent leaders in other states, that if the West were to be protected and the western states were to preserve their resources and put them to beneficial uses, people living east of the Great Plains should understand that reclamation was very much their own business. A reclamation project cost the states of the eastern half of the nation more than it cost the states who benefitted directly from it in the West. These prominent westerners saw a danger-flag flying: the eastern states could not be expected much longer to carry a great financial burden, as projected in the new plans of the ambitious Reclamation Bureau. For example, this belief had ben strongly voiced by |
