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Show RECLAMATION OF THE ARID LANDS 661 Growing Pains of Reclamation For years before 1902 land speculators had been ranging over the arid West looking for possible sites for reservoirs and land that might be irrigated from them. The Act of 1888 was a farsighted measure designed to anticipate speculators by reserving such sites as should be selected after careful topographical studies. Lack of liaison between Congress and the Land Office had, however, brought the withdrawal power, as interpreted by the latter, into such disrepute that use of the withdrawal power had been halted. As a result, when the dam on Salt River was being planned, it was found that the private land to be drowned would cost the government over $20 an acre.74 This was land which a few years earlier had gone begging. Almost everywhere that projects were adopted it was found necessary to buy at inflated prices land for construction sites and canals, and to deal with owners who held much, in many cases most, of the land to be irrigated. As soon as it was known that the government planned to build a reclamation project in an area there immediately followed a rush for land. Thus at the first announcement of the Minidoka development on the Snake River near Twin Falls, Idaho, intended to irrigate an area practically all of which was still in government hands, there was a rush to acquire the land and within a few months every one of the approximately 1,000 tracts to be benefited was entered. Many, possibly most, of the entries were made for speculation, not farm making, and it was -expected that a large number of the settlers would fail to comply with the requirements of the homestead law. Director Newell took comfort out of the fact that a large number of en- tries were contested, which indicated to him that speculation or no speculation, the land would be developed.75 In 1907 Newell complained that many of the speculators refused to prepare their land for cultivation or to contribute either money or labor to the construction of the local ditches they would use in common with their neighbors. The bona fide settler, being obliged to do more than his share in building the lateral ditches, planned too narrowly and consequently many laterals had been constructed too small and would have to be enlarged.70 Newell was thoroughly committed to the view that "the object of the reclamation law is primarily to put the public domain into the hands of small land owners-men who live upon the land, support themselves, make prosperous homes, and become purchasers of the goods manufactured in the East and the cotton raised in the South." He wrote again in 1910, "homes for an independent self-supporting citizenship" were the fundamental purpose of the act.77 Yet he had to learn that both the speculator and the land agents were always present wherever government land was available and not infrequently did much damage to plans seemingly designed to assure "land for the landless." In the Uncompahgre Valley real estate agents conducted such an active advertising campaign from the beginning of the project (it was to take years to complete) that settlers were brought in well ahead of water, one year in advance upon the lower areas, 2 years or more on the higher areas. Similarly, the Minidoka project in the Snake River Valley settlers were encouraged to 74 Geological Survey, Twenty-Fifth Annual Report, 1904, p. 287. 76 Reclamation Service, Fourth Annual Report, 1905, p. 138. 76 Reclamation Service, Fifth Annual Report, 1907, pp. 85-86. 77 Lampen, Economic and Social Aspects of Federal Reclamation, pp. 49-50. |