Santa Fe new Mexican. [volume] (Santa Fe, N.M.) 1898-1951, 1907-08-21
Subject of Address
Before Bar AS
sociation
BY PRESIDENT RENEHAN
Criticises The Governments
Policy From Legal
Standpoint

The Territorial Bar Association met
today at Roswell in regular annual
session, according to call. The at
tendance from the central part of the
Territory was not all that was de-
sired, but it was fair. President A.
b. Renehan, of the association, this
afternoon delivered lengthy address,
taking for his principal subject Fed
eral Policy Touching the Rio Grande
and It's Tributaries"
The address is too lengthy for en-.
tire reproduction in the Daily New
Mexican but it's most salient fea-
lures are given. as it is of great in
terest to one of the legal fraternity
and also to laymen generally, and of
interest these times to the people of
the Territory. Mr.. Renehan said in
part:
Gentlemen of the New Mexico Bar
Associations
THE subject which | have selected
for my annual address, Federal Pol
icy Touching the Rio Grande and It's
Tributaries is one to which, I fear,
much bring neither the requisite
ability nor that full measure of in
dustry it ought to have. The policy
is momentous in it's consequences,
whether they be good or i'll, for to
them may be attributed the stagna-
ton and desolation of an immense
area of the Territory which must
come if the present plan is not modi-
fed, while comparatively limited
domain prospers and grows proud
from the same cause. Still, the legal
ity of the process, the laws of po-
litical economy which underlie it, and
the assumed necessities of statecraft
and international morality which pre-.
tendedly have dictated it, are worthy
of the best thought of layman and
lawyer, Of the industrialist and the
statesman, particularly those VINO ap
pertain to this emaculated sov-
ereignty.
"The President, in his first annual
message to Congress- on December 3,
1901, declared that
"'The reclamation and settlement
of the arid lands will enrich every
portion of our country. * In
deed, the products of irrigation will
be consumed chiefly in upbuilding To-
cal centers of mining and other in
dustries which would otherwise not
come into existence at all. Our peo-
pie as whole will profit, for success
full homemaking is but another name
for the upbuilding Of the nation
The RecIamtion Act and Its Purposes.
Congress, following the lead thus
given to it, soon thereafter passed the
so-called Reclamation Act, and pro-
vided that all moneys received from
the sale of public lands in certain |
arid states and territories, including
New Mexico, should be reserved as a |
special fund to be used in the ex-
animation and survey for and the con-
struction and maintenance of irriga- |
tion works for the storage, diversion |
and development of waters of the re-
clamation Of arid and semi-arid lands |
in said states and territories, and |
vested in the Secretary of the Inter-
ior definite and sufficient powers for
the execution of the enactment. No
table incidents of this legislation are:
The return to the reclamation fund
the estimated cost of the project by |
charges, payable in not exceeding ten
annual installments, laid upon irriga-
tion entries; the limitation of such
entries to tracts Of 160 acres; the
surrender of the management and op-
Grafton of irrigation works to the
owners Of the londs irrigated there
from, to be maintained at their eX-
pense, when the payments required
are made for the major portion of the
lands irrigated from the waters of
any of the works contemplated; and
that nothing in this act shall be con-
strued as affecting or intending to af-
feet or in anywise to interfere with
the laws of any state or territory re-
lating to the control, appropriation,
use or distribution of water used in
or any vested right ac-
quired Hereunder, and the Secretary
OF the Interior, in carrying out the
provisions of this act, shall proceed
in conformity with such laws, and
nothing herein. shall In any way at
feet any right of any state or of the
federal government or Of any land
owner, appropriation or user of water |
in, to or from any interstate stream
or the waters thereof /;
Agreement Between v. s. and Mexico.
"On January 16, 1907, there was