Churchill standard. (Fallon, Nev) 1903-1908, 1906-09-22
NEWS NOTES AND COMMENT
THE LAW
CONTRIBUTED
". c. Black, Editor

M man can predict with any degree of certainty what { lew
~ years will bring forth Tor the Truckee-Carsonp project set
60 tiers because the terms of the law under which the project
must operate, is 50 vague in its meaning, and SO indefinite III ITS
construction, that today, although more than four years have ell
apsed since the Reclamation law was enacted, the interpretations
of this law and Its individual clauses have been SO conflicting ina
utter confusion reigns supreme in the minds of the settlers.
We are not going to engage in critical remarks regarding
the work of the engineers, but there has been a dismal failure on
the part of the Washington authorities to properly define the
homebuilders' rights, and there has also been a lack of appreaa-
ton of the work that falls to him in the development OF the ard
regions.
For instance the man who builds a home in the Carson Sink
= section more than ordinarily favored by climatic conditions,
must under the supposedly existing conditions, be not only a man
of Drawn and industry, but must also have a goodly sum, say
three thousand dollars. Without this sum, his first Improvements
consisting ofland leveling, house and fence building can not be
made. To use the words of a prominent reclamation official 'un-
less a man has more than strength and industry, he can never sue
coed in the Carson Sink, because the government has nothing here
to give away" Now, this is obviously wrong. President Roose-
velt said recently in connection with the reclamation law, ut is
not a money making scheme, but is rather a benilcent act, having
for its sole purpose the creation of homes
If this is the case, why should the settler be required to rem
brree the Government for its expenditure, in bringing the various
irrigation systems to a state of perfection. With their completion
do not these systems assume at once the nature oil public ntlht1esf
Whoever heard of the benefciaries of a federal improvement pay
ing back its cost into the United States treasury? Upon the CO.
lnmbia river, a canal was cut around dangerous rapids some
twenty years aAo, at an expenditure OF ten million dollars, a sum
greatly in excess of the estimated cost of the Truckee-
Carson irrigation project. Since the completion Of
locks and canal, not more than ten thousand people have been
served on an average. yet should these people be requested to pay
our Uncle Samuel back his ten millions, on the installment plan,
they would rightly regard the request as a huge joke.
On the other hand, we have in The reclamation law, an exam
pie of the inconsistency of men who legislate supposedly for the
neople. Our project will cost when completed approximately
seven OF eight millions of dollars, and will serve twenty thousand
people directly and the whole state of Nevada indirectly, yet these
same people are required to pay the government back money,
which they helped to create, and are made to understand that in
this transaction, for the first time, a public utility IS being buhded
upon purely a business basis. Quite n different condition from
that existing when the lands of the West were still public domain!
Lands that were ST. angey favored by nature; level and Watered'
Did the government undertake to sell those lands! Although
they certainly had a substantial intrinsic value by reason of the
natural advantages named, which was added too by the settlers
efforts, to whom did this value go?
But we find the original law supplemented with the reelana
ton law. The question that now arises in the minds of the set
tiers is this: will any settler who exercises ordinary thrift and
industry in the development of his claim, be deprived Oft, III de