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Show RECLAMATION OF THE ARID LANDS G73 projects by $200 an acre or a total of $350 million and that in private projects supplied with water by the government under the Warren Act the average value had increased by $100 an acre, or $100 million. The combined total of enhanced value was $450 million. This figure, when compared with the total net cost of all government projects, successful and unsuccessful, then $130,742,488, would appear to prove that the government's investment in reclamation projects had been a fine piece of business. The catch is that whether or not land values had risen to the extent stated, they did nothing to repay the government the sums it had invested. The amount being collected in water charges to cover construction costs was not encouraging. By 1921 only $10,677,250 in construction costs had been paid and a considerable part of it had come not from water rents but from power income. Furthermore, in 1921 only $1,380,000 was paid on construction costs. Reclamation was a boon to the owners of land who clearly had been given large benefits.117 The fault with the calculations of Reclamation Service officials is that they refused to face the fact that the Service was performing a task assigned it, perhaps on the false assumption that it would pay off in returned dollars, and when they recognized that it could not they resorted to what amounts to circumlocution to prove good results. Reclamation farmers had done their best to expand their output during the World War, partly as a result of Herbert Hoover's plea that "Food Will Win the War," and, like other staple crop producers elsewhere, they had enjoyed the benefits of high prices, which lasted until mid-1920. Between 1916 and 1921, 5,499 new homestead filings in irrigation projects had been made and 3,949 homesteads had been carried to final entry and title. A better index of the expansion of irrigation on Federal projects in this same period is that of the increase of irrigated acreage from 922,821 in 1916 to 2,228,750 in 1921 or a 70 percent increase. Thereafter, with the exception of 6 unusually unfavorable years (1922, 1924, 1932-34, and 1938) the irrigable acreage increased in regular progression as new projects were completed and additional water was provided to older ones. In mid-1920 prices fell disastrously, marking the beginning of a long period of agricultural distress, that was serious within the reclamation projects.118 The annual crop value of the irrigated acreage fell from $152,978,887 in 1919 to $83,601,-690 in 1922 and was not to reach the 1919 figure again until 1929, by which time there were 29 percent more irrigable acres being watered by Federal projects. Settlers in the project areas, who had early begun to fall into arrears in their payments, felt the decline severely, the more so as many had bought their land during the years of inflation. The 1918 and 1919 rate of delinquency was 14-15 percent, in 1920 it was "higher," and in 1921 and 1922 it was .39-40 percent.119 The fact was that the post-war agricultural letdown bore heavily on the indebted farmers within reclamation projects. Immediate relief was necessary, for under the law persons delinquent in their payments were not entitled to receive water, and their contracts were subject to cancellation. Doubtless some administrative relief had 117 The data is from the Twentieth Annual Report, 8 ff. 118 James H. Shideler, Farm Crisis, 1919-1923 (Berkeley, 1957), esp. Chap. II, "Agriculture's Price Panic." Data on irrigable acreage and its crop value within Federal reclamation projects provided by Floyd E. Dominy, Commissioner, Bureau of Reclamation, March 7, 1968. 119 These figures were offered in the congressional discussion by Representative Kinkaid and others. Cong. Record, 67th Cong., 2d sess., Feb. 28, 1922, p. 3174. |