Vol. XVI

No. 3

HE passage of the Reclamation Act marks the commencement of an important epoch in American legislation. The national government, under this act, for the first time went into business-a business in which all the people were stockholders, and of which all the people were to be the beneficiaries. Prior to that time, whenever government participation in business was suggested, it took the form of government subsidy to great corporations about to enter upon enterprises of magnitude that were supposed to be for the public good. Steamship lines were subsidized, the bonds of railroad corporations were guaranteed, and large grants of public lands were made to them. Taxes were imposed upon imported goods in order to enable the manufacturers of domestic goods to receive a larger price. In all this legislation capital was made the beneficiary, upon the assumption that aid given to private capital would eventually filter down to the masses of the people.

The Reclamation Act was a great piece

of social and business legislation which disregarded entirely the intervention of private capital, and utilized the public property and the public money for a business undertaking intended to be of the widest application and benefit. The great public domain with its vast regions of hidden and exposed wealth-wealth of iron, of coal, of timber and of soil-had been largely disposed of, part of it wisely under homestead laws dividing the cultivatable lands into small holdings and promoting the creation of individual homes; part of it unwisely, permitting the aggregation of vast areas of irrigable desert lands, of timber lands, of coal lands, and iron deposits to drift into the hands of great and farsighted monopolies.

After a long struggle it was determined, so far as the arid lands-apparently the most worthless of all-were concerned, to withhold them from this wasteful policy of consolidation and monopoly. It was determined that the nation collectively should enter into the business of reclaiming these lands, of building the great storage and irrigation works necessary for such reclamation, of dividing

these lands into small holdings, each of such acreage, to be determined according to the productiveness of the soil, as would support a family, and of selling such holdings to homeseekers and homemakers for the mere cost of reclamation upon long time and liberal terms. The nation was to furnish the capital, the nation was to do the work, and ownership was to be ultimately vested in large numbers of small proprietors, upon terms just to the nation and regardful of the self-respect of the individual.

A reclamation fund was created from the sale of public lands, a revolving fund, to be used over and over again in accomplishing its beneficent purpose. The moneys expended in the first place in the completion of great projects were to be returned to the fund by purchasers of the lands reclaimed, and used over again in similar projects.

After the disposal of the major portion of the lands in each project, the irrigation works were to pass under the management and operation of the owners of the land irrigated thereby, but the reservoirs and the works necessary for their protection and operation were to remain in the government. Thus, collectivism was ployed gradually to promote individualism, the nation retaining the ownership and control only of those great reservoirs upon whose future enlargement might depend the further expansion of reclamation.

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This great work was put upder the control of the Geological Survey, a scientific branch of the Interior Department, composed of men who had for years been making a study of the earth's surface in all that related to geology, topography and stream measurement; a service entirely disconnected from politics, and composed of trained and educated men whose ideals lifted them above mere commercialism, and made good service for the whole people their highest ambition. Power was given to the Secretary of the Interior to determine what projects were practicable, and to enter without further authority upon immediate immediate construction. There were to be no delays in appropriation, no delays in construction, and no limitations upon the powers of the Secretary except that the works should be completed by contract, and that no contract should be

let unless the moneys for its payment were in the fund.

Under this act nearly $30,000,000 has been paid into the reclamation fund, operations have been commenced in thirteen states and three territories, enormous projects are now under process of construction, and the triumphal completion of one was celebrated in Nevada last year-within three years after the passage of the act. The work has been done with quickness, with efficiency, and with honesty; not a breath of scandal thus far has tainted any of the work entered upon.

The act was careful to guard against monopoly of the great arid domain now in the ownership of the government. It guarded against monopoly by providing, as to the land reclaimed, that no grant should be made for more than 160 acres. Thus the concentration in single ownership of land reclaimed by the government was avoided, and the menace of land monopoly averted. As to the land in private ownership coming within the beneficial operation of this act, it was provided that no water right for more than 160 acres should be granted to any proprietor of land within reach of the irrigation project. Such a proprietor may have thousands of acres of land, but he can only get a water right from the government for 160 acres, and the application of water from government works upon vast areas held in single ownership can only be secured by division and sale of the land into small holdings of not more than 160 acres. So this act guards not only against monopoly of arid lands in the future, but destroys existing monopoly, and is gradually disintegrating these great holdings without injury to the proprietors and with benefit to the entire country.

Doubtless in the near future the reclamation service, in laying out the public lands under the various projects, will provide for well-planned towns in which the owners of the adjoining farms will gather for social, educational and religious purposes. Intensive cultivation, which irrigation facilitates, will so promote small holdings as to enable the residents of these towns to be within easy reach of their farms. Reservations will be made for schools, libraries, churches and public squares. Water, sewerage and electric light systems will be planned and pro