Weekly journal-miner., 1909-12-01
THE RECLAMATION SERVICE.

The law setting aside the proceeds of sales of public lands in the west ern States. to be applied to the car rving ont of irrigation projects com mercially impossible by private cap ital. was a just, wise and beneheent .ct There is some reason to believe that the good intentions of the pup lie have not been carried out with good judgment or wisdom and that Congress itself was, on the one hand, too lavish in donating the money or the people to individuals, and, on the other hand, has imposed on those ln- dividuals conditions which the ma iority of them will be unable toI meet. There is no justification m giving away ten years interest on the purchase money of a farm, nor, on the other hand, will it, under conditions as they exist in most pro- iects. be possible for farmers ot small means to improve and stock their farms. build roads and public buildings and pay for the whole Tn ten years from the products of the land. In other countries where such things are done, interest IS included at about one-half of one per cent more than the Government pays, and the payment distributed over 25 or 30 years-of course, with the right to pay up as fast as possible.
 The evidence of bad administra- tion is conclusive, for there has ae- eumulated a virtual debt, said to be about $1O,OOO,OOO, that is to say, pro- jects have been begun so greatly Tn excess of the ability of the fund to carry out, that to complete them all within a reasonable time $10,- 100000 will be required, which the fund will not provide. There can be no excuse for that, and the responsi- bility must rest with the reclamation officials who recommend the projects and the Secretary of the Interior who approved them. It was the re- suit, partly, of injudicious legislation regulating the geographical distribu' tion of the fund, partly from the clamor of local boomers, and partly from an extravagant desire of the Reclamation Service to spread itself all over the country. There are alsC assertions-h well founded we dc not knOw-that some of the projects the Gunnison tunnel, for example, art costing so very much more than tht estimates that the cost never can bC repaid from the products of the lan( to be irrigated. If these staIement' are not true they should be author itatively denied, for they are com ing to be believed.
 While the Government land unde these projects can be-must be-takel up under the homestead act, the set tiers must pay pro rata the cost O the works, and an annual operating fee. which makes the farms cost iron S25 to $40 an acre, and, ii, is al legged, in some cases far more. Thi IS for the bare land and water, usu ally located at a considerable distanc from any market, and expected 10 b devoted to the products of intensiv cultivation, with whose methods mos American farmers are unfamiliar Such land, thus located, at thos prices, cannot possibly sell to respor sible farmers in competition with th free prairie lands of Canada, or th old improved farms of the Atlanti States. It seems to have been, many of these projects, the antic patton by half century of a d
 mand for the land and water at wh;
 they will cost. The report of u
 Congressional committee which h;
 been investigating these projects wi
 be awaited with interest.-San Fra
 cisco Chronicle.