The Florence tribune., 1899-06-17

lands within reach of the individual effort, so that when he sets his blow in the desert the water will follow the furrow. Create conditions which will, without loading them down with debt, give to the settlers who are now tilling these arid lands with insufficient water supplies, enough to insure their pros perity and enough to enable new set tiers to go out and take up homes on the public lands and build for them selves and with their own labor and teams and sarapers, the distributing canals and laterals necessary to bring the water to their land. This may easily be done by the construction by the federal government of the storage reservoirs to save the waters now wasted in winter floods and by allow tug tho states to lease the public graz ing lands, and uae the revenues to build the large main line canals neces- sary to bring the water within this in- dividua4 reach Of the settler.
 "This whole plan has been gradual ly evolved through a series of years by the National Irrigation Congress, which has held. seven annual sessions, and is embodied in its resolutions; and is in brief us follows:
 "'ta) Where the government owns the land, it shonld, wherever it is necessary, build the irrigation works to reclaim it, and sell the land and water together to actual settlers only in small tracts for the cost of construc- ton of distribution systems added to the government price of the land The cost of storage reservoirs should not be put on the land
 "tAll storage reservoirs should be built as internal improvements, and permanently maintained by the state or federal government, as an absolute assurance of safety to communities on the land below them. In DO other way can the inherent fear of settle ment under reservoir systems be over come.
 SkThe government has 100000, 900 acres of arid public lands which can be reclaimed by irrigation, and could sell and settle it just as fast as it could re- claim it. An Oklahoma stampede would follow the opening to settlement of every tract So reclaimed.
 "'Money paid by the government for labor would come back to pay for land Aen wanting homes would seek this employment to get money to buy ihe land
 lb) Federal storage reservoirs to save the waters which now go te. waste and do damage and destruction below should be built as part of the estab lished national policy of internal i'm provements, the use of the water ss stored to be free to the people forever without toll or charge of any kind | and to be distributed under the law, of the states, as recommended in tn, report of Colonel Hiram NJ. Chittender on Reservoir Sites and urged by the resolutions of the Irrigation Congress
 esThe. share which ought to go tc the arid states and territories out oi the aggregate disbursements from the ,. national treasury for internal improve ments should be devoted to the build ing of these storage reservoirs within their borders. Why should the arit west not have its share of the vas s1ms of money expended for interna improvements? What reason is ther, that the west should continue con tributing to build internal improve ments for the east and south, unles, the westis given an equitable propor tion of'ah moneys expended for sucl purposes?
 "(c) Forests should be preserved and reforested where necessary, a natural reservoirs and sources of wate supply; and the public grazing land should be leased and the revenue derived therefrom used to build larg irrigation works, such as reservoirs main canals, and great dams or diver sion works, which would be beyon, the scope of the resources of the lam owners. Such works should be main tained, controlled, and operated by tn states, just as they are by the Britis government in India.
 " '(d) Systems for the distributio and delivery of. water to irrigators after the water supplies have bee made available to them through tn adoption of the policy above set fortI should be organized as co-operativ water companies, with the stock per petually appurtenant to the land, s that farmers could build the canal and ditches themselves, as was done b the early Mormon settlers, and thu get irrigation without debt, and shar , the burdens aud benefits of the wate , system in the proportion of their r,