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Show RECLAMATION OF THE ARID LANDS 651 irrigable public land.43 Private capital had taken up and improved the most likely projects which did not require too large an investment and promised quick return in water rents or in accelerating land prices. If there was anything to the view of Senator William M. Stewart that from 75 million to 100 million acres of arid lands were capable of being irrigated, only 7,200,000 had been provided with water by 1899 and of this only 5,200,000 acres were in hay, forage, grain, or fruit crops.44 The semi-arid West had a long way to go to realize its optimistic dreams of extensive agricultural development. Private Irrigation Efforts Most private irrigation projects early fell into difficulties. Many had been 43 Secretary of the Interior, Annual Report, 1902, H. Doc, 57th Cong., 2d sess., vol. 18, No. 5 (serial No. 4457). p. 482. The progress the states made in applying for land under the Carey Act, having it segregated, and securing patents by 1958 was little more promising. State Oregon_______ Washington___ Arizona_______ Idaho________3 Nevada_______ Utah_________ Colorado______ Montana______ New Mexico___ Wyoming_____1 Totals______8 Area applied for 791,615 155,649 31,266 819,181 185,455 606,704 461,707 609,826 10,204 796,274 ,467,834 Area segregated 388,876 Area patented 73,442 13,745 ,335,787 36,808 141,814 284,653 246,698 7,604 ,396,869 3,852,860 617,334 1,578 37,239 37,706 92,280 4,743 203,311 1,067,635 Table 28 in Statistical Appendix to the Annual Report of the Director of the Bureau of Land Management, 1958. 44 The earlier absurd figures of potentially reclaim-able land offered by Hinton were less talked about in 1902 but Stewart and Representative W. L. Jones of Washington still mentioned 100 million as their upper figure; C. D. Clark, Senator from Wyoming mentioned from 30 million to 60 million acres. Cong. Record, 57th Cong., 1st sess., pp. 2220, 2277, 6753. planned, engineered and promoted by incompetent or speculatively inclined persons having insufficient capital to carry them to completion. Construction of dams, reservoirs, and ditches was not up to the best standards of the time, water resources had been badly misjudged, and available water and land had not been fully utilized. Owing to the lack of advance studies, the need for providing drainage, preventing alkali deposits from accumulating, and the importance of marketing facilities had not been foreseen. Settlers with no experience in irrigation farming frequently proved unadaptable to the new tasks before them. Ninety percent of the private irrigation companies were in or near bankruptcy by 1902.45 The role of the private irrigation companies in the development of the West was not over but it was becoming difficult for them to raise capital. The West was coming to realize that its earlier optimistic estimate of the amount of land capable of being irrigated could not be attained without government aid, that is, Federal aid. As a result, westerners-or at least some-swallowed their prejudices in behalf of state ownership and opposition to Federal development of the arid lands waned. If the public lands were not to be ceded to the states, could not the income from them be used to build the high dams and the long canals and purchase necessary sites that had been permitted to fall into private hands? Friends of agriculture had already pointed the way in the Hatch Act of 1887 and the Second Morrill Act of 1890 whereby Congress, instead of giving the states and territories an additional grant of 45 Henry W. Palmer, Pennsylvania Representative, mentioned the high rate of failure on Jan. 21, 1902, Cong. Globe, 57th Cong., 1st sess., p. 841. The factors contributing to failure are summarized in Ray Palmer Teele, Irrigation in the United States, a Discussion of its Legal, Economic and Financial Aspects (New York, 1915), pp. 133-34. |
