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STOP LAND-STEALING.
First Step Toward National Irrigation
—Evils Due to Desert Land and
Commutation Laws —Why
Private Schemes for
Irrigation Fail.
(William E. Smythe, author of "Con
quest of Arid America.")
The operations of the land laws of
the United States have been in the
main beneficent. The dominant idea
in public land administration that
homemakers would be given a part of
Uncle Sam's vast public domain has
caused the westward movement of the
sturdy sons of our New England and
Eastern farmers, and has attracted
other thousands of the better class of
European emigrants. The result has
been a great homemaking movement
which has civilized and settled the
Mississippi valley and the states to
the westward in an incomparably
short period. But the land laws which
have made possible this great move
ment have likewise benefited the land
speculator, and in some sections, un
der their loose administration, great
areas have been wrongfully and fraud
ulently acquired and to the great
detriment of the country. The desert
land law is responsible for the great
est of the land frauds.
It would be erroneous to suppose,
however, that all the stealing of the
public lands has been accomplished
under this law. On the contrary, there
is not a land law on the statute books
which has not been abused to a great
er or less extent. Even the beneficent
homestead law —of glorious tradition
—has frequently been made an instru
ment of injustice and a plaything of
speculation by means of its notorious
"commutation clause." Both have
been misapplied by greedy and dis
honest men, who have looked upon the
public property merely as a means of
private speculation.
But the desert land law is singular
in this—that there never was even
the shadow of an excuse for its exist
ence from the standpoint of the home
seeker. It has been a hypocritical
pretense of benefit to the homeseek
ing public, when it could not possibly
be used for such a purpose in the vast
majority of instances.
Put Water on Land First.
From our years of experience with
the desert land law, and with other
enactments made in connection with
the public domain, the American
people should learn one lesson and
write it in luminous letters upon their
hearts. That lesson is this:
This Government should not offer
one single acre for settlement until it
has been made fit for settlement. The
arid land cannot be fit for settlement
until water has been made available
for its irrigation.
What social tragedies have followed
the disregard of this simple rule!
What precious years have been wasted
by whole families and entire communi
ties! What beautiful homes have been
bulded in hope, to be abandoned in
despair! What seeds have been plant
ed only to wither and die—seeds not
merely of fields and orchards, but of
institutions as well! Joaquin Miller
once told me the whole story in a
single explosive and dramatic sen
tence when he exclaimed:
"Arid America! My God, we have
watered it with our tears!"
Our arid lands legislation has not
only been such as to do injustice to
the homeseeker, but such as to bring
little or no advantage, in the edn, to
those who have sought to use these
laws as a means of exploiting the
homeseeker. How many of the specu
lative irrigation enterprises have made
profits for those who actually invested
the capital? A distinction should be
drawn between the promoter and the
real investor. Sometimes the former
has made money, but it is seldom in
deed that the latter has done so.
This is not because the desert land
law and the commutation clause of
the homestead law do not offer every
opportunity far abuse. It is due rather
to the fact that, save in exceptional
instances, the reclamation of new
countries is inherently an unprofitable
investment for private capital. The
enterprise is surrounded by too many
unknown factors; the settlement of
the lands is seldom to be controlled
with any certainty; too long a time is
required to get the country establish
ed on a dividend-paying basis. All
this has been proven over and over
"again in the experience of nearly
every state and territory in the West.
Why Private Irrigation Fails.
But these facts do not constitute an
argument against public enterprise in
the same field.
Irrigation is always a paying in
vestment from the standpoint of social
and economic gains. With private
capital, large and early dividends are
the chief consideration, but the pri
mary object of the investment of pub
lic capital is to increase the general
prosperity. This is accomplished when
the opportunity for homemaking is
opened for thousands; when the
amount of taxable property is in
creased; when business is created for
merchants, manufacturers and rail
roads. With these benefits to be scor
ed on the credit side of its ledger, the
Government .may well afford to wait
a long time for direct returns from its
irrigation investments, but private
capital is in no such position.
The misfortunes which settlers have
suffered in dealing with speculative
irrigation companies furnish several
important counts of the people's in
dictment of the desert land law.
Large irrigation undertakings have
frequently been started by men whose
means were entirely inadequate to the
enterprise. Very often they have in
vited settlement before they had them
selves done anything except to make
preliminary surveys. They had no ex
istence except in their imagination.
Strangely enough, settlers have often
made haste to purchase such paper
"rights" and thus to furnish the pro
motors with capital to be used in the
exploitation of those who supplied it.
If settlers had thereby obtained water
for their land, even upon these unfair
terms, the case would not Lave been
so bad. But usually they did not get
water for their lands. The amount of
money which could be obtained from
settlers in advance of the construction
of works was seldom suffcient for the
purpose. Thus neither t.ho settler
nor the promoter had anything to
show for their investment and labor.
In this way thousands of people dis
sipated their savings and lost valuable
time. The Western states are strewn
with irrigation wrecks of this sort.
Evils of Speculation.
All the heart-breaking evils which
the settlers of our arid public domain
have suffered are due to bad land laws,
chiefly to the desert land law and to
the commutation clause of the home
stead act. These laws are totally un
suiteri for the conditions to which
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they have been applied. They are a
disgrace to the Government and a dis
grace to the American people.
They have enabled wealthy individ
uals and corporations to carve lordly
private estates from the public do
main.
They have permitted a few men to
acquire and hold out of use, for self
ish and speculative purposes, lands
which are needed to make homes for
the masses of our people.
They have encouraged private enter
prises to enter a field where, in the na
ture of things, it could not be success
ful, but could only involve its own
capital in a hazardous adventure and
thereby do great injury to the irriga
tion industry and to the West.
They have furnished the means by
which settlers were deluded into in
vesting their capital and their labor
in dangerous and often disastrous at
tempts at home making.
They even now stand in the way of
progress by blockading the path of
national irrigation and permitting
speculators and adventurers to take
up lands which will be required in the
operation of the new national policy.
Repeal Desert and Cummutation Law.
For all these reasons the desert land
laws and the commutation clause of
the homestead act should be promptly
repealed as recommended by Presi
dent Roosevelt in his message to con
gress.
From this day forth the Government
should not offer a single acre for set
tlement. Repealing the laws by which
land is now acquired in large tracts,
and without actual residence and im
provement, the Government should
proceed to withdraw from entry all
lands where there is any thought of
applying the national policy. This
done, it should go forward as rapidly
as possible with actual reclamation.
It should bring under thorough and re
liable irrigation every acre which it
purposes hereafter to open to settle
ment.
What would this policy mean to the
people of the United States? First of
all, it would mean "a home for every
man who wants one." It would mean
that we had stopped looting the peo
ple's estate and begun saving the
people's estate. It would mean that
we had reached the end of the wild
orgy of speculation in the natural re
cources of the West and entered upon
a period of sound and sober indus
trialism. It would mean that when a
settler got ready to claim his share
of the national heritage he would ob
tain not only fertile soil, but the water
necessary to make it a self-sustaining
home and that that water right was
guaranteed by the Government of the
United States.
This is, beyond all comparison, the
greatest thing ever attempted by the
American people. Let it be done, and
let it be done right. The first step in
this great and inspiring drama of
the future is to stop the stealing of
the public domain by repealing the
present vicious and inexcusable land
laws.
In order to follow intelligently the
advance of the wireless telegraphy
from the beginning, some rough idea
must be had of the modern physicist's
view regarding the nature of electrical
phenomena. To this end all space
must be regarded as permeated by a
something, termed the luminiferous
ether. Not only does this ether per
meate the spaces between the heaven
ly bodies and our atmosphere (which
conception offers little difficulty to the
lay mind), but it also permeates all
solids. Further, its nature is such
that the movement even of solids is
not in the least restrained by such per
meation, the closest analogy being
that of a sieve, representing the solid,
being moved about in water, represent
ing the ether.
The ether is the seat not only of all
electrical phenomena, but also of all
the phenomena of light and heat. All
of these, apparently so distinct, are
but the result of vibrations, or waves,
on the ether, the apparent differences
being due only to differences in the
length of the waves and the rapidity
with which they occur, just as one mu
sical note differs from another in the
same particulars, only that the sound
waves are air waves and not ether
waves.
Now, with the usual telegraphic
methods, the current, as it is termed,
is sent or directed through space by
means of a metallic conductor. Actu
ally nothing passes through the wire,
as is implied by the use of the word
"current." What actually takes place
is the transmission of energy along
the path of the wire by means of y\
brations in the neighboring ether.
That is, the metal of the wire acts
merely as a guide for the ether waves
to the destination desired.
,In wireless telegraphy ether vibra
tions are also set up at the transmit
ting station, but these, having no con
ducting guide, radiate in all directions
through space, and a small percentage
of them arrives at the receiving sta
tion, and by means of suitable appara
tus are made appreciable by the
senses, or recorded.
