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Show 672 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT lators," and that "the greater percentage of the lands under the reclamation projects is in the hands of speculators, the smaller portion being in the hands of actual settlers," that in his report he devoted two paragraphs to showing that these charges were "not altogether correct." He conceded that much land within the project areas had been withheld from settlement for higher prices, and that many settlers had paid excessively high prices for their tracts but he was certain that the greater part of the reclaimed lands was in the hands of small owners who were trying to cultivate it and were complying with the residence and improvement requirements. He also maintained that the larger owners were selling off their tracts in small quantities, as the Newlands Act had contemplated, but he offered no evidence for his statement.112 Elsewhere he declared that the distress of settlers on reclamation projects had been caused for the most part by the high prices they had paid in buying land of speculators, or from previous settlers, thereby assuming a burden of interest at 8 to 12 percent and heavy taxes in addition to the water charges. It was the "many pitiable instances of this kind," said Newell, that led to the insertion in the Extension Act of a provision empowering the Secretary of the Interior to fix the price at which excess lands might be sold.113 Unfortunately, this provision afforded little relief, for the excess-land holder could sell a small tract to a middleman at the price the officials set and the middleman was then free to sell at the full speculative price land was bringing at the time. It never proved easy to outguess the speculator.114 The application of the land limitation provision of the Newlands Act had been somewhat enlarged by the adoption of the Warren Act of February 21, 1911. Primarily designed to permit the Secretary of the Interior to furnish water to individuals, corporations, associations, and irrigation districts wherever the source of water for a project was greater than its needs, the Warren Act required that "water shall not be furnished from any such reservoir or delivered through any such canal or ditch to any one landowner in excess of an amount sufficient to irrigate one hundred and sixty acres." Water was thus to be made available for the irrigation of tracts no larger than 160 acres outside the projects but there was no provision requiring such users to dispose of their excess lands.115 By 1915 water was being delivered to 36 irrigation, ditch, and canal companies but the Director of the Reclamation Service provided no information concerning effect of the land limitation provision.11" Mounting Costs Criticisms of the reclamation program, the need to hasten construction in order that settlers could have the vital water, the necessity for extending payments from 10 to 20 years, the failure to plan for drainage and seepage, together with the numerous errors in selecting and constructing some projects, all combined to make officials slow to suggest new projects. The Director tried to present the work of the Reclamation Service in the best possible light by giving emphasis in his reports and in other literature to the high average value of crops produced and the rapid appreciation of the value of the land within the projects. For example, in 1921, when troubles were again piling up, the Director stressed that government irrigation had increased the average value of land within 112 Thirteenth Annual Report, 1914, pp. 19-20. 113 Ibid., pp. 26-28. 114 Fifteenth Annual Report, 1916, p. 11. 116 36 Stat. 925. 118 Reclamation Service, Fourteenth Annual Report, 1915, pp. 26-27. |