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Show RECLAMATION OF THE ARID LANDS 649 to be done but now was doing nothing but harm and: it is of the highest importance that it should be repealed before all the valuable public lands have been wrested from the hands of the people. Selfish land-grabbers . . . pay the government SI.25 per acre, then water the lands and sell them to the public at a very large profit. It is a grotesque system which robs the people of their patrimony and then allows them to buy it back again upon the robbers' own terms. Smythe declared that the cost of getting water to the land had averaged $8.15 per acre, while the land was being sold at $20 to $100 an acre. In the light of the demand of the Irrigation Congress for the repeal of the Desert Land Act and of the recognized power of its leaders, it is difficult to understand why Congress was so loath to enact a repeal measure.35 Although the tide of opinion seemed to be favoring Federal development of irrigation projects because of the financial weakness of the western states and the fact that the rivers were mostly interstate, advocates of state leadership were not ready to yield. In 1896 the American Society of Irrigation Engineers presented to Congress resolutions adopted at their annual meeting in Denver, urging the "application of the doctrine of home rule to the irrigation development of the Western States . . . the proper agencies to supervise such development and the best custodians of their natural resources. . . ." The Society urged that the Federal government transfer the public lands to the states "under such conditions as shall secure the irrigable lands to actual settlers only, and shall withhold from private ownership the other lands now public, and that the revenue derived therefrom shall be applied to the development of our natural resources. . . ." Here 36 William E. Smythe, "The Progress of Irrigation Thought in the West," Review of Reviews, X (October 1894), 399; id., "The Irrigation Idea and its Coming Congress," Review of Reviews, VIII (October 1893), 405. was a suggestion that the nonirrigable lands, i.e., mineral and forest lands, be retained in public ownership and the income from them be used for irrigation works. This was the plan later incorporated in the Newlands Act of 1902, save that the management of all lands and irrigation projects was to be kept in the hands of the Federal government. The principal speaker at the Denver meeting was Elwood Mead, a well-known and respected reclamation engineer who will come into this account in numerous places. Mead declared that land and water rights must be held by the same government to make irrigation possible and since the states controlled the water rights they should also now be given control of the land within their boundaries. Federal law, including the Desert Land Act and the Homestead Act, was ruining the West by permitting individuals to gain ownership of land needed for collective action in irrigation development. But anyone who attempts: to secure a reform in our land system must abandon all hope of preferment here or hereafter. The influence of those interested in maintaining the free grazing privilege, the effect of prejudice is so potent, that a candid statement of existing conditions is seldom attempted. In many sections of the West, to advocate land reform is to be regarded as a subject for the jail. So long as this is true, the fact that irrigable land without water is only fit for a grave and that the present homestead law has been the cemetery of the ditch builders' investment will not be potent enough to overcome the fear of the demagogical cry of 'land grabber,' which meets every suggestion of a reform. One may well understand from this rhetorical flourish why Mead became the principal and highly successful lobbyist of the irrigation engineers and the advocate at a later time of lavish support for reclamation programs, not by the states, however, but by the Federal government. For their proposal to donate all public lands to the states Mead, Smythe, and the engineers assembled support from land |
