accordance with the advice of trained
experts, after long investigation has shown the locality where all the
conditions combine to make the work most needed and fraught with the
greatest usefulness to the community as a whole. There should be no
extravagance, and the believers in the need of irrigation will most
benefit their cause by seeing to it that it is free from the least
taint of excessive or reckless expenditure of the public moneys.

Whatever the nation does for the extension of irrigation should
harmonize with, and tend to improve, the condition of those now living
on irrigated land. We are not at the starting point of this development.
Over two hundred millions of private capital has already been expended
in the construction of irrigation works, and many million acres of arid
land reclaimed. A high degree of enterprise and ability has been shown
in the work itself; but as much cannot be said in reference to the laws
relating thereto. The security and value of the homes created depend
largely on the stability of titles to water; but the majority of these
rest on the uncertain foundation of court decisions rendered in ordinary
suits at law. With a few creditable exceptions, the arid States have
failed to provide for the certain and just division of streams in times
of scarcity. Lax and uncertain laws have made it possible to establish
rights to water in excess of actual uses or necessities, and many
streams have already passed into private ownership, or a control
equivalent to ownership.

Whoever controls a stream practically controls the land it renders
productive, and the doctrine of private ownership of water apart from
land cannot prevail without causing enduring wrong. The recognition of
such ownership, which has been permitted to grow up in the arid regions,
should give way to a more enlightened and larger recognition of the
rights of the public in the control and disposal of the public water
supplies. Laws founded upon conditions obtaining in humid regions, where
water is too abundant to justify hoarding it, have no proper application
in a dry country.

In the arid States the only right to water which should be recognized
is that of use. In irrigation this right should attach to the land
reclaimed and be inseparable therefrom. Granting perpetual water rights
to others than users, without compensation to the public, is open to all
the objections which apply to giving away perpetual franchises to the
pu