Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1894-02-22
AGAINST IRRIGATION.
Congressman Cooper Opposes a Glut
Of Land Culture.


pointed TO 90 thing wnlcn congress, Iof
the present at least, is determined shall
not be done. He very naturally feels, there
fore, that the interested public ought to
understand the situation and stop bother
ing about it. When the grand irrigators
descended upon congress few years ago
with the proposition that all the surplus
which then troubled SO many statesmen
should be used up in grand irrlgatlng
works, congress named u new committee
On the subject and appointed investiga-
tors. The latter, Major Powell. the noted
explorer of the Colorado, being their CHIEF
spokesman, reported in favor OF the sys
TEN, which would have cost, first and last,
somewhere between 1000, 100000 and
So, 0O0, 900 900. BY the time this was fully
understood, however, the surplus was gone,
and the committee had time to think the
thing over, and now, says Chairman Coop
er: at is about as certain as anything IN
legislation can be that nothing whatever
will be done for several years. 1t certain
~ will be nothing if it depends on me.
The Arid Lands.
ave have learned this: All those inter
ested in the matter may be divided into
three classes. The first class, and by far
the largest, wants the land all given to the
state in which it is situated, and their ar
gument is ingenious. They say that in
the middle especially Indiana, Hi
nois and Michigan, after all the available
land was sold, congress gave the swamp
land to the states. In our own state, you
know meaning Indiana), nearly the whole
Kankakee country is still in swamp, and
the state has never fulfilled the implied
obligation of draining it. These fellows
use those grants as precedent and sey
that nature has simply reversed herself
out west-where we had too much water
they have too little-and by the same rule
the arid lands should belong to the states.
'The next class, not so large, but rather
more logical, declare with vehemence that
the scheme of reclamation by states is ut
terly impracticable. as the water is very
often in one state and the land to be re-
claimed in another-that is, great stream
like the Arkansas or Platte has very
large volume in Colorado, but in the irr
eating season, or indeed in the driest sea
son before irrigation was established, the
water nearly all disappears before one
reaches the boundary of the next state east
ward.
ain fact, there have been seasons when
one might travel for Is miles along the
bed of the South Platte and not see water,
although there was really a great deal
Just below the sand surface. Furthermore,
these cannot be called navigable streams
even BIZ the latitudinarian construction
which the supreme court has lately put
upon that phrase, So congress could not
interfere with any disposal Of the water
made by the higher states. In short, the
state which has the land about headwa.
tiers has the wafer, and there would be no
help for it. Therefore, say these men. CON
gress should divide the whole country into
irrigation districts irrespective of state
lines and provide Il general and compre-
hensive system. Otherwise there will be
an oppressive and really outrageous water
monopoly.
"There is third class which you may
call the paternaists-the kind of fellows
who want the government to do every
thing that needs doing and make every
body virtuous and happy by act of con-
gress These fellows want Us to go in and
spend lots OF money, hundreds OF millions
of ito spend money everywhere for
which any pretense can be found under any
clause of the constitution; to bore artesian
wells on all the Indian reservations; to
bore them all along the post roads and
government mail routes and wherever else
the slightest pretense of constitutional
right can be found for it. In short, they
adopt the broadcast construction put forth
by the old internal revenue men, and want
all streams canalized for irrigating pur-
poses, and all the rest of the dry country
fertilized by artesian wells, and all at the
expense of the general government. These
men look upon government as perennial
fountain of bcneficence and never bother
their heads about how the money is to be
got in before it is paid out.
Artesian Wells n Failure.
"Now, hadn't gone into this thing very
far before became fourth party--a par
ty by myself. l was convinced by the ev-
idence that artesian wells were failure
for irrigation purposes, except under ex-
tremely favorable circumstances, and l
didn't think it the business of the govern
ment to bore them anyhow. Furthermore,
there is no necessity for the government to
enter upon such work and will not be for
25 or perhaps so years.
"This dollhouse system of forcing the
growth of the remote west has resulted in
a general robbery OF the farmers in all
that part of the country east of the Mis-
sissippi. You know how it was done.
There was great anxiety to tie the Pa
cifc states to the Union, and SO the Union
Pacific railway was subsidized to an OK
tent which made dozens of millionaires
and created our greatest national scandal.
The precedent once set was followed up
in the case of SO many roads that, by am
porting farmers from Europe and the east.
several hundred thousand square miles Of
new land were brought suddenly into
grain growing, and the farmers of the old
er states were almost ruined.
Dead Against It.
Snow, what these fellows propose, dis
guise it as they may. is that all these
farmers shall be double taxed once more
in order to create another glut of land cul-
ture, il one may SO speak, Mt any rate to
greatly lenRthen the present glut of grain
production to their own injury. OF course
they try to whip the devil around the
stump by talking as if money could be
got out of the treasury without taxing
any body any heavenly some financial
hugger-mugger, like taxing the foreigner,
for instance, but the plain English Of this
grand irrigation scheme is that the farm
ers of Indiana, Illinois, ETC., along with
k-lr IL. Il. 4. \