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Show RECLAMATION OF THE ARID LANDS 639 on Public Lands of the errors and weaknesses long since apparent in the preemption and homestead laws and in the cash sale law when applied to timberlands.6 The ink was hardly dry on the Desert Land Act before complaints reached the Land Office that there were loopholes in the act that Congress should close by explanatory and more carefully drawn restrictions. One story was told about a man who hauled a can of water to his claim, poured it into a furrow, and then swore, and his friends supported him, that he had conducted water on his claim.7 Another person, to gain control of the lands near a stream filed an application for land in zigzag shape with 44 corners. The California surveyor general declared that though irrigation of the desert lands of southern California was vital to its future development, irrigation could not be accomplished by individual enterprise as the act contemplated. Similarly, the Idaho surveyor general said that the act could only be successful if capitalists lent sufficient funds to those entering 640-acre tracts to enable them to accumulate enough land to justify spending large sums in conducting water to it. He might have quoted from the report of John W. Powell, as did the Arizona surveyor general, that more than three-fourths of all future redemption of land by irrigation would require the expenditure of a million and more dollars in each enterprise. In Arizona it was said that abuses of the Desert Land Act were expected to become so common that they would lead to such a strict interpretation of the law as to make it impossible to gain ownership under it. Commissioner Williamson was not one to pull his punches in reporting on poorly drafted legislation. The Desert Land Act 6 Cong. Record, 44th Cong., 2d sess., Jan. 6 and Feb. 27, 1877, pp. 464, 1964-74. 7 GLO Annual Report, 1877, pp. 296, 322-23; and 1880, p. 277. "is a good law, from which most beneficial results should and would be obtained, if it could be fully carried into effect," he declared. But it was "somewhat loosely drawn"; it provided no protection against one who put "very little water upon the land," and a strict interpretation which he proposed to give to it would practically defeat its operation. "To be required to irrigate all of a tract of 640 acres of land, except in very rare cases, is to require something well nigh impossible, or, if possible, something so expensive that no person or corporation could afford to do it until lands for cultivation are far more valuable than they now are." Williamson recommended the early repeal of the act and the enactment of a law giving to persons or corporations all the truly desert lands which they might fully reclaim by irrigation. There was no reason why desert lands in any amount should not be given to those who irrigated them; humid lands which did not require such large investments of capital were being given away free.8 The opportunity to acquire 640 acres of public lands, "arid" or "desert" though they might be, proved immediately attractive. Between the signing of the act on March 3, 1877, and June 30, 731 entries had been filed for 26*9,307 acres, of which 467 for 166,665 acres were in California and 139 for 42,652 acres were in Utah.9 The following year the number of entries reach 1,008 for 310,553 acres; the number fell to 426 entries in 1881 and to 568 in 1882; in 1883 they increased to 1,254. It appears that few of these entries were carried to title within the 3 years allowed for making the improvements. Commissioner McFarland, noting this fact, reasoned that most filings had been made for speculative purposes in violation of the restrictions of the law, and complained that the lands were being held for grazing without settle- ! Report, 1877, pp. 33-34. "Ibid, p. 41. |
