REPORT 
 
 OF THE 
 
 PROCEEDINGS 
 
 OF THE 
 
 ! STATE IRRIGATION CONVENTION 
 
 Hl-Ll) IX ELECTRIC HALL 
 
 IN THE 
 
 CITY OF HELENA/MONTANA, 
 
 Thursday, Friday and Saturday, 
 ANUARY 7, s AM) 9 1^92 
 
 WITH AN 
 
 APPRNDIX 
 
 tfwr 
 
 irrigation in the ( 
 
 HELENA, MONT.: 
 
 INDEPENDENT PUBLISHING CO. 
 1892 
 
REPORT 
 
 OF THE 
 
 PROCEEDINGS 
 
 OF THE 
 
 STATE IRRIGATION CONVENTION 
 
 HELD IN ELECTRIC HALL 
 
 IN THE 
 
 CITY OF HELENA, MONTANA, 
 
 ON 
 
 Thursday, Friday and Saturday, 
 JANUARY 7, 8 AND 9, 1892. 
 
 WITH AN 
 
 Showing the State of Irrigation in the Counties. 
 
 HELENA, MONT.: 
 
 INDEPENDENT PUBLISHING CO. 
 1892 
 
OFFICIAL REPORT. 
 
 Compiled by E. D. WEED, B. BROWN and W. C. CHILD, 
 composing the Publication Committee. 
 
 583217 
 
GAL LA 
 
 FOR THE 
 
 STATE IRRIGATION CONVENTION. 
 
 WHEREAS, the Irrigation Congress which lately met at Salt Lake 
 City, Utah, adopted the following platform: 
 
 Resolved, That this congress is in favor of granting in trust, upon 
 such conditions as may serve the public interest, to the states and 
 territories needful of irrigation, all lands now a part of the public 
 domain within such states and territories, excepting mineral lands, 
 for the purpose of developing irrigation, to render the lands now arid 
 fertile and capable of supporting a population. 
 
 Resolved, That it is the sense of this convention that the. committee 
 selected to propose and present to Congress the memorial of this 
 convention respecting public lands, should ask as a preliminary to 
 the cession of all the lands in the territories in accordance with the 
 resolutions of the convention, a liberal grant to said territories, and 
 to the States to be formed therefrom, ot the public lands to be de- 
 voted to public school purposes. 
 
 WHEREAS, Large areas of arid lands and semi-arid lands, situated 
 upon the great plains in the Dakotas, western Nebraska, Kansas and 
 Oklahoma were settled upon in good faith, by homeseekers, under 
 the supposition that they were entering agricultural lands, and 
 
 WHEREAS, The settlers upon such lands have expended much 
 time and money upon the same; and paid into the United States 
 treasury therefor many millions of dollars, only to discover that irri- 
 gation, to a greater or less extent, is necessary in making homes for 
 themselves thereon; therefore, be it 
 
 Resolved, That the representatives of all the states and territories 
 directly interested in irrigation, do hereby pledge their unwavering 
 support to the just demands of such settlers, that the general govern- 
 ment shall donate at least a portion of the funds received from the 
 sale of such lands toward the procurement of the means necessary 
 for their irrigation. 
 
 Resolved, That this Congress heartily endorse the irrigation work 
 of the agricultural department of the national government in the 
 collection and dissemination of information; especially its admirable 
 progress reports covering the whole field of irrigation development, 
 and that it favors large appropriations for this work hereafter. 
 
 And whereas it is deemed advisable to obtain a direct expression 
 of the people of this state npon the resolutions aforesaid, now there- 
 fore, for that purpose and to that end, a convention is hereby called to 
 meet at the city of Helena, on Thursday, January 7, 1892, at 12 
 o'clock m. The apportionment of delegates has been made as fol- 
 lows: Beaverhead, 6; Choteau, 10; Custer, 4; Dawson, 2; Deer 
 Lodge, 28; Fergus, 6; Gallatin, 8; Lewis and Clarke, 26; Meagher, 8; 
 Missoula, 22; Madison, 8; Park, 10; Silver Bow, 40; Yellowstone, 5. 
 
 The Boards of County Commissioners of the several counties are 
 earnestly requested to appoint delegates at their December meeting, 
 according to the foregoing apportionment, based upon two delegates 
 to each 300 voters. JOS. K. TOOLE, 
 
 Governor of Montana. 
 
RESOLUTIONS 
 
 ADOPTED BY THE 
 
 MONTANA STATE IRRIGATION CONVENTION 
 
 Resolved, That in the judgment of this Convention it is the duty of 
 the general government to aid in the development by irrigation of the 
 arid lands in the several states and territories where such lands exist; 
 and while we do not deem it desirable that the control and title of such 
 lands should pass from the general government to the several' States 
 containing them, we do nevertheless urge at least that the proceeds 
 arising from the sale of such lands shall be applied to the supply of water 
 for their development for the purpose of agriculture, and we urge upon 
 our Senators and Representatives in Congress to use every effort to 
 accomplish such legislation as will bring about this desirable result, 
 not only in our own State, but to all other States and Territories simi- 
 larly situated. 
 
 Resolved, That it is the sense of this Convention that the com- 
 mittee selected to propose and present to Congress the memorial of 
 this Convention respecting public lands, should ask in accordance 
 with the resolutions of this Convention a liberal grant to said Terri- 
 tories and to the States to be formed therefrom of the public lands to 
 be devoted to public school purposes. 
 
 WHEREAS, Large areas of arid lands and semi-arid lands, situated 
 upon the great plains in the Dakotas, western Nebraska, Kansas and 
 Oklahoma were settled upon in good faith, by home seekers, under 
 the supposition that they were entering agricultural lands, and 
 
 WHEREAS, The settlers upon such lands have expended much 
 time and money upon the same, and paid into the United States 
 Treasury therefor many millions of dollars, only to discover that irri- 
 gation, to a greater or less extent, is necessary in making homes for 
 themselves thereon; therefore be it 
 
 Resolved, That the Representatives of all the States and Terri- 
 tories directly interested in irrigation, do hereby pledge their un- 
 wavering support to the just demands of such settlers; that the gen- 
 eral government shall donate at least a portion of the funds received 
 from the sale of such lands toward the procurement of the means 
 necessary for their irrigation. 
 
 WHEREAS, The Convention has heard with interest the reports 
 from different parts of the State in reference to the matter of arte- 
 sian wells now in active flow in different localises, therefore 
 
 Resolved, That this Convention earnestly urge upon our Senators 
 and Representatives in Congress to use every effort to secure as 
 large an appropriation as possible for the purpose of testing the ques- 
 tion as to the practicability of this matter of water supply for this 
 State, the money to be used in the actual sinking of wells, and not in 
 expensive theorizing. 
 
 Resolved, That we believe it will best subserve the interests of this 
 State if no appropriation whatever be made under the direction of 
 Major Powell, of the government geological survey for the state of 
 Montana. But we do ask for appropriation for scientific research 
 under a State Department of Agriculture, whereby knowledge of 
 much value to this State may be obtained and a complete check of all 
 moneys expended be made. 
 
REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS 
 
 OF THE 
 
 STATE IRRIGATION CONVENTION 
 
 Held at Helena, Montana, January, 8, 9, 10, 1892. 
 
 THURSDAY MORNING. 
 
 January 8, promptly at n o'clock A. M., ex-Governor 
 S. T. Hauser called the State Irrigation Convention, as- 
 sembled in answer to the call of Governor J. K. Toole, 
 to order. He referred briefly to the objects of the Con- 
 vention, and then introduced Lieutenant Governor J. K. 
 Rickards, who welcomed the delegates to the State Cap- 
 ital on behalf of Governor Toole. The Lieutenant Gov- 
 ernor said: 
 
 Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Convention : 
 
 I am sure that we all very much regret that the Governor of the State 
 is absent. As I said playfully this morning, it was he who acted as mid- 
 wife of this Convention, and it would be eminently fit and proper that he 
 should address you and welcome you to the Capital. It is, however, my 
 pleasure to fill the Governor's place and welcome you. We have met 
 at the call of our most worthy Governor to consider and discuss a sub- 
 ject which is filling to-day a large place in the minds of the people 
 and is challenging the best thought of our ablest statesmen. I do not 
 believe it is expecting too much of you to say that this Convention? 
 made, up as it is of the best citizens, will mark the opening of a new 
 era in the development of our grand State. 
 
8 ' '.RE^dRTioV VRJOCEEDINGS 
 
 I am proud to be a citizen of Montana. I enjoy very much seeing 
 the coming together of such a body of men from all parts of the State, 
 and I enjoy seeing them come together to discuss and deliberate upon 
 such momentous questions as will come before you. I enjoy more 
 than I can find words to express witnessing, on the eve of a great 
 political struggle, men coming together, of all political complexions, 
 not to discuts political questions, but each vicing with the other and 
 actuated by public interests, to render the best service to this State. 
 [Applause.] I have confidence in this body of my fellow citizens. 
 You will remember that when Mr. Gould was before a Senate com- 
 mittee the question was asked him, "What are your politics?" Mr. 
 Gould answered: "When I am in a Democratic district I am a Dem- 
 ocrat; when I am in a Republican district I am a Republican, and 
 when I am in a doubtful district I am doubtful, but I am always an 
 Erie man." So that I say I have confidence in this body, for you 
 would not have come here at the call of the Chief Magistrate if you 
 were not first and all the time Montanians. [Loud applause.] 
 
 Now, I think you all appreciate the magnitude of the questions 
 that will come before you and the object of this Convention. It is 
 not my purpose to attempt any discussion of the subject. I am sure, 
 however, that in deliberating you will forget all partisan discussion, 
 and that there will be a unanimity of purpose to advance the material 
 interests of the grand State of Montana. 
 
 Now, I believe it is expected of me to speak a few words of wel- 
 come. I scarcely know how to do this. However, I will say that 
 inasmuch as the excellent and popular Mayor of the city has turned 
 over the kevs of the city, so it is fit and proper for me to turn over 
 the keys of the Executive Mansion and Capitol buildings that is if 
 you can find them. [Loud laughter and applause.] And in the true 
 Western style elevate your feet on the table. There are no cuspidores 
 on the floor to embarrass you. If I could, I would like to turn over 
 to you the combination of the State Treasury safe, but the State 
 Treasurer is an excellent and good-natured gentleman, who will do 
 anything he can for you. Now, in behalf of the great State of Mon- 
 tana, of which we are all proud citizens, I welcome you to the Capi- 
 tal, and invoke for you at the close of your deliberations the verdict 
 of well done from a grateful constituency. I say, again, welcome. 
 
 At the conclusion of the Lieutenant Governor's ad- 
 dress the Chairman introduced Mayor T. H. Klein- 
 schmidt, who extended to the delegates the freedom of 
 the city in the following language: 
 
 Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Irrigation Convention : 
 
 It is not often in the history of one so situated as myself to have 
 the privilege of extending a welcome to a city of which we are resi- 
 dents. I extend a hearty welcome to you, gentlemen, and can add 
 
STATE IRRIGATION CONVENTION. 9 
 
 but very little to that which has been said by the Lieutenant Governor 
 on the subject for which you are assembled, a question vital to the 
 interests of this State. If we look about us over this vast territory 
 that only requires the labor of husbandry to make it productive, and 
 more productive than anr other state, we can appreciate the task of 
 this Congress to develop and submit something for the people for 
 them to act on, and for the benefit to be derived from such action. I 
 say it is a proud privilege to extend to you a hearty welcome to our 
 city. The Lieutenant Governor says he will turn over the keys if 
 you can find the Capitol buildings. I will go farther. This city has 
 no keys; the gates are wide open. 
 
 W. A. Clark, of Silver Bow: I assume that the first 
 appropriate action of this Convention will be to affect a 
 temporary organization, and probably the appointment 
 of some committees. If I am correct in this I will take 
 the liberty and the pleasure of placing in nomination as 
 temporary chairman of this Convention, Hon. S. T. 
 Hauser. 
 
 Mr. Clark put the vote and declared Mr. Hauser duly 
 elected as temporary chairman. 
 
 Mr. Hauser: Gentlemen of the Convention, I thank 
 you for the compliment and honor, and I am at your 
 service. 
 
 On motion George W. Irvine II., of Silver Bow, was 
 elected temporary secretary. 
 
 The Chair man : I expected to be made temporary 
 chairman, and called on Mr. Irvine, who promised to 
 make a speech for me. 
 
 The Chairman then introduced Mr. Irvine, who said: 
 
 Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Convention : 
 
 Governor Hauser has been treating me a little unfair. I can recall 
 no conversation of the kind. I wan to say to you that in an irriga- 
 tion convention I am not well equipped. I have noticed in life that 
 every single possible quantity or atom of organization has life. I 
 have pursued my investigation to an extent that I have found there 
 is life in the plant, there is life in the shrub, there is life in the tree, 
 there is life in every portion of the earth. All that's required is that 
 it be called into actual existence. I believe the serious business of 
 this convention is one of the greatest importance. Our people from 
 our side of the Rocky Mountains have come over as lay members 
 rather than as active members. We come here desiring to learn and 
 to make such recommendations a> shall present themselves. Of 
 course in coming to ihis Convention we believe in the outline of the 
 Salt Lake platform, probably differing in some details. The manner 
 
IO REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS 
 
 of the control of the lands and their disposal to corporations and indi- 
 viduals is all a matter of details. The turning over of the lands to the 
 State involves a number of collateral questions. We have the ques- 
 tion of cutting timber on the public domain. It is relative to this 
 question. So with the forestry problem. We don't want this matter 
 relegated to the keeping of a few gentlemen in the East who base 
 their knowledge of the subject upon the reports of agents, who don't 
 know the tamarack monarch of the forest from an ordinary bull pine. 
 I say candidly that the question of the control of the forests should 
 also be turned over to the State. Therefore we are interested in get- 
 ting their control, and I think we can do it better than those who are 
 assuming to care for the American forests. 
 
 On motion of John W. Thompson, of Lewis and 
 Clarke county, the following committee on credentials 
 was appointed: 
 
 J. M. Patterson Choteau. O. C. Cooper Missoula. 
 
 J. A. Harris Cascade. W. H. Sutherlin Meagher. 
 
 W. B. S. Higgins Custer. R. O. Hickman Madison. 
 
 J. C. Auld Dawson. W. A. Harrison Park. 
 Peter Levengood Deer Lodge. B. F. Leggett Silver Bow. 
 
 E. G. Brooke Jefferson. A. L. Corbley Gallatin. 
 
 J. A. Browne Beaverhead. E. D. Weed Lewis and Clark. 
 
 B. F. Shuart Yellowstone. H. L. Fisher Fergus. 
 
 An adjournment was taken till 2 o'clock p. m. 
 
 THURSDAY AFTERNOON. 
 
 Promptly at 2 o'clock Chairman Hauser called the 
 Convention to order. Chairman E. D. Weed, of the 
 credentials committee, reported the following delegates 
 entitled to seats: 
 
 Beaverhead H. R. Melton, A. Eliel, Thomas M. Selwey, W. C. 
 Orr, John C. Brenner, J. A. Browne. 
 
 Custer Sam Gordon, A. M. Cree, W. B. S. Higgins, J. W. Strevell. 
 
 Choteau Thomas C. Burns, Z. T. Burton, J. F. Patterson, J. W. 
 Power. 
 
 Cascade Maurice S. Parker, S. B. Robbins, George E. Ingersoll, 
 E. D. Hastie, John M. Castner, John F. Wegner, John W. McKnight, 
 John A. Harris, H. P. Rolfe, N. T. Porter. 
 
 Da^vson Jas. G. Ramsay, J. C. Auld. 
 
 Deer Lodge T. C. Davidson, Allen Kimmerly, Peter Levengood, 
 J. Stuckey, Jno. R. Quigley, P. Jensen, J. Richey, P. Valiton, Byron 
 Wood, W. A. Hansley, C. Hardenbrook, N. J. Beilenberg, D. Berry, 
 
STATE IRRIGATION CONVENTION. II 
 
 Jos. Gough, J. W. Blair, M. Geary, G. W. Morse, W. Dingwall, Wm. 
 Wallace, Jno. Fetherman, W. T. Elliott, John Gandell, F. M. Durfee, 
 B. Parrott, Wm. Morton, I. Gibbs, C. F. Mussigbrod, E. Girard. 
 
 Gallatin Walter Cooper, J. W. Caldwell, William Flannery, O. P. 
 Chisholm, W. W. Alderson, Chas. A. Gregory, A. L. Corbly, H. H. 
 Sappington. 
 
 Fergus C. W. Baylies, H. L. Fisher, C. M. Goodell, James 
 Ettien, David Hilger and C. V. Peck. 
 
 Jefferson Ed Cardwell, G. Ryan, E. G. Brooke, A. L. Love, John 
 Murray, J. I. Winslow, J. Patterson, A. H. Moulton, B. Townsley, 
 W. C. Whaley. 
 
 Lewis and Clarke S. T. Hauser, S. Word, W. B. Hundley, J. T. 
 Murphy, T. H. Kleinschmidt, H. M. Parchen, W. E. Cullen, D. S. 
 Wade, D. A. Cory, J. H. Longmaid, J. B. Clayberg, A. M. Holter, 
 John W. Thompson, E. D. Weed, J. W. Wade, Donald Bradford, A. J. 
 Seligman, A. J. Burns, E. Beach, A. C. Botkin, A. G. Lombard, Abra- 
 ham Thomas, R. H. Howey, W. C. Child, F. P. Sterling. 
 
 Meagher J. B. Stafford, C. W. Cook, H. Whaley, J. E. K-anouse, 
 W. H. Sutherlin, N. E. Benson, R. H. Clendenin, W. Brady. 
 
 Missoula John E. Cyr, G. Deschamps, Mose Clemens, Peter 
 Schaffer, A. A. Fourier, A. G. England, M. Flyn, W. J. Brennan, W. 
 R. Ramsdell, Lyman Loring, A. W. Twaney, J. M. Eastland, E. M. 
 Ratcliff, O. C. Cooper, R. A. O'Hara, G W. Ward, J. R. Faulds, J. S. 
 Robertson, J. L. Hunter, S. Maclay, J. H. Mills, Frank Borroughs. 
 
 Madison James W. Page, Patrick Carney, H. C. Harrison, A. W. 
 Tanner, M. D. Jeffers, A. Metzel, M. Howes, R. O. Hickman. 
 
 Park James Vestal, C. C. Day, W. A. Harrison, J. F. Work, 
 James Smith, Samuel Bundock, J. L. Dellart, A. Myers. 
 
 Silver B oiv D. A. Morrison, WITT. Bowe, Jos. S. Harper, J. Carter, 
 Thos. Couch, J. R. Boyce, Jr., S. F. Fictchett, C. A. Small, T. C. 
 Jackson, J. McCauley, W. A. Ralston, P. A. Larger, Thos. O. Miles, 
 Earnest Spear, E. Gregson, H. H. Eccleston, Levi Cartier, L.G. Wun- 
 derlich, Wm. Stolte, Chas. H. Carver, Simon Hauswirth, W. A. 
 Clark, Geo. H. Casey, John A. Leggatt, Napoleon Geneveaux, C. S. 
 Baxter, Wm. Hamilton, Lee W. Foster, T. M: Robbins, David S. Durey, 
 Geo. H. Tong, J. G. Maddox, T. C. Miles, J. H. McQueeney, J. J. 
 Feeley, J. F. Cowan, Wm. Woodward, C. L. Bauman, Geo. W. Irvine, II. 
 Telloivstoneft. F. Shuart, O'.ney Taylor, Charles A. Wenstrum, 
 R. J. Martin. 
 
 The report was adopted and the committee was made 
 permanent. 
 
 There was a call for Senator T. C. Power, who said: 
 
 Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Convention : 
 
 This is not the time to make any speeches. I believe you have 
 assembled from all parts of the State for the purpose of investigating 
 this great question of irrigation in this State, and I will not delay you 
 
12 REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS 
 
 at this time with any speech; but after you proceed with business, 
 and want to ask any questions about government aid, I will be glad to 
 answer them, and I will be in readiness to do that to the best of my 
 ability. I know that members are here from the farming sections 
 who want to return as soon as possible, and I would ask that we 
 despatch our business as quickly as possible. On that account I am 
 not going to say anything further just now. 
 
 On motion the following Committee on Permanent 
 Organization and Order of Business was appointed: 
 
 Adolph Eliel Beaverhead. A. M. Cree Custer. 
 
 John W. Power Choteau. E. D. Hastie Cascade. 
 
 J. C. Auld Dawson. G. W. Morris Deer Lodge. 
 
 James Ettien Fergus. Charles A. Gregory Gallatin. 
 
 Edward Ca~d well Jefferson. W. B. Hundley Lewis and Clarke. 
 
 Patrick Carney Madison. J. B. Stafford Meagher. 
 
 A. L. England Missoula. Alfred Myers Park. 
 
 J. H. McQueeney Silver Bow. Olney Taylor Yellowstone. 
 
 On motion of Mr. Botkin, of Lewis and Clarke, a re- 
 cess of thirty minutes was taken in order to give the 
 Committee on Permanent Organization and Order of 
 Business time to report. 
 
 The report of the committee, submitted by Chairman 
 Alfred Myers and read by Secretary C. A. Gregory, 
 was as follows: 
 
 Gentlemen of the Convention : 
 
 Your Committee on Permanent Organization and Order of Busi- 
 ness beg leave to report as follows: 
 
 Samuel T. Hauser, of Lewis and Clarke, President. 
 
 C. E. Ingersoll, of Cascade, Secretary. 
 
 George H. Casey, of Silver Bow, Assistant Secretary. 
 
 S. Alexander, Sergeant at Arms. 
 
 Morris Langhorne and Eddy Boos, Pages. 
 
 Order of Business First, election of officers; second, reading of 
 the call for this Convention; third, presentation of resolutions. 
 
 We recommend that all resolutions presented to this Convention 
 shall be in writing, and that the same shall be referred to the Com- 
 mittee on Resolutions without debate. We also recommend that 
 each county appoint one of its delegates to report to this Convention 
 the state of irrigation in his respective county. These reports to be 
 made on the floor of this house. And your Committee further rec- 
 onnmend that for rules this Convention shall be governed by the per- 
 manent rules of the House of Representatives of the Second session 
 of the Legislature of the State of Montana. All of which is respect- 
 fully submitted. A. MEYERS, Chairman. 
 
 CHARLES A. GREGORY, Secretary. 
 
STATE IRRIGATION CONVENTION. 1 3 
 
 Mr. Botkin, of Lewis and Clarke, moved to amend 
 the report by striking out that portion of it recommend- 
 ing that resolutions introduced be referred to the Com- 
 mittee on Resolutions without discussion. 
 
 The Chairman of the Committee said that it was the 
 opinion of the Committee that resolutions should be re- 
 ferred to the Committee on Resolutions for action, and 
 that discussion of them would follow after the report of 
 the Committee had been made to the Convention. 
 
 Mr. Botkin : It would be well if they could be referred 
 to the Committee on Resolutions for presentation, but 
 not if they are to be referred to the Committee on Res- 
 olutions for suppression, and that is very apt to be their 
 fate. I hold that each resolution should be fairly dis- 
 cussed. [Applause.] 
 
 The motion on the amendment was put by the Chair- 
 man and carried. 
 
 Mr. Meyers: I move to amend the report by making 
 George W. Irvin II., of Silver Bow, Vice President of 
 this Convention. Seconded and unanimously carried. 
 
 The report of the Committee as amended was unani- 
 mously adopted. 
 
 A motion was adopted that a Committee on Resolu- 
 tions, consisting of one member from each county, be 
 constituted, to be selected by the Chairman of each dele- 
 gation. The following were named as members of the 
 Committee: 
 
 H. R. Melton Beaverhead. Samuel Gordon Custer. 
 
 M. S. Parker Cascade. Z. T. Burton Choteau. 
 
 James R. Ramsey Dawson. N. J. Beilenberg -Deer Lodge. 
 
 Clarence Goodall Fergus. O. P. Chisholm - Gallatin. 
 
 O. L. Love Jefferson. A C. Botkin Lewis and Clarke. 
 
 A. W. Tanner Madison. W. H. Sutherlin Meagher. 
 
 R. E. O'Hara Missoula. J. L. De Hart Park. 
 
 W. A. Clark Silver Bow. B. F. Shuart Yellowstone. 
 
 There was a call for Chairman Hauser to make a 
 speech on his election as permanent chairman, and in re- 
 ply he said: 
 
 Gentlemen of the Convention: 
 
 1 certainly appreciate the high honor, and also the importance of 
 this Convention When I was asked to call the Convention to order 
 by our absent Governor I particularly requested that I should be 
 allowed about two or three hours to make a speech. He did not 
 
14 REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS 
 
 think I should occupy the attention of the Convention that long. 
 With that understanding I consented to act as temporary chairman. 
 At first I did not take much interest in this question. I have paid as 
 high as 40 cents an inch for water during the last[ten or fifteen years, 
 and higher than that for other irrigants. But I find it is a better 
 plan to stand by water. If we stand by this subject we will awaken 
 an interest in the people of the east. We have stood by them for 
 years in their appropriations of millions, and there is no reason why 
 we should not get these lands. When this question was broached to 
 me in making me temporary chairman, I hadjiot taken much thought 
 of it. My interests had been in mining, cattle and sheep. I thought 
 it perfectly ridiculous to subscribe toward the Helena artesian well 
 fund. The facts are that when you measure the water in the Prickly 
 Pear Valley flowing to waste in the months of June and July, there is 
 enough to irrigate this entire valley. I had not paid any attention to 
 irrigation up to this time. I did not think there was anything in it, 
 but the time will come when we will all think so. I believe this is 
 the most important question raised in any country. There are lands 
 in the Prickly Pear valley that without water, if sold by the sheriff, 
 would not be worth $5 per acre. With water on them they are 
 worth from $50 to $75 per acre. 
 
 There seems to be some disposition among those who differ in 
 politics with me -like my friend Power, for instance -not to take 
 these lands. I have been in Montana too long for that. If anybody 
 is going to give me anything, I am going to take it. Montana men 
 know how to take care of themselves. 
 
 On taking his seat next to the Chairman, as Vice 
 Chairman, Mr. Irvine, of Silver Bow, said: "I am very 
 much gratified at the compliment paid me. I do not 
 consider that I have any particular intelligence that can 
 go very far toward enlightening the gentlemen before 
 me, and I think, if speech is silver, silence is golden, I 
 will take the liberty of sitting down. After the elo- 
 quence of the Chairman I am certainly silenced for once 
 in my life." 
 
 A. J. Seligman, of Lewis and Clarke: In order to 
 bring the matter to a focus I will move that each county 
 be entitled to the entire number of votes that the appor- 
 tionment calls for, and that the majority of that county 
 cast the votes of the absentees. 
 
 Z. T. Burton, of Choteau: I believe this Convention 
 was called under certain rules directed to the boards of 
 county commissioners, this Convention having been 
 called by the Governor. It seems to me it would be 
 
STATE IRRIGATION CONVENTION. 15 
 
 arrogating authority to ourselves by making delegates 
 who had never been chosen by the Commissioners. 
 
 Mr. Leggatt, of Silver Bow: In calling the roll I 
 noticed one county had but one delegate here. It would 
 be unfair for Dawson county, which has the largest 
 interest in this matter, to be represented by one man. - I 
 therefore second the motion that each county be entitled 
 to its full quota. 
 
 R. O. Hickman, of Madison: The gentleman from 
 Silver Bow speaks of Dawson County. Mr. Ramsey 
 has been selected as a delegate with Mr. Auld. 
 
 Mr. Botkin sent the following resolution to the Secre- 
 tary's desk: 
 
 Resolved, That it is the sense of this Convention that reservoirs, 
 canals, ditches and other works of irrigation, in case such policy is 
 permitted by the Constitution, be taxed not: on the cost or appraised 
 valuation, but upon the income actually received from the sales of 
 water. 
 
 R. H. Howey, of Lewis and Clarke : It occurs to me 
 that is a proposition I would like to hear from some one 
 on who is conversant with the proposition, giving the 
 reasons for its adoption; or it ought perhaps be referred 
 to the Committee on Resolutions. 
 
 Mr. Botkin : I would be very glad, as a member of 
 the Committee on Resolutions, to hear some expression 
 from the Convention. 
 
 Mr. Melton, of Beaverhead: If there is anything I 
 am opposed to in this matter it is haste. I am inclined 
 to be in favor of the resolution. I am not yet able to 
 catch the full meaning of that resolution. I believe it 
 should be turned over to the Committee on Resolutions. 
 Let us go slow in this matter; let us do what we do 
 intelligently, and then we will not regret it or do it over 
 again. 
 
 Mr. Word, of Lewis and Clarke: I move that the 
 resolution be made a special order at 10 o'clock to-mor- 
 row morning. 
 
 Mr. Weed: The Convention would like to hear from 
 the author of the resolution. 
 
 Mr. Botkin: Mr. President, I beg leave to -submit 
 that I am peculiarly unfitted to express any conviction- 
 about the policy. It is because I sought knowledge and 
 not to impart it that I introduced the resolution. The 
 
l6 REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS 
 
 policy suggests itself to me as one wholly to be desired. 
 It seems to me that a man who invests large sums of 
 money in irrigation should not be taxed until those in- 
 vestments should have become fruitful. I can hardly see 
 how we can invite capital to engage in enterprises of 
 this character if taxation shall commence before the 
 earning. 
 
 R. H. Howey: That is one side of that proposition, 
 but it strikes me that there might be another side to it. 
 The poor fellow who takes up a desert land claim is not 
 exempt. If you exempt one side why not exempt the 
 other? I think it would be a fair proposition to include 
 the other side; to include the poor fellows on the home- 
 steads. 
 
 W. A. Clark: I have simply one word to say on the 
 proposition. I believe in encouraging by every legiti- 
 mate means all kinds of enterprises in this State that will 
 help to build it up, but I do not see how it would be or 
 could be done equitably, to pass any legislation that 
 would discriminate particularly in favor of any particular 
 enterprise. Of course in anything like mining, which 
 might be termed, in the language of insurance people, 
 "extra hazardous," there might be some exceptions, and 
 I believe that has been incorporated in the Constitution 
 of this State. But so far as irrigation, perhaps, is con- 
 cerned, I believe before entering upon any enterprises of 
 this character we ought to calculate the chances of suc- 
 cess, and not discriminate in favor of monopolists. I beg 
 to suggest that it would be in conflict with the Constitu- 
 tion of Montana for the Legislature to make any excep- 
 tion of this character. The Constitution says that prop- 
 erty of every character shall be taxed its full value. 
 Legislation of this kind cannot be had until the Constitu- 
 tion shall be first amended. 
 
 Mr. Burton : There should be in my opinion no con- 
 flict between gentlemen largely interested in the mining 
 industry and gentlemen who are interested in building 
 irrigation canals and reservoirs. If the Constitution of 
 this State, as it wisely did, looked upon the development 
 of mining property as largely speculative, in what view 
 can it be said that a man who erects large irrigation en- 
 terprises does not invest his money in works which are 
 
STATE IRRIGATION CONVENTION. 17 
 
 largely of a speculative character? As a constitutional 
 question we cannot determine it, but as the sense of this 
 Convention we can determine it. I believe a canal 
 should be taxed according to the value placed on it, but 
 its actual value to be determined from the sale of its 
 water. 
 
 John W. Thompson, of Lewis and Clarke: I heartily 
 agree with Mr. Burton. Permit me to say that there 
 are men on the floor of this Convention who have in- 
 vested largely in irrigation enterprises who will have ta 
 wait some years before they derive any revenue from 
 them. Why should we be taxed until we have a rev- 
 enue? 
 
 A. M. Holter, of Lewis and Clarke: This resolution 
 should go to the Committee on Resolutions, and let them 
 take time to consider it in regard to the taxation. On 
 the constitutional question I want to say that a canal or 
 ditch is simply a right of way, the same as a road. The 
 Constitution does not make any provision for assessing 
 roads or highways. I move that this resolution be re- 
 ferred to the Committee on Resolutions and be disposed 
 of to-morrow. 
 
 The motion was put and carried. 
 
 Mr. Strevell, of Custer: I desire to make a suggestion, 
 I have prepared a resolution, but I will premise it with a few 
 remarks. The Governor in calling this Convention 
 called it for the purpose of considering the action taken 
 by another Convention at Salt Lake City, and it seems 
 to me that it is desirable to confine ourselves to the bus- 
 iness for which the Governor called this Convention; to- 
 bring that business before the Convention at the earliest 
 moment. If I remember the call, the Governor has sug- 
 gested to the Convention whether it would adopt the 
 course taken at Salt Lake. Now, it is desirable to bring 
 that call before this Convention. It is in the nature of 
 an address to a legislature. I move that the call be re- 
 ferred to the Committee on Resolutions, to report at the 
 earliest practicable moment, to bring before the Conven- 
 tion the main purpose. I think I am justified in asking 
 this. The question is whether we will or will not ratifv 
 the action of the Salt Lake Convention. 
 
 The motion was put and carried. 
 
l8 REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS 
 
 Mr. Donald Bradford offered the following: 
 
 WHEREAS, Montana contains 93,349,200 acres; 38,000,000 acres 
 comprise our ranges. Interspersed with these are 30,000,000 acres of 
 farming lands, and 
 
 WHEREAS, Montana has limitless latent wealth, the fact must be 
 recognized that we are face to face with a vast problem, that we must 
 prepare now to solve and not procrastinate till too late to properly 
 and economically master it, and 
 
 WHEREAS, It is fair to assume 15,000,000 acres to be the area sub- 
 ject to all practicable means of irrigation. Fifteen million acres, 
 properly watered, means 1,000,000 additional rural population. Canals 
 for 1,000,000 population mean, not alone irrigation, but demands for 
 water power, for manufactories, water for houses, for cities and vil- 
 lages, and consequently a well balanced law prepared in the light of 
 the experience of the countries of Europe, of Egyt and of India, 
 that have, in a measure, overcome the difficulties in the proper distri- 
 bution of water; a law anticipating the need of reservoir site- in 
 every locality possessing irrigable lands, to prevent their occupancy 
 and ultimate enlarged outlay in condemnation; a law that will place 
 under the control of each district or drainage area their water supply, 
 and will reduce the cost to a minimum; that will prevent discrimina- 
 tion as between landholders, and 
 
 WHEREAS, The constitutional life of the Legislature will not per- 
 mit of an investigation or the research the importance of the subject 
 demands, therefore be it 
 
 Resolvrd, By the Convention, constituting representatives from 
 different portions of the State, that a committee of one from each 
 county be appointed by the President of this Convention with power 
 to prepare a bill and present it to the next legislature, which bill shall 
 embodv the following general points, to-wit: The creation of a State 
 Irrigation and Immigration Commission, which shall be appointed by 
 the Governor, together with a State Engineer, which Commission 
 shall have power, through the State Engineer, to divide the State 
 into districts, according to natural slopes; to prepare plans for the 
 construction of the necessary canals and reservoirs or other works 
 of any district; to have sole control of the construction; to cause the 
 organization of any such district by the election by 'he legal voters of 
 such district of five trustees, who shall exercise control of such canal, 
 reservoir or other work of construction; issue bonds of such district 
 for construction; levy taxes and otherwise provide for sinking fund, 
 interest and repairs, subject in all cases to the laws of the State. 
 
 Mr. Bradford, in support of his resolution, said : 
 
 Mr President: 
 
 I have prepared and introduced these resolutions with a view to 
 crystalizing to some extent, and bringing before this body the ques- 
 tion how the arid lands of Montana are to be made habitable for the 
 accommodation of a vast population. In conridering the best method 
 of accomplishing this object, we should try to realize the work, not 
 only this Convention and the next Legislature, but this epoch has 
 mapped out for its achievement by the demands of civilization. We 
 should bring home to our minds the fact that the public domain, in 
 the rain belt, has practically become exhausted; that the so-called 
 arid region, known in early days as the "Great American Desert," is 
 
STATE IRRIGATION CONVENTION. 19 
 
 the last resort as a relief for the millions of population annually flow- 
 ing into the United States; that the eastern States are in a constant 
 state of gestation and of delivery; that these youths are seeking out- 
 lets for their ambition, and that the Rocky Mountains, the arid 
 region, the land of gold and silver, is the Mecca toward which they 
 all turn their hopes. Therefore, I say, we must impress upon our 
 minds the grandeur of the responsibility resting upon this Conven- 
 tion, of creating for this influx of humanity an avenue through which 
 it may quickly utilize its energy. 
 
 There are several plans extant that attempt to cover the ground, 
 but, according to my judgment, are seriously defective in the most 
 vital requisites. First, the question arises, shall the national or state 
 governments exercise general supervision? Second, if either, shall 
 the ownership be by private corporations and individuals, with State 
 supervisors, as in Colorado; State ownership and control, as in India; 
 ownership by the people in districts through a board of directors that 
 exercise absolute control, without any higher supervision, as in Cali- 
 fornia; or the plan propo-ed in the resolutions, of district ownership 
 and control with ultimate supervision both in construction and dur- 
 ing operation by a permanent and competent State board or com- 
 mission. 
 
 I will attempt to discuss each scheme as it is here presented: 
 First National control and perhaps construction is impracticable for 
 the reason that it is too vast for comprehensive supervision by one 
 man or one board of the minutia of each individual enterprise in the 
 whole arid region comprising Montana, Idaho, Washington, Ore- 
 gon, California, the Dakotas, Wyoming, Colorado, Nebraska, Kansas, 
 Utah, Arizona, Texas and New Mexico, containing 150,000,000 acres 
 of irrigable and 500,000,000 acres of grazing lands. Second It gives 
 too much power to the Central uovernment through patronage. 
 Third It would be a tax upon States in no way benefitted. Fourth 
 The management would likely prove incompetent in that political 
 favoritism would soon be the basis of all appoi"tments and the people 
 would have no remedy. 
 
 Fifth Irrigation is essentially a local question that should be gov- 
 erned from its inception by local powers. Sixth Irrigation securi- 
 ties will gain comparatively little through government guaranty as 
 under the plan proposed in the resolutions the security would be so 
 ably proven by a competent State Commission, aided hy a State En- 
 gineer, that no question of the feasibility of any enterprise would 
 arise. Seventh The argument that the national government should 
 control because of any inter-state complications that may arise is 
 unsound, for the reason that the United States courts have jurisdic- 
 tion over all litigation between States and the citizens of the several 
 States. The same courts would, under the national plan, adjudicate 
 all dispute > arising from the use of water from a stream penetrating 
 two or more States. 
 
2O REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS 
 
 The Colorado plan can be diposed of by the statement of the sim- 
 ple fact that to set up a barrier between life and the means of sustain- 
 ing life is an unnatural condition, and therefore would not be toler- 
 ated for a long period by the people, notwithstanding the fact that the 
 State controls. The fact that a corporation has the fee-simple in the 
 v/ater or the means of distribution and declares division of profits 
 from the proceeds of sale is sufficient reason why corporations should 
 not exist. The further fact that nature decrees the use of irrigation 
 is an unanswerable argument against a monopoly of the distribution 
 of water. 
 
 India is a congregation of ignorance, poverty and slavery that, not 
 being blessed by comparatively universal civilization as is here exem- 
 plified, could not, through a popular vote of the masses, provide for 
 -an intelligent system of irrigation other than by imperial manage- 
 ment. 
 
 Irrigation in California is regulated by the law known as the 
 ^'Wright law," whereby fifty or more holders of title, or evidence of 
 title, to lands susceptible of one mode of irrigation from a common 
 source and by the same system of works, may petition the county 
 supervisors to cause the organization of a district according to the 
 details prescribed under the law which provides for the election of a 
 district board of directors, which board has the power to construct 
 canals or other works, issue bonds, assess property through a district 
 assessor, sit as a board of equalization, and in all respects regulate the 
 affairs pertaining to irrigation in the district. 
 
 Should the area called for in the petition extend into two or more 
 counties, the supervisors of the county within which the petition orig- 
 inated shall notify the supervisors of the other counties within whose 
 boundaries the district extends of the fact that such district is organ- 
 ized, and such other supervisors are enjoined from interfering with or 
 overlapping such district boundaries with any other district boun- 
 daries. 
 
 The defects in this law are so apparent it is necessary only to men- 
 tion them in comparison with the plan proposed in the resolutions to 
 show that while the California law is a decided step in advance and is 
 the best existing law, it is far from being what it should be. It will 
 be noted that a district may extend into two or more counties; that 
 the district is established by the supervisors of one without the neces- 
 sary co-operation of the other boards, wherein lies a foundation for 
 conflict between the counties. The plan proposed in the resolutions 
 would obviate this fault by giving to a central state commission the 
 power to fix the boundaries of a district, to regulate its organization 
 and to pass upon all disputes as between districts counties as such 
 having no jurisdiction. The California law gives to the board of 
 county supervisors and lo the board of directors of a district the sole 
 power of deciding upon the feasibility of a scheme of irrigation. 
 
STATE IRRIGATION CONVENTION. 21 
 
 Such boards, from the nature of things (their members not being as 
 a rule engineers), are incompetent to judge of the practicability of a 
 project; more than likely they would employ a local engineer with 
 little or no expeiience, and, too, local bias would probably affect a 
 board composed necessarily of farmers whose interests would de- 
 mand the construction of works and the expenditure of money in the 
 purchase of products of the farm. This plan is met in the proposed 
 law by the creation of a state commission, which would be made up of 
 engineers of known ability, with an engineering department thor 
 oughly fortified with all data bearing upon the drainage and lands of 
 the whole State the number of acres susceptible of irrigation and 
 the supply of water permanently available under all circumstances; 
 the cost of construction of the necessary works and the size and class 
 of work most suitable. I have been informed that out of $24,000,000 
 in bonds issued under the California law only $5,000,000 have been 
 sold, leaving $19,000,000 unsold, caused, in my judgment, wholly by 
 the lack of faith in the ability and honor of local boards. Without 
 the confidence of the financial world in our securities it is heedless to 
 attempt the reclamation of this empire of Montana. 
 
 This proposed law contemplates the management of immigration 
 to the State. Through state management immigration would be 
 under absolute control, as any tract of lands could be reclaimed and 
 systematically settled by any class desired, through colonies or by in- 
 dividuals. All settlers would secure employment upon public works 
 in course of construction for one or two years, thus aiding in building 
 up each locality; in the meanwhile farms would be tilled, houses and 
 fences erected, and prosperity would reign by the time water could 
 be delivered. In addition it will place in circulation millions of dol- 
 lars that will be repaid by its own results. 
 
 The State will soon reap the full fruition of such wise legislation 
 by all such lands becoming subject to tax. Not alone will Montana 
 gain by the immediate output of these lands the population thus en- 
 hanced will crea'e a growing demand for manufactories, woolen mills, 
 iron furnaces, flouring mills, sugar and cheese factories and cream- 
 eries and the innumerable accessories of such industries will spring 
 up and add to the prosperity of our commonwealth. Railroads run 
 by electricity, generated under the pressure of our mountain streams, 
 will, penetrate every sec ion, and Montana will lead not alone in min- 
 eral, but in the production of every other source of wealth. I have 
 in my possession the laws of every country practicing irrigation, and 
 I believe that a law carrying out the ideas as expressed in the resolu- 
 tions, as offered, will prove efficacious in every emergency, as it will 
 embody the best parts of all, and will avoid the t.rrors as well. The 
 people now own the water in some states; they should own i r . in all 
 and exercise ownership over the means of distribution. In this way 
 only can conflicts be avoided and much litigation prevented. 
 
22 REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS 
 
 On motion the resolution of Mr. Bradford was referred 
 to the Committee on Resolutions. 
 
 On motion of Mr. Irvine, of Silver Bow, the press was 
 invited to publish the resolution and argument of Mr. 
 Bradford in full. 
 
 Mr. Leggatt, of Silver Bow, moved that the rules be 
 suspended, and that all resolutions be referred to the 
 Committee on Resolutions without debate. The motion 
 was lost. 
 
 Adjourned until 10 A. M., January 8, 1892. 
 
 FRIDAY MORNING, JANUARY 8. 
 
 The Convention was called to order at 10 o'clock 
 Friday morning by Chairman Hauser. 
 
 Samuel Word, in a short speech, called attention to 
 the fact that the day was the anniversary of the birth of 
 Andrew Jackson. 
 
 Senator Power: I would say to the Convention that 
 we are very much obliged to the gentleman from Lewis 
 and Clarke for putting us in mind of what has been 
 done, but the question before us is what we want to 
 heed. Keep your eyes open. We do not want our 
 attention diverted just now. What we want to do is to 
 keep our powder dry and our eyes on the guns. I will 
 now ask for the report of the Committee on Resolutions. 
 
 The Secretary read as follows: 
 
 Hon. S. T. Hauser, President of the Irrigation Convention: 
 
 The Committee on Resolutions beg leave to make the following 
 report: The platform of the Salt Lake Convention, after due consid- 
 eration, is referred back to this Convention without recommendation, 
 further than that said platform be referred to the committee of the 
 whole for discussion. 
 
 W. A. CLARK, Chairman. 
 
 Mr. Strevell, of Custer: I move that the report be 
 received and adopted. 
 
 Mr. Word, of Lewis and Clarke: I move to amend 
 by receiving it and lay the report on the table for the 
 action of this Convention without being adopted. 
 
 A. J. Seligman, of Lewis and Clarke: Will you 
 kindly state what effect it will have as amended? 
 
STATE IRRIGATION CONVENTION. 23 
 
 Mr. Word: Simply to lay on the table, to be called 
 up at any time by any member. It is there for the action 
 of the Convention. Possibly it can be taken up in com- 
 mittee of the whole as a special order. It is on the table 
 subject to the call of the Convention. 
 
 Mr. Strevell, of Custer: If the report is immedi- 
 ately adopted, it will bring the matter before the Con- 
 vention the action of the Salt Lake Convention. I 
 hope the amendment will not prevail. 
 
 Mr. Word : I withdraw my amendment. 
 
 Senator Power: I understand the business before the 
 Convention is whether it will adopt the Salt Lake plat- 
 form, which means segregation. 
 
 Mr. Strevell: I beg your pardon; that is not it at all. 
 
 The Chairman: I think the Senator is out of order. 
 
 Senator Power: I will give up the floor. 
 
 The motion of Mr. Strevell was put and carried. 
 
 Mr. Clark, of Silver Bow: I move that the Conven- 
 tion resolve itself into committee of the whole for the 
 consideration of the Salt Lake platform. 
 
 The motion was put and carried. The President called 
 Mr. Chisholm of Gallatin County to trie chair. 
 
 IN COMMITTEE OF THE WHOLE. 
 
 The Chairman: We are now in committee of the 
 whole for the discussion of the Salt Lake platform. 
 
 Mr. Strevell, of Custer: I move that the resolu- 
 tions embracing the action of the Salt Lake Conven- 
 tion be taken up seriatim. The main point for discus- 
 sion in this Convention will be raised upon the resolu- 
 tions. I move that they be taken up in order. 
 
 On motion of John W. Thompson the Secretary read 
 the call of the Governor for the Convention. 
 
 The Chairman: The Secretary will now read the 
 first section of the resolutions of the Salt Lake Conven- 
 tion. 
 
 The Secretary read as follows: 
 
 Resolved, That this Congress is in favor of granting in trust, upon 
 such conditions as mav serve the public interest, to the states and ter- 
 ritories needful of irrigation, all lands now a part of the public do- 
 main within such states and territories, excepting mineral lands, for 
 the purpose of developing irrigation, to render the lands now arid 
 fertile and capable of supporting a population. 
 
24 REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS 
 
 The Chairman recognized Senator Power, who said: 
 
 Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Convention: 
 
 I am not going to take up your time by making any remarks on 
 this section, but on the subject from its beginning, from its incipiency, 
 to the present, if that is in order. You have heard the resolution, 
 sugar-coated, or you can read it in the proceedings of the Irrigation 
 Congress at Salt Lake, the crystalization of their action, which is to 
 cede these lands to the states absolutely, save and except mining 
 lands. This action of the Salt Lake Congress was preconceived and 
 prearranged before that Congress met. The delegates from this 
 State, and I believe they will not deny the assertion, did not under- 
 stand the situation. Gentlemen who represented this State at the 
 Salt Lake Irrigation Congress will appear before you to-day and 
 speak on this proposition. These gentlemen did not understand that 
 a deep and concocted p'an had been laid. I did not understand its 
 drift un^il told by some friends of irrigation measures. Having been 
 warned, I watched some of the Senators that had made this a study. 
 I wanted to know why they were so deeply interested, and saw after- 
 wards that it was for the centralization of power, the increasing of 
 their political holdings. I refer more particularly to the Senators 
 from W\ oming. At the organization of the Senate, I thought I saw 
 this cropping out. I asked to be put on the Irrigation Committee. 
 They said they would see. A committee of seven was named to 
 select members for the different Senate Committees. I found I was 
 left out; but prior to it, I was asked how I felt about segregation. I 
 said it was winter and we might want to ask the old man for some- 
 thing. I was referring to appropriations. This remark did not suit 
 them. That Committee on Irrigation and Reclamation of Arid 
 Lands is formed with Senator Warren as chairman. The others, out- 
 side of the chairman of the Com mttee on Railroads, are chiefly 
 lawyers. I tried to convince that committee of seven that I was 
 interested in irrigation; that I went to Dakota in 1860, when crops 
 could not be raised, and where they now raise millions of bushels. I 
 thought I understood the subject. No, sir; tnere was no place for 
 me, because I did not absolutely fall into this trap. Now follow up 
 the work. Governor Thomas of Utah issued his call. The outcome 
 of that work you will see later. Then came the recommendation of 
 Governor Toole; then the organization of this Convention. When 
 we wanted to get a chairman, Mr. Clark was spoken of. We wanted 
 to make him chairman, but he was committed to this question. We 
 took chances on Governor Hauser, and lo, and behold, he is commit- 
 ted. Now, I say, keep your eyes open and look out. You will be 
 asked to remain here a week if this, the endorsing of the Salt Lake 
 programme, cannot be accomplished. I say, meet the issue; vote 
 direct; say whether you want the lands ceded to the State or not. If 
 you do desire segregation, you, in my opinion, oppose all appropria- 
 tions from the government. 
 
STATE IRRIGATION CONVENTION. 25 
 
 There are perhaps 40,000,000 acres of arid lands in Montana. The 
 Dakota Congressmen say they will stand by the old man who holds 
 the purse. I would like to be so instructed by this Convention. 
 California is a country owned absolutely by railroads. Every busi- 
 ness man who goes there must admit it. That influence controlled 
 the Salt Lake Convention. I ask Mr. Clark and Mr. Gregory if they 
 can deny it. There is to-day, I dislike to say it, a judge on the 
 Supreme Bench who is actually a lobbyist in getting judges named. 
 This I understand from my colleagues who are lawyers, and to whom 
 is referred the recommending of judges. I refer to Judge Field, who 
 is apparently going out of his way in these matters. I dislike to 
 mention those things, but you should have fact^. Who are the men 
 standing by the Salt Lake proposition? Men living on the plains? 
 No, sir; the prime movers are from small mining counties. I have 
 said enough, gentlemen, but I am ready to answer any questions, if 
 you desire it. If these lands are ceded to us, that will be an end to 
 our appropriations. After having had forty or fifty millions t of acres 
 of land given to us, we will be asked to stand aside. How is the situ- 
 ation? Wyoming has about two-thirds of her lands surveyed; she 
 has had Union Pacific influence. The Northern Pacific does not care 
 about having the lands surveyed. We have hardly one-fifth surveyed 
 in Montana. These are facts, and we want to consider them and act 
 immediately. I would ask that some of the, members who were at 
 the Salt Lake Convention be heard from. 
 
 Mr. Carney, of Madison: Senator, what are the 
 chances for appropriations by Congress for irrigation? 
 
 Senator Power: If we all work together, I believe 
 we will succeed in securing such measures. When I say 
 that, I mean we, the Representatives in Congress of the 
 sixteen or seventeen States and Territories, comprising 
 what is known as the arid region. 
 
 Mr. Strevell, of Custer: I suppose the ordinary 
 parliamentary usage would be for the adoption of the 
 resolution taken up first. 
 
 The Chairman : I think as a committee of the whole 
 we can take no action. We can recommend to the Con- 
 vention that it adopt the section. 
 
 R. H. Howey, of I-ewis and Clarke: After discus- 
 sion it will be proper to move a recommendation. 
 
 Mr. Strevell: I now offer as a substitute for Resolu- 
 tion No. i the following: 
 
 Resolved, That in the judgment of this Convention it is the duty of 
 the general government to aid in the development by irrigation of 
 the arid lands in the several states and territories where such lands 
 
26 REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS 
 
 exist; and while we do not deem it desirable that the control and 
 title to such lands should pass from the general government to the 
 several states containing them, we do nevertheless urge that at least 
 the proceeds arising from the sale of such lands shall be applied to the 
 supply of water for their development for the purposes of agricult- 
 ure, and we urge upon our Senators and Representatives in Congress 
 to use every effort to accomplish such legislation as will bring about 
 this desirable result, not only in our state, but for all other states and 
 territories similarly situated. 
 
 Mr. Strevell then addressed the Convention upon the 
 substitute as follows: 
 
 Mr, Chairman and Gentlemen of the Convention: 
 
 Upon this substitute which I have offered it is desirable that we 
 shall reach such a result as will be satisfactory to all. If there is any 
 scheme or any trap I do not suppose we will fall into it. As to the 
 first proposition I do not desire, and I shall be very brief, to be under- 
 stood at any stage of this Convention as antagonizing the proposition 
 that it is the duty of the general government to aid in the develop- 
 ment of the arid lands in this State, because it is the duty of the gen- 
 eral government to aid. I am going to assume that farming is the 
 basis of this country. [Applause.] We cannot live without the pro- 
 ductions of the farm. To invite a man to farm without water in this 
 Western country is but little short of inviting him to a hospitable 
 grave. Hence it becomes necessary that some other means should 
 be devised than formerly prevailed to aid in development. That is the 
 reason for the presence of these delegates here, because there is a 
 condition of things here that has not been confronted before in the 
 history of this country. It is the duty of this government to aid in 
 the development of these arid regions. That's a proposition I am 
 prepared to stand bv in all the stages of it. In the early days of Illi- 
 nois that vast domain lay there, which is now an empire, with not a 
 railroad. Stephen A. Douglass in 1849, I think, introduced into Con- 
 gress, which was passed, a bill which gave to the company which 
 should build from one end of the state to the other every alternate 
 section of land. Immediately, as if by magic, the state jumped to the 
 front and is now third in the Union. So, by government aid, was the 
 continent spanned. It is, and should be, the prime consideration of 
 this Convention that the government shall help and assist in the de- 
 velopment of these arid lands. Is it desirable, as the Salt Lake Con- 
 vention said, to transfer the control and title of these lands to the 
 various states? I think not [loud applause], and in a word I will tell 
 you why. Some of you gentlemen are perfectly plain, as I am. You 
 may protest against it when the corporations come to take those 
 lands; your voices may be raised against it, but it will be as the breath 
 to the idle wind. It will be accomplished, and it is our duty not to 
 put these lands into that condition. 
 
 It is the duty of the government to provide a homestead for every 
 poor man who wants it, and if he must have water to develop it, it is 
 
STATE IRRIGATION CONVENTION. 27 
 
 the duty of the government to aid him in that also. [Applause.] The 
 ceding of the arid lands to the State would make necessary the estab- 
 lishment of tribunals to determine land contests just as it is now done 
 by the general government. The State cannot stand the expense. 
 For these reasons and many others I do not assent to the proposition 
 urged by the Salt Lake Convention. 
 
 It is our duty to harmonize all the elements of this arid region 
 just as far ns we can. I would not for one moment oppose anything 
 done by the Salt Lake Convention, because it is the duty of all so far 
 as possible to stand together, but I cannot acquiesce in the proposi- 
 tion that the State should have the control and title of these arid 
 lands. For that reason I have offered the substitute. 
 
 In conclusion I wish to say that the arid lands, undesirable as they 
 now appear to the eye, will some day constitute the grandest portion 
 of the whole United States. No man knows what these univiting 
 prairies will become when the fertility which resides in their bosom 
 is called forth by the application of water. Let us keep these ques- 
 tions close to the people. Keep their water, the management of it, 
 in their hands. Under the Salt Lake resolution it can never be done. 
 
 The Chairman : As the Senator from this State has 
 requested to hear from some of the delegates who were 
 present at the Salt Lake Convention, I believe it would 
 be proper for the Chairman of the Committee on Reso- 
 lutions, who was in that Convention, to address the 
 meeting. 
 
 W. A. Clark, of Silver Bow, the gentleman referred 
 to, then addressed the Convention as follows: 
 
 Mr. President and Gentlemen : 
 
 We appear here at the call of the Governor to take into considera- 
 tion a question that vitally concerns the prosperity of the State the 
 question of irrigation and the reclamation of the arid lands. This is 
 in consequence of an agitation of the subject recently inaugurated in 
 Nebraska, where a Convention was held in February last, and in 
 which a resolution was adopted providing for a western inter-state 
 congress to consider the question of irrigation more widely, and Salt 
 Lake City was the place designated for the meeting. The congress 
 was called by Governor Thomas, of Utah, in September. All the 
 States and Territories, except two or three, which are embraced in 
 what is termed the arid region, that great expanse of country which 
 lies west of the looth meridian of longitude, were there represented. 
 The convention was composed of about five hundred delegates and 
 remained in session three days. Many resolutions were considered, 
 and after full and free discussion those cited in the published call of 
 our Governor were adopted almost without dissent. 
 
 The first one involves the most important question, that of the 
 cession by the general government to the several States and Terri- 
 
28 REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS 
 
 tories of all the arid lands lying within their boundaries; and this 
 resolution expresses the crystalized sentiment of that convention. 
 
 It was an assemblage of representative men, in the main agricul- 
 turists, but drawn from every occupation and profession, and I be- 
 lieve they were thoroughly identified with the industries of their 
 respective States, and mindful of their best interests. I have no 
 doubt that in point of intelligence and honesty of purpose they would 
 average very well with the distinguished gentleman who has just pre- 
 ceded me and who so indelicately raised the question of self-interest 
 and possibly fraud as the governing motives in that convention. It 
 is an unjust reflection on the character of the men who were there, 
 and, speaking for my colleagues who shared the honor with me of 
 representing Montana on that occasion, I resent the insinuation that 
 they were dupes, led into a trap by the representatives of railroad 
 companies, as suggested by the gentlemen from Choteau, or partici- 
 pants in a movement which was prompted by incentives of fraud. 
 
 It is gratifying to find here in this body representative men from 
 every part of the State, and that all of the principal occupations, 
 trades and professions are represented. You have come here volun- 
 tarily to discuss a great question that concerns every inhabitant of the 
 State, and I consider the insinuation of the gentleman who preceded 
 me an undue reflection upon those delegates here engaged in pur- 
 suits other than agriculture. It would seem from that gentleman's 
 remarks that we of the mining counties have no business here. He 
 appeals to the people "from the plains" to "keep their eye on their 
 guns," and warns them of lurking designs and dangers that threaten 
 them. Now I venture to suggest that the people in the mining dis- 
 tricts and they certainly have done their part to build up the State 
 have its interests just as dearly at heart as have the farmers, or even 
 the eminent gentleman himself. What concerns the welfare of one 
 locality concerns all. We all have a right to avail ourselves of the 
 privileges of the land laws, and all likewise of the benefits of the min- 
 eral laws. 
 
 It is a public question that we have met to discuss. Let it be free 
 to all. I have too much confidence in the intelligence, the integrity 
 and the magnanimity of the people of Montana, whatever may be 
 their avocation, to believe that, in considering questions of this char- 
 acter, they could be largely influenced by narrow or sordid consider- 
 ations. 
 
 The question before us is one of the most important that could 
 possibly engage our attention. The mining development in this State 
 has attained gigantic proportions. By the concentration of the highest 
 skill and large capital, we have reached a position unparalleled in all 
 the world. We should not permit our other great resources to lie 
 dormant or to languish. 
 
 The importance of irrigation becomes apparent when we realize 
 
STATE IRRIGATION CONVENTION. 2<> 
 
 the fact that more than one-half of the agriculture of the world is 
 dependent upon it; that two-fifths of the arable land of the United 
 States will not surely produce crops without its aid, and that in our 
 own State, which is estimated to contain over twenty million acres 
 susceptible to cultivation, irrigation is absolutely essential to success- 
 ful agriculture. 
 
 The artificial watering of the earth had its origin soon after the 
 struggle of mankind for subsistence first began. Ruins of ditches 
 and aqueducts, as well as reservoirs, are found in Asia, Africa, and all 
 other parts of the world. Some of them were projected upon a mag- 
 nificent scale. Egypt has been called the classic ground of irrigation. 
 The Spanish Conquerors discovered upon the eastern slopes of the 
 Andes, aqueducts as much as five hundred miles in length and reser- 
 voirs of such stupendous character, as indicated a civilization far in 
 advance of that possessed by the Incas, and all of such permanent 
 construction as to survive the disintegrating forces of unnumbered 
 ages. 
 
 The Aztecs employed irrigation to increase the productiveness of 
 their fields centuries before the fleets of their conquerors appeared 
 on the Gulf of Mexico. In Arizona the aborigines built ditches irt> 
 the valley of the Gila more than five hundred years ago, and in several 
 localities of that Territory have been found extensive ruins of irriga- 
 tion works that were built by prehistoric races. 
 
 The gradual decay of irrigation works on the peninsula of India 
 was followed by impoverishment of the natives and in some instances 
 by famine. The British government about thirty years since took the 
 matter up, and has since expended about one hundred and twenty 
 million of dollars in irrigation improvements, and as much more in 
 building canals, highways and railroads necessary to transport the 
 cereals that irrigation enabled them to produce, and the result was 
 that India, next to the United States, became the largest producer of 
 wheat, and has become a serious competitor of this country for the 
 European markets. 
 
 Previous to the last quarter of a century the methods of applica- 
 tion of water were rather of a crude and unscientific nature, until the 
 needs of the Far West invoked the aid of engineering skill and reduced 
 it to a science, and obtained the maximum results. But much more 
 may be accomplished by impounding waters during the flood season, 
 by which a steady supply will be insured and larger areas watered in 
 the dry period of the year. To Montana this means a great deal. 
 Here exist, I believe, the greatest possibilities to be found anywhere. 
 This State is traversed by a magnificent system of mountain ranges, 
 pregnant with mineral wealth, and clothed with measureless forests, 
 which are great accumulators and conservators of snow and moisture 
 and upon whose bosoms Nature has scooped out hydrographic basins, 
 which require simply a wall at their outlet to convert them into reser- 
 voirs ample for all requirements of storage. 
 
3O REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS 
 
 The innumerable streams having here their sources which furnish 
 the waters of two of the greatest rivers of the continent are admirably 
 located for the best possible diversion and distribution to the arable 
 lands. 
 
 These are known to be of the greatest fertility and w r ill produce 
 from forty to fifty bushels of wheat to the acre, and the other grains 
 in proportionate abundance. Consider, moreover, their contiguity to 
 the richest mining districts that the world has ever known, which 
 will insure a constant and advantagous market, and it becomes appar- 
 ent that our State is endowed with the elements of wealth in the 
 highest degree. At present we depend largely on other States for 
 produce that should be raised at home. Flour, bacon, fruits, vegeta- 
 bles, butter, eggs and poultry, in car-load lots, are unloaded daily at 
 our principal railway stations, and millions of dollars are sent out 
 annually for these articles that should go into the pockets of our own 
 farmers. The benefits resulting would exceed the calculations of the 
 most sanguine, and the condition of the farmer here, with a market 
 at his own door for his annual product made certain by irrigation, 
 would present a striking contrast to that of the western farmer who 
 is obliged to contend with drouths, distant and fluctuating markets, 
 long hauls, extortionate charges and the competition of cheap Asiatic 
 labor. Now what is the status of irrigation here to-day ? Almost at 
 a standstill. The lowlands lying along and near the streams were 
 appropriated by the early settlers and watered by small ditches of 
 easy and comparatively inexpensive construction. Moreover this 
 character of land is of limited area compared with the broad table 
 lands lying higher up, and the still higher and far more extensive 
 mesas, which are even more fertile, but all require expensive canals 
 for their proper watering. 
 
 Individual effort has almost reached its limit and it becomes neces- 
 sary to invoke the assistance of capital or depend on government or 
 State appropriations. Hence we are confronted with the important 
 problem as to how we can best effect the reclamation of these lands 
 and provide homes for the people. 
 
 There are some, Mr. President, who are content to lean on the 
 arm of the government and expect it to come to the rescue with lib- 
 eral and adequate appropriations. Others despair of accomplishing 
 anything of consequence from that quarter and believe it is better to 
 ask that the lands be ceded to the States. This was the conclusion 
 arrived at at Salt Lake, and the people of Montana are asked to co- 
 operate with this plan. Mr. President, I am in accord with this 
 theory, but I desire to hear a full discussion of the questiou in this 
 Convention, and if thereafter I am convinced that my position is not 
 wise or tenable I say to you frankly that I will abandon it. But I 
 want to hear something reasonable and definite presented, and not 
 mere vague assertion and inuendo as we have heard this morning. 
 
STATE IRRIGATION CONVENTION. 3 1 
 
 I am convinced that the time is now opportune when the govern- 
 ment may advantageously dispense with its land system. 
 
 About all of the available public land is now occupied. I am in- 
 formed that the number of acres now unsold amounts to less than a 
 million. The arid region is practically valueless without water, and 
 this I do not believe the government can or will provide in a prompt 
 or economical manner. The conditions existing in the several states 
 are entirely different, and no uniform system that the government 
 would necessarily have to adopt would be applicable everywhere or 
 secure the most advantageous application of water. A law suitable 
 to New Mexico would be impractical for the needs of Montana. 
 Utah requires entirely different regulations from Dakota. Each ~>tate 
 can best legislate for itself, particularly as each state has a different 
 statute governing water rights. 
 
 Again, we of the West all know how difficult it is to procure ap- 
 propriations of any considerable proportions. The states lying east of 
 the arid belt would all oppose it, apprehending competition in the 
 cereal markets, and being somewhat jealous of the Far West. This 
 subject has already received some attention in Congress, but so far 
 without practical results. 
 
 One hundred thousand dollars were appropriated in 1888, and the 
 year following two hundred and fifty thousand dollars more, for the 
 purpose of surveying the irrigable lands. This was a commendable 
 movement, and I have no doubt but that much valuable data and in- 
 formation have been secured through government inquiry. But let 
 us now inquire what became of that money. The whole matter wa& 
 placed in the hands of Major Powell, director of the geological sur- 
 vey, who diverted and used up one hundred and eighty thousand dol- 
 lars in making topographic surveys and maps thereof, claiming that 
 this work was a necessary preliminarv to any engineering work. The 
 Senate Irrigation Commission, very justly, severely criticised this 
 action as an unlawful diversion of money that they considered inde- 
 fensible. 
 
 Mr. Power: Mr. Clark, I would like to correct you 
 on the statements made by you concerning appropria- 
 tions. 
 
 Mr. Clark : Very well. 
 
 Mr. Power: In the first session of the Fifty-first Con- 
 gress there was appropriated for the Agricultural Bu- 
 reau the sum of $889,000, and during the last session an 
 additional sum of $812,000. Major Powell is not under 
 the direction of the Agricultural Bureau. A great deal 
 of the money has gone to furnish positions for Powell's 
 friends from the South, East and North, and to his cou- 
 sins and his aunts. 
 
32 REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS 
 
 Mr. Clark: I do not accept the statements of the gentlemen as 
 any correction of what I said. They refer to an entirely different 
 subject. I said nothing about the Agricultural Bureau or appropria- 
 tions therefor, but the remarks of the gentleman from Choteau are 
 corroborative of the theory I advance touching the futility of seeking 
 appropriations in aid of any Western enterprise, with the expectation 
 of having the funds properly applied. 
 
 Mr. President, we are not without precedent on the subject at 
 issue. The swamp lands were donated to the states in 1849, and so 
 far as I can learn it was considered a wise movement, which worked 
 out admirably. Every consideration urged in behalf of that measure 
 would apply with equal or greater force to the cession of the arid 
 lands. It has been suggested that this theory, if carried out, would 
 encourage jobbery and corruption in our Legislatures, and that in the 
 control and disposition of the lands, monopolies of land and water 
 franchises would be created. 
 
 It is a well known fact that water is the key to the land; that the 
 latter without the former is almost valueless, and there is the danger, 
 under existing circumstances, to which we are now exposed. 
 
 The best water privileges in he State are now being absorbed by 
 individuals and corporations which, while they may not improve these 
 lands, will have a monopoly of the most desirable of them, and this 
 will seriously handicap and complicate future operations more and 
 more as the matter is delayed. 
 
 As to the other objection, do we not trust our Legislatures to reg- 
 ulate our most vital interests and make laws controlling every species 
 of property? If we cannot trust them to control and dispose of the 
 arid lands if donated to the State, in God's name what is to become of 
 the great grant of school lands that were given to us with statehood? 
 I am not one of those who believe in the total depravity of human 
 nature. I think our interests much safer in the keeping of our Legis- 
 lative Assembly than in that of Congress. 
 
 Now, I say, let the states own the lands, and they will take care of 
 them and dispose of them judiciously, without fostering monopolies 
 or allowing the practice of extortion. We are asked how this can be 
 accomplished. I say, leave that problem to the future. It will be of 
 easy solution. Canals and reservoirs may be constructed by the 
 State, and the proceeds of the sale of the land applied to reimburse- 
 ment, or a law enacted creating irrigation districts, whereby the 
 people themselves can carry out the system of reclamation. Such a 
 law was put into operation in 1877 in the Orange Free State of South 
 Africa, creating a board in each district having corporate authority 
 and the power to issue bonds by creating a first lien on all of the 
 property of the district. This is said to work very satisfactorily. A 
 similar law, called the Wright bill, was enacted in California in 1887, 
 which works admirably. The State Supreme Court has repeatedly 
 
STATE IRRIGATION CONVENTION. 33 
 
 affirmed the validity of its provisions. The bonds, secured by mort- 
 gage, run twenty to thirty years, and afford a safe, permanent and 
 desirable security, that is eagerly sought by investors in the Eastern 
 states and of Europe. There is another question which is intimately 
 associated with irrigation, and that is the preservation of our forests. 
 They perform an important service in sheltering the snows and hold- 
 ing them until late in summer, to feed gradually the sources of the 
 rivers, and I hold that these lands also should be ceded to the states. 
 I feel assured that the people of Montana would exercise more 
 care in the protection of the timber in our forests, while at the same 
 time providing the inhabitants with what they require in their var- 
 ious pursuits, and much more satisfactorily than the government can 
 or will possibly do. Forest fires generally destoy more timber in one 
 year than would be consumed in fifty years. As it is now, the De- 
 partment of the Interior, in framing regulations governing the cut- 
 ting of timber on the public domain, is influenced largely by the 
 American Forestry Association. What do these people know about 
 the forests of the Rocky Mountains or the needs of the people there? 
 Scarcely anything. Perhaps few of them have ever been as; far in 
 this direction as Chicago. They call that the "Far West." 
 
 Senator Power: Would you also include the mineral 
 lands in the proposed cession ? 
 
 Mr. Clark: That is a proposition not contemplated in the resolu- 
 tion, and I have not fully considered it; but I would suggest that in 
 view of the history of national legislation whereby large grants of our 
 best lands have been made to railroad corporations by statutes so 
 loosely drawn that we find those corporations now laying claim to 
 millions of acres of our mineral lands, with a good prospect of suc- 
 cess according to recent decisions, it would probably be a wise pro- 
 vision to include these lands also with the others. No Montana Leg- 
 islature would ever frame such a law as that. I think we could de- 
 pend upon it that the people and not Ihe corporations under state 
 legislation would possess and enjoy the mineral lands. 
 
 Senator Power: You stated that in India there had 
 been expended more than a hundred millions of dollars 
 in irrigation works. I would like to know how that 
 money was raised. 
 
 Mr. Clark: The necessary funds were appropriated by the British 
 government. The conditions here and there are entirely different^ 
 The people of India are very poor, having few resources aside from 
 their fertile soil. Self interest dictated to the government the [expedi- 
 ency of these appropriations, and it was done with a lavish hand, and 
 the results confirmed the wisdom of the enterprise. We are able to 
 take care of ourselves, and besides we might wait a hundred years 
 and then not obtain any government aid commensurate with the 
 magnitude of the scheme in contemplation. 
 
34 REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS 
 
 Now, Mr. President, I have concluded all that I desire to say at 
 present upon this subject. I thank you, gentlemen, for the patient 
 attention you have accorded me. Whatever may be the result of the 
 discussion of this question in this Convention, I trust that the agita- 
 tion of the subject will continue until some practical system is inau- 
 gurated that will mark the beginning for our young State of a new 
 era of prosperity. 
 
 Mr. Clark's remarks were frequently greeted with 
 applause. 
 
 H. P. Rolfe, of Cascade: I move that the speeches 
 after this be limited to five minutes. 
 
 Mr. Word, of Lewis and Clarke: I move to amend 
 by making it fifteen minutes. I want to say something 
 myself. 
 
 Mr. Burton, of Choteau: I move that the motion as 
 amended be laid on the table. 
 
 The Chairman : The motion is upon the proposition 
 to lay the motion and amendment on the table. 
 
 Mr. Howey, of Lewis and Clarke : I move that the 
 committee arise and ask.leave to sit again. 
 
 The committee arose and on motion a recess was 
 taken until 2 p. m. 
 
 FRIDAY AFTERNOON. 
 
 At 2 p. m. the Convention was called to order by Vice 
 President Irvin. On motion the Convention resolved 
 itself into a committee of the whole, with Mr. Chisholm 
 in the chair. 
 
 Mr. Charles A. Gregory, of Gallatin County, spoke as 
 follows : 
 
 Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Convention : 
 
 I had the honor to second the resolution offered by Judge Strevell> 
 and I rise to speak in support of that resolution and to express my 
 disapproval of the first section of the platform of the Salt Lake 
 Congress. 
 
 I speak, not because I love the melody of my own voice, but be- 
 cause moved by a sincere conviction, and appreciating the great 
 importance of the question at issue. I feel I have a message to con- 
 vey to this Convention out of the depths of my heart, and out of a 
 judgment made up upon reflection. 
 
 No speaker can magnify beyond its just merits the importance of 
 the question involved in the needs and demands of the arid region; 
 
STATE IRRIGATION CONVENTION. 35 
 
 it is the most important question before the American Congress 
 to-day; it involves money value surpassing all other money values 
 that Congress deals with put together; it involves the exercises of all 
 the brain power in statesmanship that the Nation can command, to 
 work out the details of the questions which now press and which will 
 arise in the future in legislation and in the application of scientific 
 methods to conserve waters, to prevent floods, to preserve forests, to 
 build reservoirs, to mark out irrigation districts, to compose interstate 
 complications and international difficulties. 
 
 Reference has been made on this floor to the origin of this demand 
 to cede the public domain to the states wherein situate, and to the 
 conduct of the Utah Congress. It is thought the Utah Congress has 
 given out a 'manufactured opinion, and that the Congress was under 
 such control as to make it a foregone conclusion that it would pass a 
 resolution asking the United States Congress to cede the public lands 
 to the States. 
 
 In reading the report of the proceedings of that Congress, we are 
 struck with names and situation of the persons who appear to have 
 been the leaders in the debate. We naturally ask, who owns these 
 men, or what do these men own? One of the gentlemen was intro- 
 duced as the General Land Agent of the Central and Southern Pacific 
 Railroad Companies, and was also known as land commissioner of the 
 Oregon & California, and of the Houston Texas Railroad Compa- 
 nies. These are surely positions of honor and trust. Another of the 
 gentlemen was known as a very extensive owner of lands in the arid 
 region and to be engaged in irrigation development :n Nevada to an 
 extent that astonishes men of the ordinary business abilities. Such is 
 perceived to be the situation of two men who with great address and 
 with mental ability equal to their boldness and address, dominated in 
 1 nfluence in that convention. Another was so circumstanced as to 
 lead to the supposition that personal ambitions and property interests 
 and hope of opportunities might govern to a large extent the posi- 
 tion he took on this question of State control of public lands. 
 
 One of these gentlemen, indeed, said in that congress, "there is no 
 room for modesty in this bustling and active world of ours;" and 
 whether that be a fact or not, he clearly showed that he did not 
 occupy "that room." 
 
 I recall that some of the Utah orators boasted they would carry 
 their plan by the force of the impact. I quote their words. But the 
 gravity of the good sense of the people is now aroused and set in mo- 
 tion against the Utah plan. We shall not find it overcome by the 
 "im-iact" of the Utah demand, and the future "impact" of the blows 
 will be less and less felt. The people have been thinking meanwhile. 
 The speculators and the cattlemen who want to get hold of great 
 ranges as a private property, through the channel of State ownership, 
 now perceive that the farmers must be consulted in this movement. 
 You, farmers, are here to-day; what do you say? 
 
36 REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS 
 
 The Utah platform has been endorsed by some other conventions. 
 The proceedings of these several irrigation conventions which have 
 preceded this one, and in which the movers have succeeded in getting 
 a vote for the Utah first plank, remind me of the experiments in nat- 
 ural philosophy and in magic, where a small mass of matter over- 
 comes and regulates a much larger, if there but be an anticipation of 
 motion by the velocity of one before the other is prepared to act or 
 to resist. As the explosive power of a little gunpowder will over- 
 come gravity because the latter is slower in resisting the motion of 
 the mass. 
 
 I do not wish to denl in personalities, and if I may be permitted to 
 criticise somewhat in the tone of censure any of the remarks of 
 those who have preceded me, I should say that the argument drawn 
 from the situation and relations of the persons or the motives found 
 on the other side of this question, is not the best argument to use. So 
 that the honorable Senator who has spoken on this subject, while he 
 may be right in his conclusions, has not sufficiently stated the 
 grounds of his conclusions. However, it is always pertinent to learn 
 all that can be learned of the motives and environments of the men 
 who originated the segregation plan. 
 
 A novel plan is proposed. Who proposes it, and who are for it? 
 The answer to these questions will create in men's minds, naturally 
 enough, a predisposition to reject or favor the plan, according as we 
 may perceive that the plan runs along in harmony with the selfish 
 side of their business, attended with grave danger to public interests, 
 or that the plan is evidently good for the public. The force of the 
 argument is not toward the decision of the question on its merits, but 
 it is used as a caution that we be not led to adopt the conclusion 
 merely because able and ingenius men have recommended it to us. 
 The moral force of the majority vote at the Utah Congress is broken 
 in view of certain facts of the nature I have just mentioned, and 
 further in view of the fact that there were able men in that Congress 
 who did not vote for the ceding of the lands to the states, and who 
 pointed out strong objections and dangers arising out of such a plan 
 of dealing with the public domain. Another consideration that will 
 weaken the moral effect of a majority vote in that Congress is that it 
 was called to petition Congress to cede the lands to the states. Men 
 were designated to go to that Congress, naturally enough, who favored 
 the object of the call. Its opponents would not be solicited. Hence, 
 so far as this Convention here assembled to day is concerned, this 
 question need not be seriously prejudiced in favor of the State con- 
 trol of the lands by the action of the Utah Congress. And to descend 
 to lesser matters, nor need it be prejudiced by the fact of arrangement 
 to have as the President of this Convention one who is in favor of the 
 Utah plan, and to have the Chairman of the Committee of the Whole 
 in favor of such plan, and to have the orator who was to speak first in 
 
STATE IRRIGATION CONVENTION. 37 
 
 this Convention one who went to school to the Utah Congress, and to 
 have to him accorded the floor for a good hour. Since these things 
 are &o, and, as may be claimed, are so in their favor by accident, I did 
 regret that any one could be found who, upon the close of that speech 
 of the gentleman thus put forward, should arise from their side of the 
 question and move to limit the rest of the debate to five-minute 
 speeches. We have come hither on business of State from distant 
 places at expense of time and money, and we are here as a deliberative 
 assembly, concerned to consider with circumspection and reflection 
 the most important measure before the American people; and yet 
 some delegate thinks he aids the cause of truth and right by shutting 
 the mouths of those who do not agree with his views. Such a course 
 I deem an insult to the intelligence and fairmindedness of this Con- 
 vention. 
 
 Emboldened by your evident interest in the question and your 
 eager looks of inquiry for some statement of grounds of rejection of 
 this Utah plan, I shall not trouble myself to look at the hour glass 
 while speaking, and, though I shall be brief, I will be limited only by 
 the necessity of the statement and your continued approval. I speak 
 under a duty. 
 
 If it should be known that I am the farmer's friend, that I am the 
 advocate for the protection of the rights of the working classes, and 
 the friend of every humMe citizen throughout the United States who 
 has rights in the public domain, and that I stand against monopoly, I 
 should think this the proudest distinction that could be bestowed 
 upon me. 
 
 Here is a question of changing by the wholesale, and at once, in 
 one broad legislative action, the tenure and ownership and mode of 
 disposition of a vast .domain, equal in extent to something like two- 
 fifths of the United States, outside of Alaska, lessened by the amount 
 of lands already reduced to private ownership. It is a question also 
 of changing the national policy which has existed for a century, and 
 in later days has been improved upon by its mineral, timber, home- 
 stead and desert entry laws, which has grown into a vast administra- 
 tive system, and which has hitherto worked to well as to challenge 
 the praise and admiration of wise and patriotic statesmen. New physi- 
 cal conditions presented in the arid region require some modification 
 of this system. Under the existing system of public domain policy 
 there have been usefully distributed seven hundred millions of acres 
 of lands; there have been usefully expended under that policy more 
 than two hundred and twenty-three millions of dollars. There has 
 thus grown in practice a great departmental administration under the 
 Secretary of the Interior, which, resting at the capital of a great na- 
 tion, surveys, investigates and executes over a field that covers many 
 states and territorial regions, many differences of climate, a variety of 
 land, mineral, agricultural, pastoral and timber, and the so-called 
 waste lands, and which in a measure affects and controls climatic con- 
 ditions in and over vast regions of land surface. 
 
38 REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS 
 
 Your deliberations, then, will be clothed with dignity and import- 
 ance, by reason of the importance of the issues which your resolu- 
 tions shall tend to affect and mould. A weight of responsibility 
 should press on your minds equal to the gravity of the questions in- 
 volved. The gravity of such questions will be more clearly appre- 
 hended if we stop to consider in whose interests you are about to act. 
 Is it a matter that pertains to one state alone? Aye, even to one na- 
 tion alone? Is it for a present and temporary interest you are to de- 
 liberate? Is it alone the welfare of the existing generation that shall 
 concern you? Are not all the arid states and territories interested? 
 are not all the states of the Union interested? Is not the coming 
 generation to be affected by the tendency of your recommendations? 
 Are not future generations upon their coming to feel the impress of 
 this day's work at your hands? I would not miss, then, the oppor- 
 tunity to strengthen and deepen this feeling of responsibility t-> local 
 and to general interests and 10 the immediate and to future time? Let 
 us dwell on it for a while at least, and then, when our mood is fitted 
 to form a conclusion, let us conclude and resolve in the face of all 
 these stupendous interests with what of unselfishness and with what 
 of wisdom we may. 
 
 The act of Bitting in this Convention and voting for a string of res- 
 olutions might seem slight and inconsequential, unless we halt for. a 
 moment. Our heads are full of our own individual affairs. Men 
 walk in accustomed paths often without heeding the ground they are 
 passing over till they come face to face with some new object to ar- 
 rest their attention. Here, before us, are objects and subjects that 
 should startle us to a halt, and hold us to rest for calm thought. 
 
 Let us lead our minds in our deliberations in this Convention step 
 by step to the things we are contemplating in this wrench to our land 
 system. First, to what end was the system framed? And is that a 
 good end or final purpose, and will a change lead to better results? 
 Having considered the end or final purpose of our present system, 
 let us ask if the means of attaining such end are better furnished by 
 the several states and territories separately than by the united action 
 of the nation. Great expenditure of money is involved in this action, 
 and in the details to a useful result. Will feeble and poor states and 
 territories be able to spend millions on millions of dollars in separately 
 caring for these great interests? 
 
 Bear in mind that if you take by grant from the nation all this great 
 domain of arid lands you take upon yourselves the mighty and op- 
 pressive burden of reclamation at your own expense, unaided by na- 
 tional appropriation. 
 
 One great harm to grow out of ceding the lands to the states is 
 that the lands will be sold out in job lots and get into the hands of 
 schemers and monopolists. They will not be sacredly kept for the 
 occupancy and ownership of the people and the poor man. The de- 
 
STATE IRRIGATION CONVENTION. 39 
 
 claimers for the ceding plan tell us, with an air of surprise and with 
 pity for our fears, that this is not possible; that we must not distrust 
 the ability of a free people in a free country and under Democratic 
 rule to protect themselves; that we thus slander the people and insult 
 the legislatures; that \ve asperse the integrity and honesty of the peo- 
 ple. This reply sounds well and it is exaected to put us to the blush. 
 We know that experience teaches us we are right to take counsel of 
 our fears. Some of the states have given us examples of warning. I 
 cannot stay on this for instances of proof. Public men know them 
 well enough. But the people know these things. There is a popular 
 distrust of state legislatures which may be said to characterize a large 
 portion of the American people at the present time. 
 
 The details of the Constitutions of the four most recently formed 
 States, lying all of them in the arid region, illustrate this fixed 
 tendency in American politics they frame their constitutions to 
 declare what the respective State legislatures cannot be permitted 
 to do. 
 
 The principal prohibitions on the legislatures are: On enacting 
 any private or special legislation; on extinguishing or releasing the 
 obligations of corporations or of individuals to the State; on legisla- 
 tive bribery; on personal or private interest in a bill in any member; 
 on irregular form in framing bills; on appropriations of moneys; on 
 performing legislative functions by deputy; on loaning the credit of 
 the State to corporations; on authorizing lotteries; and on entertain- 
 ing money bills during the last hours of the legislature. 
 
 These new constitutions suggest that the people have lost confi- 
 dence in their State legislatures, and thus the people have sought to 
 anticipate great evils by limiting powers of the legislature; by telling 
 them what they may do and what they may not do. 
 
 This is the undeniable answer to the declamation of orators who 
 boast the integrity of legislatures. It is known that many honest legis- 
 lators are brought and weedled to do the things by intriguing mem- 
 bers and lobbyists, which in the innocence of the well intentioned 
 members they never knew the iniquity of till the wrong is consum- 
 mated. 
 
 These considerations convince one that "the people" will be set 
 against the ceding of lands to the full control of the States. We do 
 not distrust the ability of "the people" to take care of their own inter- 
 ests. When they are assembled in conventions they do that very 
 well. The result of this Convention will show their sagacity. It is 
 only that the people distrust the influences that may be brought to 
 bear on their agents. 
 
 I tell the politicians who hold the strings of this kite which they 
 are now flying before the face of the people, that they will ere long 
 bring down the lightning on themselves. This Utah plan is not to be 
 a popular plan. The people will continue to regard the national 
 
40 REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS 
 
 domain~as their heritage to be kept i-acredly for the benefit of the 
 poor man, the homeseeker and the settler, throughout the United 
 States. 
 
 It is a bad thing for a Sta'e to own large properties of this nature. 
 Such political institutions as States are not made for monetary cor- 
 porations, or corporations to deal in property; they are framed to pre- 
 serve order, to punish crimes, to protect property rights, to protect 
 the weak against the strong, and there the proper functions cease. 
 The people know this and will not wish to have new temptations to 
 fraud and to monopoly set on foot, as would be done by the Utah 
 plan. 
 
 The Salt Lake City Congress did resolve that its members, as a 
 majority, were in favor of granting in trust, upon s>uch conditions as 
 may serve the public interest, to the States and Territories needful of 
 irrigation, all lands now a part .of the public domain within such 
 States and Territories, excepting mineral lands, for the purpose of 
 developing irrigation, to render the lands now arid fertile and capable 
 of supporting a population. 
 
 This Convention, under trje call of Governor Toole of Montana, is 
 called, it is declared in the call, because it is "deemed advisable to 
 obtain a direct expression of the people of Montana upon the resolu- 
 tions adopted by the Salt Lake City congress." 
 
 This is a useful purpose. One will hardly think, however, that a 
 convention made up by the selection of a few delegates by the 
 boards of county commissioners will necessarily reflect the wishes or 
 views of the people on this topic It would seem more to the pur- 
 pose to declare that a convention should be held to take under con- 
 sideration the matters referred to in the resolution of the Utah con- 
 gress, to the end that the people of the State may hear arguments 
 for and against the recommendations embraced in the U"tah platform. 
 The discussion of the questions involved would be highly useful and 
 instructive. Such discussion would prepare the public to make up its 
 mind on these resolutions. 
 
 I have somewhere else said the Convention was supposed to be 
 called "to foster interest in the question of ceding public lands to the 
 States in the arid region." It is charged, and it is thought, that there 
 is a desire on the part of some interested cliques to create a public 
 opinion in favor of such a course. This is not illegitimate work, 
 unless the open and full opportunity to express the opposite opinion 
 is denied to the people. That opportunity must come, however, and 
 the forum for its discussion is the halls of Congress. The partici- 
 pators in that discussion will be "the members of Congress from all 
 parts of the United States. I shall assume members of Congress 
 from the parts east of the looth meridian of west longitude can intel- 
 ligently study and consider this question; as can also members from 
 the arid regions. Such intelligent study of the question may bring 
 
STATE IRRIGATION CONVENTION. 4! 
 
 wiser results of legislation than if the solution of the question is left 
 to rest on the demands of voluntary conventions not made up of dele- 
 gates chosen by the people. The choice of members of Congress 
 from the States may yet turn on this single issue; and when it shall 
 so turn, then we may believe that the mind of the people will be ascer- 
 tained. In the meantime agitation, discussion and instruction is what 
 may be best sought after. Keep these conventions going. The uses- 
 of these conventions are the agitation of the question and the instruc- 
 tion to grow out of them. We all profess to want the same thing, 
 i. e., what may best serve the public interest. My insistance will be 
 that the whole of the vast interests involved shall be duly considered, 
 that the views of men who have been prepared by study and observa- 
 tion and familiarity with the subjects, may be brought out; and that we 
 may respectfully hear their conclusions. Against the quickly pro- 
 nounced resolves of delegates chosen to declare their own views, and. 
 who do not profess special preparation of mind to form such views, I 
 would wish the people to weigh the views of men who do possess 
 special preparation of mind on these questions. I would call an 
 architect to advise me on the plan and construction of an important 
 edifice; I would advise with a lawyer rather than a tinsmith, to guide 
 me as to my contract rights and liabilities, and equally wise would it 
 be to consult scientific me^ and statesmen on grave questions of pre- 
 servation of natural streams of water, reservoirs of water and head 
 waters, and forest regions, and as to legislation for the best public 
 interest, and long enduring public interest. Trained and able men 
 are in the employment of the government. Let us have their advice. 
 I cannot think that separate States can deal with an international 
 question of right to use and conserve natural waters, or that they can 
 deal with interstate questions of the same nature, or that poor and 
 feeble States can sustain the pecuniary burdens of scientific investiga- 
 tion and publication for instruction, of geological and geographical 
 surveys, nor of building reservoirs and canals. Or is it supposed that 
 Congress will wisely cede all these lands' to the States and still con- 
 tinue all its expenditures in their preparation for sale and disposal the 
 same as though it were still charged with holding such lands in trust 
 for all the citizens of the nation? 
 
 It is now certain that these matters will be carried on at nationa^ 
 expense; if the new plan is adopted, it will no longer at least be cer- 
 tain that we should have that aid. It is probable \\e should lose 
 such aid. 
 
 f I have dwelt somewhat at length on the Utah congress it is be- 
 cause in ihe call for this Convention in which we are speaking the 
 Governor has said that the purpose of calling the Convention is to- 
 take the sense of the citizens of this State on the matters resolved on 
 by the Utah congress. The Utah congress is made the leader to form 
 opinion in favor of its plan. I shall venture to predict that your 
 
4 2 REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS 
 
 voice will call a halt in this movement, and make a recommendation 
 to Congress that shall fix the attention of Congressmen from the 
 east and from the south, on our needs, while showing we do not ask 
 what is injurious. 
 
 Now we have been presented with the substance of the argument 
 in favor of the Utah plan, by one who is selected as its exponent be- 
 cause of his ability to set forth the argument, and because he did 
 attend that congress, and having been fully instructed, crammed 
 down to the bottom and filled full to the top with the utmost argu- 
 ment presented in that congress by the most able and skillful attor- 
 neys for a certain faction, he brings here to us that argument. 
 Necessarily I can comment on that argument. I listened to his 
 speech with profound respect, and with the utmost interest, in order 
 to discover the reasons for the Utah plan, and to give to him the 
 benefit of every good reason he could assign. 
 
 I desire to ask you if am not right in the inference from his 
 speech that his argument is this: We want the arid domain placed 
 within control of the States respectively in which it is situate, for 
 two reasons. One is that we need development of irrigation, and in 
 this matter Congress will not help us. Secondly, that seventeen 
 States individually, chopping this arid domain into seventeen frac- 
 tions, can better manage these seventeen fractions than the United 
 States Congres> can manage the national domain as an entirety. 
 
 I grant you we want irrigation development (letting this phrase 
 cover the whole subject). We want this and we vant it as rapidly as 
 it may be done, because we want to give to all who seek it the bene- 
 fit of cheap land and great crops in this region which we know is 
 suited to be the habitation of the highest civilization of the human 
 family. I do not admit that Congress will not help us. That, at least 
 irom the stand of those who state it to be so, is an unimproved propo- 
 sition. I do not believe it. It may be contradicted from our present 
 knowledge of legislation. None of us expect, or, T may say, desire 
 that the nation should build irrigating canals, but to preserve forests, 
 to make reservoirs, promote surveys and make laws to bring the 
 land and water into close relation, and to aid in some manner the 
 irrigation development, is expected and desired. Appropriations to 
 this end have been made already; we want them continued or 
 increased. Already a standing committee has been made in the 
 United States Senate on irrigation; already a committee is formed in 
 the House on this subject. A bureau of irrigation inquiry is established. 
 We want it more amply provided for. The mind of the people is 
 being aroused to all these matters, to their importance, and to our 
 needs. Therefore I deny that Congress will not aid in this matter. I 
 can conceive, too, that the impatience of young and sparsely peopled 
 States, and the eager haste of speculators in lands and canals will not 
 be pleased with any slowness on the part of Congress; but I can also 
 
STATE IRRIGATION CONVENTION. 43 
 
 conceive that too great haste can be made and bold expenditures en- 
 tered on in advance of the means of a population to justify or to sus- 
 tain them. 
 
 The next point is: It is claimed the several states will better man- 
 age the lands and make better money provision than Congress could 
 do. This is certainly not so in my judgment. A nation of sixty-five 
 millions of people, possessing more natural resources of wealth and 
 taxable ability than any other nation on the globe, is surely better 
 able to sustain the burden of providing money for the aid of this kind 
 of improvement than a few feeble and poor states. If states should 
 undertake any works of this nature as states, they would not do any 
 great things, or, entering upon great things, they would become 
 bankrupt. But I do not believe in states doing any of these things. 
 If states do not make the improvements, then individuals, or private 
 corporations, or municipal corporations in the form of irrigation dis- 
 tricts will do it, and in either of these events they will be better done 
 while the domain is controlled by the nation and under its laws than 
 if the same were granted to the several states. 
 
 It is not for me to work out the details of any plan. I am only to 
 show that change of ownership and control of the public lands will 
 not help matters; or rather I should say, the burden is on those who 
 would force a change to show that it is free from dangers and is ben- 
 eficial. We who are conservative stand upon the ancient ways. If 
 any would advise to make a change, let them prove that such a change 
 is clearly for the best interests of the people. This they have not 
 done. Has the policy recommended in the Utah resolution ever been 
 fully considered, or, as some may ask, ever been honestly put before 
 the people? 
 
 Most of the voters of the United States, we may feel sure, have 
 never thought of it. Few of the members of Congress have ever con- 
 sidered it. It is new to them, and I believe those who have heard of 
 the demand for this action, outside of interested parties, have not 
 thought of it as a likely or as a desirable measure. 
 
 The recommendation is indeed coupled with the condition that the 
 "trust be upon such conditions as may serve the public interest." 
 
 The trust is now already in such hands, and upon such conditions 
 as may best serve the public interest. It may in its present hands be 
 moulded. It is a plastic trust, shapeable to the best needs of each 
 state and of the whole of the people of the United States 
 
 The petition to the United States Congress to convey the lands to 
 the State in trust is but a term or phrase to allure, since I notice that 
 in the arguments at the Utah Congress as reported the position is in- 
 sisted on that the title to the lands shall pass absolutely to the State, 
 to do with such lands as they please, the trust, so called, being simply 
 that the proceeds of such lands shall be used for furthering irrigation, 
 or for irrigation and for school purposes. 
 
44 REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS 
 
 "The trust to be upon such conditions as may serve the public in- 
 terest." Here is the rub. You who demand a ceding of these lands 
 to the State say, among other reasons, that the present law under 
 which citizens may acquire lands is not well adapted to the condi- 
 tions that obtain in the arid region. Such a thing as changes and 
 amendments is known to the law makers. Remove this imperfection 
 then. 
 
 If the ownership and control of the public domain passes from the 
 nation to the several states, the land surveys, special examinations, 
 explorations, educational publications at national expense naturally 
 cease. To continue them separated from the trust is to keep things 
 together that are incongruous. To sell my farm to another man and 
 then for the grantee to expect me to survey his lines and run his- 
 ditches and fence and break up his land is not in harmony with our 
 ideas of obligation and duty. How are seventeen states and territories 
 to carry on the great measures, which cost millions of dollars annually, 
 that we are now agreed are useful and necessary in preparing the 
 lands for occupation? The speaker who preceded me is not fortu- 
 nate in his allusion to state control of lands. Texas and California are 
 melancholy illustrations of the improvidence of guardianship of pub- 
 lic lands. 
 
 If the states obtain control of all the lands, except mineral, imagine 
 what opportunities for corrupt lobbying would be opened in seventeen 
 different capitals. A pandemonium and a riot of corruption will 
 ensue. Arizona has a population by the census of 1890 of 59,601. 
 How many able and intrigueing men in that state will it take to cut 
 off every homestead right in the future, every desert entry right, 
 timber and mineral claim in many instances? And how long will it 
 be before a few rich land barons will be the owners of most of the 
 80,000,000 acres of lands there? California is a state where individu- 
 als have big holdings. These big grants and big acquisitions of lands 
 are recognized as a blight on the prosperity of the State; they are also- 
 an injustice to the rest of the citizens not sinister enough or not dex- 
 terous enough to get these big possessions. But these things are not 
 to be encouraged by any forms of law or by any policy of public man- 
 agement. 
 
 Said Mr. Estee, of California, in that Utah Congress: "I know one 
 man who owns 258,000 acres of valley land in California, and every 
 foot of that 258,000 acres is in one of the richest valleys of that great 
 State, and there is not an acre of it that is either mountain or hill 
 land." 
 
 I read in a government document, House of Representatives, 
 United States Congress, report of Select Committee on Irrigation, 
 February n, 1891, that one firm of partners owns in California the 
 water, or controls the water, that will irrigate 2,000,000 acres of land; 
 and they now control 350,000 to 400,000 acres. This is an unjust 
 
STATE IRRIGATION CONVENTION. 45 
 
 agiandizement. These great possessions are irresistably inviting to 
 an agrarian experiment. These -are topics for communism to harp 
 on. Hateful as this state of things is, it is not an animadversion on 
 the men who own these properties that I make. I point the moral to 
 another purpose, it is unjust that the system of government policy 
 should have made this thing possible. Avoid it then as soon as pos- 
 sible and as strenuously as possible in your future policy. A pesti- 
 lence is not so much to be dreaded. Think you a poor man from 
 Missouri can move then to Arizona and get land and water at a cheap 
 rate? Can a farmer go thither then from Holland and get his farm on 
 any terms except as speculators may dictate? 
 
 I name Arizona as an instance. Will it be any better than in 
 Nevada, in New Mexico, in Idaho, or Montana, or Wyoming or other 
 states? Montana is of course virtuous. We have seen no party 
 strife there; no attempt to steal government control there. Does any 
 junto of able schemers like these opportunities? Do they covet 
 them? And will the proposed measure make the opportunity, and 
 then make it easy to seize. all the advantages of such opportunities? 
 The instinct of the average citizen tells him that this is the probable 
 outcome of such a measure of cession as is proposed. This argument 
 against the measure is felt to be a weighty one, and is answered by 
 saying that the virtue of the governing bodies of the several States 
 will keep watch and ward over the interests of the poor man! I 
 think I would not tempt this boasted virtue so far and so needlessly. 
 You say Congress will do nothing further for you. How do you 
 know? Appeal to Congress for suitable and reasonable aid. 
 
 Take your map of the arid west and see where all the interstate 
 waters are located. You will find all of the Missouri headwaters lie 
 in the Rocky Mountains, and within the states of Colorado, Wyom- 
 ing and Montana. You will be able to find all the Columbia's head- 
 waters heading in Montana and Wyoming. Study the source and 
 course of the Snake River. You may find the Rio Grande heading 
 in Colorado. You trace the Wind, Bear and Green Rivers, the 
 Grand, the Gunnison and San Juan, to their fountains and run them 
 down to their mouth. Some of them tributary and headwater sup- 
 plies of the Colorado River, and all of them heading in Wyoming 
 and Colorado. Search elsewhere and you will find no interstate 
 headwaters of any large value. Lake Tahoe, in California and 
 Nevada may not be omitted; its importance entitles it to a reference. 
 These three states, Colorado, Wyoming and Montana, each of them 
 declare all natural waters to belong to the state. Hence they control 
 all the valuable stream waters at their sources. Who shall umpire 
 the interstate disputes when water grows more valuable and more 
 scarce to the cultivated land area than now? You say the nation and 
 its tribunals, perhaps. Truly. Then why seek to destroy the juris- 
 diction in rem, the power over the thing itself, which is the most 
 salutory feature of our present system. 
 
46 REPORT OF PROCEEDIMGS 
 
 I may not omit to mention that British Columbia and Old Mexico 
 have a finger in the pie. Is it a salutary thing to so place states in 
 antagonism to these fringing notions as to stir up strife? But you 
 say the strife is begun. Mexico frets, her right hand lifted; and 
 British Columbia is on her. guard, in the attitude of parry. Well, 
 then, keep the matter where it will be no worse, and where it may, 
 by prudence and forbearance and wisdom and unity, become much 
 better. 
 
 I will not point to where, nor with what interest, nor in what 
 selfishness this movement began. That would excite prejudice 
 against it, and what I wish is candor, examination and reflection. If 
 the policy is wise, no matter who pushes it forward, nor where it 
 started. 
 
 Is the proposed change an improvement? Merely because it is a 
 change, is it good? I do not hesitate to state my views. It is the 
 cautionary signal held up by one humble citizen while the train is 
 still getting under way, and while it is easy to slack up. 
 
 Congress had best administer in the public domain everywhere. 
 The poor man is thus better off all over the states. The subject mat- 
 ter in all its details is then under a control that will enforce 
 uniformity in the care and disposal of parcels of the public domain, 
 and thus only can this be done. The nation of 65,000,000 of people 
 can bear the burden of expense incidental to such control better than 
 states poor in means of raising money and spare in populations, and 
 new means and avenues of legislative corruption are thus kept from 
 being opened up. 
 
 Many persons will stigmatize this demand for ceding lands as the 
 biggest scheme for personal aggrandizement ever broached before the 
 American people. 
 
 Congress will not fail in due time to meet all the just demands of 
 the irrigation districts. Bills are now before Congress on this subject 
 of great importance. Some worthy, some crude, perhaps, but these 
 are attempts in the right direction. 
 
 A wise Congress will not fail to keep in perpetuity the heads of all 
 the principal streams and forest and water reservations. The pastoral 
 or water-gathering lands above 5,000 feet in altitude should be re- 
 tained and only parted with where it is known that no impediment is 
 thus created in the gathering and flow of waters. The value of the 
 arid lands is in the waters. 
 
 My watchword is "extension of irrigation under national control'* 
 (not at national expense), gradual, sure, and up to the point to meet 
 the wants of the coming millions of people into the arid region. 
 Twenty years from now 100,000,000 of people will dwell in these 
 United States, and the abundance of agricultural wealth to come out 
 of the arid region by means of irrigation will he known and appreci- 
 ated then as it is not now. 
 
STATE IRRIGATION CONVENTION. 47 
 
 May the deliberations of this Convention be of use to all the peo- 
 ple of all the states. 
 
 Mi\ Carney, of Madison: There are quite a number 
 of us old farmers here who have listened very attentively 
 to quite a number of eloquent speeches. We are not 
 familiar, however, with oratory as we are with practical 
 farming. Therefore we would like to ask a few ques- 
 tions in order that some eloquent gentleman might throw 
 some light on the subject. Thus far they have failed to 
 do so. Show us the man who is going to be benefited 
 by the State getting the land. What is going to become 
 of the poor man's homestead rights? The man who 
 starts out without money, how is he going to get hold of 
 it if the State secures it? We can look back upon the 
 history of the farmers for the past few years. Some of 
 them are making money out of the soil, and I venture to 
 say that there are large numbers of the farmers of Mon- 
 tana that have fallen short of making both ends meet 
 within the last three years. I am simply asking these 
 questions for ourselves. We are not orators or talkers. 
 We can think and theorize and read perhaps as well as 
 some that can do more talking. I believe you will find 
 that the agricultural people will bring a majority 
 against it. 
 
 Mr. A. C. Botkin : The fifteen-minute rule can be di- 
 vided by. three. The argument ad hominum has been 
 introduced not by those who favor the expression con- 
 tained in the Salt Lake platform. You have heard cer- 
 tain things from the lips of Senator Power and Mr, 
 Gregory, charging that the Salt Lake Convention was- 
 under the personal influence of railroad men. These are 
 the gentlemen who are held before us as a warning, as 
 reasons why we should not support the expression of the 
 Salt Lake platform. Now, the argument ad hominum 
 having been introduced by the gentleman, let us pursue 
 it into the other part. Whom do we find on this floor 
 who are the most active and efficient in opposing the 
 Salt Lake platform? I will name Mr. Z. T. Burton,. 
 Charles A. Gregory and Mr. Thompson and others that 
 I might mention who are connected with irrigation enter- 
 prises in this State. I feel myself highly honored to be 
 here with these gentlemen who are engaged in an effort 
 
48 REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS 
 
 to solve this problem of irrigation. The ownership of 
 the water involves the control of the sale, the ability of 
 the owner of the water to fix rates, and involves a taxa- 
 tion power more dangerous than anything that we repose 
 in our representatives in our Legislative Assembly. Let 
 us guard against that and against the growth of these 
 great water barons. 
 
 In criticising Mr. Strevell's substitute the latter gentle- 
 man asked if Mr. Botkin knew that from the sales of 
 government land the State had already received $20,000 
 since its admission into the Union. 
 
 Mr. Donald Bradford: I would like to correct. The 
 lands were sold over in the City of Missoula. They 
 were town lots. 
 
 Mr. R. O. Hickman: The State received $18,707.04, 
 being five per cent, of the land sales. Missoula is a dif- 
 ferent matter altogether. 
 
 Mr. Botkin : According to Judge Strevell's substitute, 
 irrigation works are to be constructed from the proceeds 
 of the sales of lands which cannot be sold until after the 
 works are constructed. In speaking of the Salt Lake 
 Convention, Mr. Botkin said he had been one of the del- 
 egates, and did not believe he had fallen into any trap. 
 
 B. F. Shuart, of Yellowstone, then addressed the Con- 
 vention as follows: 
 
 Mr, President and Gentlemen of the Convention : 
 
 I did not have the pleasure of being a member of the Salt Lake 
 Convention. I have read its proceedings. The first resolution now 
 under discussion is based upon three assumptions. The first is that 
 in the development of the arid region we have reached a crisis. It is 
 said about all has been accomplished that can be accomplished by in- 
 dividual enterprise. There is force in that statement The second 
 assertion is that the general government cannot be depended upon 
 for the reclamation of these lands I feel there is great force in that 
 statement, these arid empires of the area of the United States. The 
 magnitude of this undertaking in Montana is something wonderful. 
 I find from my reading of engineers' reports that a very conservative 
 estimate is that the lands can be reclaimed at $6 per acre. If we have 
 here in Montana 18,500,000 acres of arable lands that it will cost $6 
 per acre to reclaim, we are confronted at once with a cost of $110,- 
 000,000. Is there any one here who supposes for one moment that 
 that there is any use to even look to the general government for ap- 
 propriations, going into the subject of figures, in reclaiming these 
 
STATE IRRIGATION CONVENTION. 49 
 
 lands? I think it is useless, to say nothing of fifteen states or terri- 
 tories. So we can see that there is a great deal to say on this subject. 
 Still there is another assumption. That is, inasmuch as the general 
 government cannot be relied on, the general government ought to 
 cede the lands to the State; then the problem is solved. That is an 
 untrue proposition, and I am very sorry that there are any personal 
 reflections in this matter. There are reasons which underlie those 
 Salt Lake resolutions. The first objection to that resolution is this, 
 that it is in the interest of the monopolists. The theory given is that 
 reclamation should be tried. You know it is the time honored policy 
 of our government to distribute public lands in small holdings to the 
 actual settler. It is recognized that the home is one of the vital 
 factors in upbuilding a commonwealth, and it is this principle which 
 the government recognizes in dispensing these lands to multiply the 
 homes. So it has ever been the disposition to distribute the domain 
 in small holdings to actual settlers. And any policy which tends to 
 destroy that principle tends to destroy the heritage of the common 
 people. The difficulties in the way of the State undertaking the 
 reclamation of these lands have been very ably stated. Our State 
 Constitution limits the indebtedness to $3,000,000, and $2,500,000 are 
 now consumed in the running expenses of the State. Should these 
 lands be ceded it would require, as I have shown, over $100,000,000 
 for their reclamation, to say nothing of the amount to take care of 
 them. In some of the states where lands have been ceded in limited 
 quantities the corporations have been allowed to reclaim them. This 
 is done in Colorado, where the state sells the lands to corporations, 
 and allowing them to reclaim and sell to actual settlers. Now, then, 
 it is just so in California. You have heard the plan which is pursued 
 there. Do you know what it means to have these lands reclaimed in 
 that state? We find by examination that the farmers are required all 
 over this arid region to pay from $5 to $8. After they are reclaimed 
 the companies, over and above the original cost of the land, over and 
 above the cost of bringing the water upon the land and repairs to 
 them, have a clear profit of from $5 to $8. Then they are still 
 obliged to pay from 25 cents to $2 per acre for the running expenses 
 of ditches, making the actual cost less than $10 per acre. This is 
 what it means to have the lands pass into the hands of monopolies de- 
 veloped in that state. We have a number of such instances where 
 lands have been ceded to the states. Notably in California, where the 
 lands went in a very short time into the control of corporations and 
 monopolies. Suppose these lands were ceded to the State, and that 
 the State Legislature would administer them in the interests of the 
 people. It is very flattering to our self-respect. But now, gentle- 
 men, in this case it is one of the facts of experience that when trusts 
 have been committed to the legislatures of the states they have not 
 always been true to the interests of the people, and the monopolies 
 have gained strong foothold. I call your attention to a very peculiar 
 
5O REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS 
 
 difficulty which concerns the irrigation of this land by the Legislature. 
 Do you suppose a Legislature would be selected, in the event of the 
 lands being ceded, of men who are not personally interested in having 
 the lands ceded to the State? This question is comparatively a new 
 one and one which calls for the highest wisdom, and should not be 
 settled without much discussion, so that the true interests of our coun- 
 try may be served. 
 
 Mr. Z. T. Burton, of Choteau: I am not here with 
 any purpose of talking to you in a spread eagle style. 
 I am here to talk on a plain practical question. On this 
 question of not being afraid to trust this matter to future 
 legislatures of this State, that will do for Fourth of July 
 orations. We are here for the purpose of settling this 
 question whether we want the government to give us 
 these lands. We represent the State of Montana, and 
 are not to consult the wishes of the people of other 
 states. Our object is to encourage irrigation. Now 
 who is going to build the water wavs? It is very well 
 to talk about future legislatures, and it is very well to 
 talk about appropriations from Congress, but I want to 
 say here and now r that I don't believe Congress will ever 
 build an irrigating canal in this Stat<\ The canals will 
 be built not by Congress or the State, but by private in- 
 dividuals engaged in that work. It takes money and* 
 brains to build irrigation enterprises. We have got to 
 look at this question from a practical standpoint. This 
 State has not the money to manage that colossal land 
 grant of some 17,000,000 acres. It will take $2,000,000 
 to $3,000,000 to get the land into condition. 
 
 A. J. Seligman, of Lewis and Clarke: I appreciate 
 this subject as a business man, and am thoroughly with 
 the expression that our first duty is toward the State. I 
 cannot see what positive good is to come from this Salt 
 Lake Convention, and have yet failed to see any good 
 reasons for adopting that platform. The accepting of 
 these lands by the State is a very serious proposition. 
 It will require the establishment of a great many new 
 land offices and will develop a number of political ques- 
 tions. And the matter of taxes is a very serious one to 
 our taxpayers. We do not want our taxes increased. 
 
 Mr. Melton, of Beaverhead: If this irrigation prob- 
 lem is to be solved it must be done by the men on the 
 ground. We are not here to wage war against any 
 
STATE IRRIGATION CONVENTION. 51 
 
 man. We are here for the purpose of rinding out what 
 is best to do, and to do it; that is the question. The 
 Salt Lake platform is not an invaluable guide. 
 
 R. H. Howey, of Lewis and Clarke: When we come 
 to vote on accepting these lands we are voting for the 
 overturning of a land system that has been established 
 for a hundred years. There has not been anything that 
 has done so much for the country as the landed policy. 
 Our government has established these liberal land laws 
 which have given so many homes to citizens of the land 
 and aided in upbuilding a great country. It is for the 
 advocates of this measure to show the wisdom of over- 
 turning such a policy and turning a great domain over 
 to the legislatures of seventeen states. I believe the 
 people who have come here and made their homes here 
 are the people who can best solve this question for them- 
 selves. 
 
 Samuel Word, of Lewis and Clarke: I am not posted 
 on the subject of irrigation, but must confess that after 
 listening to some of the speakers I have felt like irrigat- 
 ing. If any one expects that I am going to make an 
 argument upon this question that will be interesting I 
 am glad of it, because I find myself on both sides of the 
 proposition. I cannot say that I am entirely in accord 
 with the Salt Lake resolutions. I am ready to take any 
 land that the government will cede to the State. I ob- 
 ject to the first resolution because it asks the govern- 
 ment to put restrictions on the lands. I am not afraid 
 that Montana cannot take care of them. Let us take 
 them. If we are afraid of ourselves let us substitute for 
 this resolution, "For God's sake don't give us any lands; 
 we don't want them." 
 
 The Committee of the Whole decided to recommend 
 the adoption of the substitute offered by Mr. Strevell, of 
 Custer Countv. 
 
 EVENING SESSION. 
 
 The Convention was called to order at 8:20 p. m. 
 Mr. Chisholm, Chairman of the Committee of the 
 Whole, submitted the following report: 
 
52 REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS 
 
 Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Convention: I 
 have the honor to report that previous to its adjourn- 
 ment the Committee of the Whole recommended the 
 adoption of Mr. Strevell's substitute for Article i of the 
 Sail Lake platform. 
 
 On motion of Mr. Strevell, of Custer County, the sub- 
 stitute was adopted. 
 
 Mr. Sutherlin, of Meagher, presented the following 
 resolution, which was adopted: 
 
 Rcaolvt'd, That the next Legislature of the State of Montana be 
 memorialized to enact a law similar in its provisions to the Wright 
 Irrigation Law of California for the furtherance of the interests of 
 farmeis in the matter of constructing reservoirs and irrigation 
 can.ils and the government of the distribution of the water. 
 
 M r . Burton, of Choteau moved, and it was carried, 
 that the resolutions offered by Mr. Botkin, of Lewis ind 
 Clarke, which were referred to the Committee on Reso- 
 lutions, be referred back to the Committee of the Whole. 
 
 On motion of Mr. Strevell the Convention went into 
 committee of the whole. 
 
 The resolution offered by Mr. Botkin, of Lewis and 
 Clarke, concerning the taxation of irrigating ditches, was 
 taken up. 
 
 Mr. Irvine, of Silver Bow, stated that the delegates 
 from that county were to be guided in the matter by the 
 members representing the agricultural districts, and that 
 they had come to the Convention with that idea. 
 
 On motion of A. J. Seligman the Chairman was in- 
 structed to recommend to the Convention that the reso- 
 lution be indeiinitely postponed. 
 
 Mr. Sutherlin, of Meagher, introduced the following, 
 which was recommended for adoption: 
 
 Hi-wived, That the next Legislature of the State of Montana be 
 memori -lized to enact a law similar in its provisions to the Wright 
 Irrigation Law of California, for the furtherance of the interests of 
 the farmers in the matter of constructing reservoirs and irrigating 
 canals, and the government of the distribution of the waters. 
 
 Mr. Weed, of Lewis and "Clarke, introduced the fol- 
 lov\ing, which was adopted: 
 
 WHEREAS, There will be held in the year 1892 a National Irriga- 
 tion Congress to be attended by delegates from all the States and 
 Territories of the arid region of the United States; and 
 
 WM UREAS, The place where such Congress shall be held has not 
 been fixed, and is to be designated by the Executive Committee of 
 said Congress, consisting of one delegate from each or the arid States 
 and Territories; and 
 
STATE IRRIGATION CONVENTION. 53 
 
 WHEREAS, Montana has within its boundaries more acres of land 
 susceptible of irrigation, and more water available for irrigation pur- 
 poses, than any other State or Territory; therefore, be it 
 
 Resolved, That the State Irrigation Convention of the State of 
 Montana, assembled in the city of Helena, extends to the National 
 Irrigation Congress, through its Executive Committee, a cordial and 
 unanimous invitation to hold 1t> annual session for the year 1892 in 
 the State of Montana. 
 
 The committee arose and reported. 
 
 In Convention the report of the Committee of the 
 Whole was adopted. 
 
 Mr. Strevell: Mr. President, I move that the Sec- 
 retary of this Convention be and hereby is requested to 
 transmit to the Senators and Representatives in Congress 
 from this State the resolution which has been adopted 
 by this Convention as a substitute for the first resolution 
 of the Salt Lake platform, and that such action be au- 
 thenticated by the President of this Convention and be 
 transmitted at the earliest practicable day. Carried. 
 
 A motion asking for the appointment of a State Engi- 
 neer, whose duties \vould be to guard the distribution of 
 waters for irrigation, report upon the capacity of streams 
 for irrigating purposes, report upon the growth of the 
 uses of waters of rivers and streams and generally col- 
 lect data upon all subjects relating to works of engi- 
 neering of interest to the State and its inhabitants, was 
 introduced. 
 
 It w r as moved and seconded that this motion be indefi- 
 nitely postponed. Carried. 
 
 Mr. Gregory, of Gallatin : Mr. President, I move that 
 when this Convention adjourns they adjourn to take up 
 the subject of irrigation under a special order of business, 
 and that the question of considering the state of irrigation 
 in the various counties be then discussed, each county 
 making a special report on the subject. Carried. 
 
 The President: I announce the hour of a quarter 
 after eleven as the time to take up the special order of 
 business called for in this motion. 
 
 Moved and seconded that a committee of one member 
 from each county be appointed, who shall report a 
 recommendation as to what city in Montana the National 
 Irrigation Congress shall be invited to assemble in 1892. 
 Carried. 
 
 Adjourned until 10 a. m. Saturday. 
 
54 REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS 
 
 SATURDAY MORNING, JAN. 9. 
 
 The Convention was called to order at 10 a. m. 
 
 Mr. Meyers, Chairman of the Invitation Committee, 
 reported as follows: "Your committee charged to select 
 a town to invite the National Irrigation Congress next 
 summer to hold its deliberations have performed their 
 labors, and recommend that this Convention name the city 
 of Helena." 
 
 After several ballots the Convention selected the town 
 of Anaconda as the place to which to invite the National 
 Irrigation Congress. 
 
 AFTERNOON SESSION. 
 
 The Convention was called to order at 2 p. m. by 
 Chairman Hauser. 
 
 An invitation was read by the Secretary, inviting 
 the members of the Convention to witness the working, 
 at 7:30 P. M., of an Egyptian screw exhibited at 7 Main 
 street. 
 
 Mr. Clark, of Silver Bow, introduced the following 
 resolution : 
 
 WHEREAS, This Convention has heard with interest the reports 
 from different parts of this State in reference to the matter of artesian 
 wells now in active flow in different localities, therefore be it 
 
 Jtcxolved, That this Convention earnestly urge upon our Senators 
 and Representatives in Congress to use every effort to secure as large 
 an appropriation as possible for the purpose of testing the question as 
 to the practicability of this manner of water supply for this State, the 
 monev to be used in the actual sinking of welN, and not in expensive 
 theorizing. 
 
 The resolution was adopted. 
 
 Mr. Wade introduced the following resolution : 
 
 Resolved, That it is the sense of this Convention that our Senators 
 and Representatives in Congress be requested to implore and, if pos- 
 sible, secure large appropriations for public surveys in Montana, this 
 State having at present bur one-fifth of its land surveyed, 70,000,000 
 acres being yet unsurveyed. 
 
 Re.solved, That we believe it will best subserve the interests of this 
 State if no appropriation whatever be made under the direction of 
 Major Powell, of the government geological survey, for the State of 
 Montana. But we do ask for an appropriation for scientific research 
 under a state department of agriculture, whereby knowledge of much 
 value to this State may be obtained and a complete record of all mon- 
 eys expended be made. 
 
STATE IRRIGATION CONVENTION. 55 
 
 A Delegate: Mr. President, I move the adoption of 
 this resolution. 
 
 The resolution was adopted. 
 
 Mr. Cree introduced the following resolution : 
 
 Resolved, That the thanks of this State Irrigation Convention are 
 hereby extended to the citizens < Helena, to the members of the 
 press, the railway officials and to the Montana Club for their kindness 
 and for the courtesies extended to it by them. 
 
 Mr. Clark, of Silver Bow: Mr. President, I move that 
 the Secretary read the second and third resolutions of 
 the Salt Lake platform. 
 
 Seconded and carried. 
 
 The Secretary then read the two resolutions called for, 
 as follows: 
 
 Resolved, That it is the sense of this Convention that the committee 
 selected lo propose and present to Congress the memorial of this Con- 
 vention respecting public lands should ask as a preliminary to the 
 cession of all lands in the territories, in accordance with the resolu- 
 tions of this Convention, a liberal grant to said territories and to the 
 states to be formed therefrom of the public lands to be devoted to 
 public school purposes. 
 
 Resolved, That the representatives of all the states and territories 
 directly interested in irrigation do hereby pledge their unwavering- 
 support to the just demand of such settlers; that the general govern- 
 ment shall donate at. least a portion of the funds received from the 
 sale of such lands toward the procurement of the means necessary for 
 thrir irrigation. 
 
 Mr. Clark : Mr. President, I move the adoption of 
 these two resolutions. 
 
 This motion, having received a second, was regularly 
 put and carried. 
 
 Mr. Gregory: Mr. President, I desire to introduce 
 the following resolution, which the Secretary will please 
 read: 
 
 Resolved, That the Secretary of this Convention is hereby in- 
 structed to prepare a report of the proceedings of this Convention, 
 embracing, besides the routine business, also the speeches and partic- 
 ularly the important features and statistics of all the agricultural and 
 irrigation reports from the several counties represented, and the dele- 
 gates reporting on such facts are requested to send in writing the 
 substance of such reports to the Secretary; and that this Convention 
 do provide for the compilation and printing of the same, and for this 
 purpose a committee be hereby appointed to do the work of compila- 
 tion and see to the publication of the same. 
 
 The resolution was adopted. 
 
 Mr. Weed: Mr. President, I move that a vote of 
 
56 REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS 
 
 thanks be extended to the President and other officers 
 of this Convention for the services which they have so 
 cheerfully rendered. 
 
 Carried. 
 
 Mr. Clark: Mr. President, I move that each county 
 be requested to pay their pro rata share of the expense 
 of the compiling and printing the proceedings^of this 
 Convention. 
 
 Carried. 
 
 W. E. Cullen, Lewis and Clarke: Mr. President,. I 
 desire to introduce the following resolution : 
 
 Resolved^ That a committee of five be appointed by the Chair, to 
 be known a? the Committee on Legislation, the duties of which com- 
 mittee shall be to prepare and submit to the next Legislative Assem- 
 bly of the State of Montana such bilN as in their judgment may tend 
 to encourage the construction of canals and reservoirs for irrigation 
 purposes; and that the committee, as a part of its duty, take in charge 
 the matters set forth in the resolution offered by Mr. Bradford and 
 that offered by Mr. Sutherlin. 
 
 The President then named the following permanent 
 committees: 
 
 On Publication E. D. Weed, W. C. Child and B. 
 Brown, of Lewis and Clarke. 
 
 On Legislation W. H. Sutherlin, Meagher; J.HA. 
 Browne, Beaverhead; G. E. Ingersoll, Cascade; J. W. 
 Strevell, Custer; William Flannery, Gallatin. _^ 
 
 On motion the President appointed a committee of one 
 from each county to perfect a permanent organization of 
 the Montana Irrigation Convention, as follows: Joseph 
 A. Browne, Beaverhead; Z. T. Burton, Choteau; W. B. 
 S. Higgins, Custer; H. P. Rolfe, Cascade; George Mc- 
 Comb, Dawson; C. K. Hardenbrook, Deer Lodge; S. 
 S. Hobbon, Fergus; J. W. Caldwell, Gallatin; W. C. 
 Child, Lewis and Clarke; Henry Whaley, Meagher; A. 
 G. England, Missoula. R. O. Hickman, Madison; B. F. 
 Shuart, Yellowstone; E. G. Brooke, Jefferson. 
 
 On motion of Mr. Love, of Jefferson, the Convention 
 adjourned sine die. 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 Showing the State of Irrigation in the Counties. 
 
 CUSTER COUNTY. 
 
 To present at this time a report on irrigation in Custer County 
 which would describe fully or accurately her various ditches, artesian 
 wells, irrigation pumps and other irrigation works would require 
 more statistical work and time than it has been practicable to devote. 
 Custer County is situated in the southeast corner of the State of 
 Montana, and comprises a vast domain, over a hundred by a hundred 
 and thirty-five miles square. The irrigation enterprises alluded to are 
 situated in various sections of the county, many of them partially 
 completed and others under construction. 
 
 The largest ditch now in operation in the county is that owned and 
 operated by the Miles City Irrigating and Ditch Company, which has 
 cost about $100,000. The head gate is situated fourteen miles from 
 Miles City, where the water is taken from Tongue River by means of 
 a permanent dam, constructed entirely across the stream, raising the 
 water some twelve feet above its natural bed. This ditch has a ca- 
 pacity at present of 3,000 inches, and is completed for twenty miles. 
 There is sufficient water retained by this company's dam to enable 
 them to extend their ditch to twice its length and enlarge its carrying 
 capacity three or four times and still have abundance of water to 
 draw upon. There is lying under this canal 30,000 to 3S,ooo acres of 
 good productive soil, only 1,500 to 2,000 acres of which are as yet 
 being irrigated and improved. These lands alluded to as good and 
 productive, when viewed in their natural state are as uninviting and 
 unpromising as could well be found, but when water is applied our 
 native blue stem (than which no better forage plant exists) immedi- 
 ately springs up. So phenomenal has been the success of the first 
 users of the waters of this canal that the adjacent lands are being 
 
58 APPENDIX SHOWING THE STATE OF 
 
 rapidly boughtfand the sage and grease wood removed, so that 1892 
 will see one to two thousand acres added to the amount as above 
 under cultivation. 
 
 The next largest ditch, and the largest private enterprise of this 
 kind in our county, is situated on the head waters of the Rosebud, 
 owned and operated by Hubbard & Thompson, who irrigate 1,500 to 
 1,800 acres of native hay, alfalfa, corn, orfts, barley, and such garden 
 crops as tomatoes, potatoes, melons, okra, egg plant, oyster plant, etc., 
 etc. Their entire system of ditches comprise nearly thirty miles in 
 length, the smallest being six feet at top and four feet at bottom, car- 
 rying a depth of ten inches of water, the larger being ten feet at top 
 and eight feet at bottom, fifteen inches deep. The total cost of this 
 work, including fencing and reclaiming the land, which would have 
 remained absolutely worthless without irrigation, has been in this case 
 about $10 to $12 per acre. 
 
 On the north side of the Yellowstone, in the western part of our 
 county, a ditch ten feet at top and seven feet at bottom, and some 
 eight miles long, is under construction, and promises speed v comple- 
 tion. This ditch is designed to irrigate what is known as Pease Bot- 
 tom, one of the most beautiful sections of the great Yellowstone val- 
 ley, comprising more than 18,000 acres. 
 
 Below Miles City ten miles, and on the north side of the Yellow- 
 stone, is being constructed a canal, several miles of which are already 
 graded, and a large amount of work also has been done at its head, 
 near the mouth of Sunday creek, where the waters to supply it is 
 being taken out of the Yellowstone. This ditch, when completed, 
 will be eleven miles in length and carry 5,000 inches of water. Less 
 than $5,000 will be required to complete it, as the heavv cutting for 
 two miles and more, at its head, is already finished, the balance of the 
 work being shallow and comparatively inexpensive. 
 
 Howes, Strevell & Miles have constructed on Otter creek, a tribu- 
 tary of Tongue river, ditcnes and laterals comprising some twelve 
 miles, with three quite expensive dams. These ditches so far have 
 been used chiefly to irrigate pasiure la ds and alfalfa. 
 
 On Little Pumpkin creek, sixty miles south of Miles City, is to be 
 found one of the oldest and possibly, capacity considered, one of the 
 most inexpensive ditches in our county. This ditch is but little over 
 a mile in length, but carries over sixty inches of water. It was con- 
 structed and is owned and operated by Mr. James Davidson, whose 
 green pastures and meadows in summer and immense hay ricks in 
 winter testify to the richness of our soil and inestimable advantages 
 of irrigation. 
 
 On upper Tongue river Mr. Joseph Scott has completed a ditch 
 some three miles in length, and in width fifteen feet at top and nine 
 feet at bottom. From this ditch Mr. Scott irrigates some 720 acres, 
 principally hay land. Its capacity is sufficient to ultimately supply 
 
IRRIGATION IN THE COUNTIES. 59 
 
 water for nearly two thousand acres of land lying under it, which is 
 entirely barren without irrigation. Its cost was $3,500. 
 
 Next to our ditches, in line of irrigation improvements, we may 
 mention vacuum steam pumps, which the citizens of this county are 
 pioneers (in Montana) in introducing, as a means of raising water for 
 irrigation at points where the taking out of ditches seemed imprac- 
 ticable, but where small bodies of good land can be found and water 
 abundant. Many such locations are found along the Yellowstone and 
 upon smaller tributaries of various streams. 
 
 Two years go Bolles & Co., of Rosebud, placed one of these 
 pumps and operated it as an experiment. The volume of water dis- 
 charged was so great and the expense of fuel so slight that no less 
 than six of our citizens, among whom are Messrs. Scott, Cree, Bar- 
 ringer, Laney and others, men widely known in this State, have pur- 
 chased and put in position, for use the coming summer, pumps of 
 this kind. The pump used by Mr. Cree last year was found equal to 
 filling a ditch with capacity to thoroughly irrigate some three hun- 
 dred acres. Mr. Barringer has in place for use this season a mam- 
 moth pump calculated to supply w r ater for more than four hundred 
 acres of plowed land, which is known to require vastly more water 
 than turf or meadow ground. There seems to be little doubt that the 
 pump will prove equal to the task, and its total cost will not exceed 
 $1,800. 
 
 Last, but not least, may he noticed our artesian wells, of which we 
 have now in use over thirty in the vicinity of Miles City alone, some 
 of which flow several inches of water, with force to raise water fifteen 
 to forty five feet from the surface. The lower Yellowstone valley, 
 lying, as it does, at the comparatively low altitude of 1,500 to 2,000 feet 
 above sea level (while nearly all of the other important agricultural 
 valleys of the State are known to be at an altitude of 3,000 to 4,000 
 feet), is peculiarly favored in respect to the easy and inexpensive se- 
 curing of artesian water. One well two miles from Miles City flows 
 at two feet from the surface nearly two barrels per minute, and at an 
 elevation of forty feet from the surface about half that quantity. This 
 well is only 166 feet in depth, with a bore of two and one-half inches, 
 and cost less than two hundred dollars. 
 
 As an example of what a wonder a little water worketh, a circum- 
 stance may be cited, the details of which are known to scores of our 
 people. A Mr. Hyde purchased a two-acre lot near Miles City, the 
 improvements consisting of a two-room house and an artesian well, 
 the flow from which was so feeble as to be barely adequate to irrigate 
 during the dryest seasons one to one and a half acres. The price paid 
 was $700. Mr. Hyde commenced gardening, with the result that he 
 realized from his investment by reason of his sales of garden produce 
 alone never less than $1,200, and for some seasons as high as $1,600. 
 
 Recent experiments show beyond any question that with irrigation 
 
60 APPENDIX SHOWING THE STATE OF 
 
 we can grow alfalfa most abundantly and profitably. In California, 
 Arizona and New Mexico, where this forage plant is known to 
 flourish, and is both as to soil and to climate in its element, the writer 
 has observed, it can under best conditions be cut from four to five 
 times per year. Here, where, prior to the advent of our canals, it was 
 tried and declared a failure, we now cut three crops during a single 
 season, and the yield in tons per acre is equal to the largest known 
 elsewhere. 
 
 The same is true respecting Indian corn, heretofore considered an 
 impossible crop in Montana and throughout the higher altitudes. In 
 the mountainous sections extending through all of the central and 
 western portion of the State it must remain impossible of production. 
 Here, however, in the Yellowstone, Powder, Tongue and Little Mis- 
 souri valleys, and particularly the lower Yellowstone, Indian corn as 
 fine and maturing as early as Iowa or Missouri may be and is being 
 grown. 
 
 Custer County's exhibit of corn and tobacco at the State Fair last 
 August (about the 8th to I2th) was a revelation to many, including 
 old Montanians, who were loth to believe that corn and tobacco show- 
 ing a growth of twelve feet and more of stalk, and the former bearing 
 mature ears of corn with eighteen and twenty rows of kernels around 
 the cob, were matured in Montana at that date, if at all. 
 
 It is a fact well known in Eastern Montana thrit Custer County 
 strawberries are not only beyond comparison as to quality, but that 
 they come to maturity and are out of the market before the same fruit 
 from Bozeman and some other sections are ready for market. 
 
 It ha* been said of Eastern Montana that "it is the coldest and 
 hottest country on the globe," and to whatever of truth there may be 
 in this observation to a considerable degree doubtless our success in 
 growing corn, tomatoes, tobacco, small fruits, etc., is due. 
 
 A careful observer cannot fail to note that in this arid, rainless, 
 cloudless region, spring comes earlier, and the fructifying influences 
 of the sun are much earlier realized than in many localities farther 
 i-outh. 
 
 We have very little snow, and as a rule it rarely stays to the first 
 of March. The Yellowstone, Powder, Rosebud and Big Horn rivers, 
 the writer has observed for more than a dozen years, have broken up 
 and cleared of ice one, two or more weeks prior to the breaking up of 
 the Missouri, or even the Mississippi opposite Minnesota and Iowa. 
 
 There is yet unappropriated abundance of water in the Yellow- 
 stone and Powder rivers. The fall of these streams is everywhere 
 sufficient to make construction of ditches practicable. Only the great 
 outlay necessary has thus far deterred our inhabitants and the owners 
 of arable lands in securing these waters. That there is a sort of wave 
 of popular feeling throughout Montana, as well as her sister arid 
 states, must unquestionably lead speedily and surely to the solving of 
 
IRRIGATION IN THE COUNTIES. 6l 
 
 the great problem. Let it be said in conclusion that none can feel 
 more interest, none take more just pride in doing her whole duty in 
 helping the popular movement, none hope for greater benefits than 
 the citizens of Custer County. J. W. STREVELL. 
 
 CHOTEAU COUNTY. 
 
 I find the total number of ditches in the southwestern portion of 
 Choteau County to be thirty-two, with a length of sixty-five miles, 
 and covering an area of about 30,180 acres. I find the reservoir sys- 
 tem is only in its initiative at present, there being only five or six so 
 far established, the smallest covering not more than half an acre, and 
 the largest covering about forty acres, with an average depth of eight 
 feet of water. I also find that all available water for irrigation (ex- 
 cept the waters of the Missouri) have been appropriated by indi- 
 viduals and corporations during the irrigation season, and that in 
 order to reclaim and bring under profitable cultivation all or any por- 
 tion of the land now arid and uncultivated it will be necessary to 
 resort to the reservoir system in order to store the waters when not 
 used by prior claimants. J. F. PATTERSON. 
 
 CASCADE COUNTY. 
 
 Cascade County contains about 3,000 square miles, mostly valley 
 and bench lands of an average elevation of about 3,000 feet above the 
 level of the sea. It is bounded by the Highwood and Belt mountains 
 on the east, the Belt and Birdtail ranges on the south, with prairie 
 lands on the north and west. It is watered by the Belt and Smith 
 rivers and their branches, Willow and Otter creeks, Hound, Stickney, 
 Wegner, Sand Coulee and Box Elder creeks emptying directly or indi- 
 rectly into the Missouri river from the south. The Dearborn and Sun 
 rivers and Muddy creek flow into it from the north and west side of the 
 river. The Missouri river runs for about ninety miles in a northerly 
 direction through the county. It conveys about double the amount 
 of water that the Mississippi does at St. Paul. 
 
 At the falls of the Missouri at Great Falls there is 267,000 horse 
 power developed and undeveloped, or an amount equal to all tn,e 
 other water power in the United States with that of Niagara added. 
 This enormous power is already partly used in the great smelting 
 and manufacturing plants constructed there, and could be used in 
 raising the great volume of water of the Missouri and irrigating a 
 
62 APPENDIX SHOWING THE STATE OF 
 
 large portion of Cascade, Choteau and Dawson counties. A large 
 portion of the soil, perhaps from one-half to two-thirds, is a sandy 
 loam extending from the Missouri river to the Belt mountains. From 
 this vast acreage in the driest seasons we have produced from ten to 
 twenty bushels of wheat and thirty to forty bushels of oats per acre 
 without irrigation, amounts which would be trebled by irrigation. 
 Last season the yield was from thirty to forty bushels of wheat, 
 seventy-five to one hundred bushels of oats, and 250 to 300 bushels of 
 potatoes without irrigation. All this land would, however, be im- 
 proved by irrigation. 
 
 The canals already constructed here have cost about $500,000, and 
 including laterals and small ditches would make about 400 to 500 
 miles. The main canal of the Cascade Land Company, taken out of 
 the North Fork of the Sun River and tributaries of the Teton, is 
 about sixty-five miles in length and twelve to sixteen feet in width. 
 It carries about 3,000 inches of water and will irrigate 3,000 acres of 
 land. Benton lake, three miles by seven miles in extent, is used as a 
 reservoir. During the year the company has cut about $15,000 or 
 $20,000 worth of hay, although their system is not yet completed. 
 In the length of the canal the lateral ditches are not counted. The 
 Sun River ditch has been in operation many years. It is ten to 
 twelve miles long and cost about $2,000 a mile. It carries about 3,000 
 inches of water and will irrigate 3,000 acres of land On one ranch 
 covered by this ditch the farming profits this year were over $7,000. 
 The Crown Butte canal is twenty-six miles in length and sixteen feet 
 in width, and cost about $3,000 a mile. It carries about 40,000 inches 
 of water. The canal irrigates an immense body of land between the 
 Sun river and the Missouri Wilson and Thompson are the owners 
 of a system of reservoirs and canals at a point near the termination of 
 the Crown Butte canal. The system comprises four immense reser- 
 voir and some twenty-four miles of canals, covering thousands of 
 acres of land and representing an investment of $30,000. The Chest- 
 nut Valley ditch takes the waters of the Missouri at Ila'f Breed 
 rapids. It is twelve miles in length and carries about 15,000 inches of 
 water. The Belt C':eek ditch is five miles in length and waters all 
 land on the Lower Belt. Another ditch on Willow creek is from five 
 to seven miles in length There are many ditches from one-half 
 mile to one mile in length on Belt, Willow, Cora, Otter, Sand Coulee, 
 Deep and Wegner creeks and in other localities, the number of 
 which it is impossible to compute. Two canals have been surveyed 
 on Lower Sun river from Priest rapids. Each one will be twelve 
 miles in length and run on each side of the river. Surveys were 
 made for similarly located canals as long ago as 1876 at the time the 
 Missour River Navigation company was formed. On Hound creek 
 and Smith river another large canal is projected and to be built this 
 spring which will be from fifteen to twenty miles in length and 
 irrigate lands along the Smith river and east of the Missouri river. 
 
IRRIGATION IN THE COUNTIES. 63 
 
 DEER LODGE COUNTY. 
 
 Deer Lodge County is a mountainous district intersected by the 
 Deer Lodge, Flint Creek, Nevada Creek and Big Blackfoot valleys, 
 which contain nearly all of the agricultural land in the county. These 
 valleys are traversed lengthwise by streams bearing their names. 
 This section constitutes the watershed of the Clark's Fork of the 
 Columbia river. The valleys are drained latterly by a large number 
 of small streams, the waters of which have all been appropriated by 
 the settlers along the same. There are in the county 460 ditches, 
 conveying the water an aggregate distance of about 750 miles, or an 
 average of less than two miles each, and having a carrying capacity 
 of about 85,000 miner's inches and irrigating about 95,000 acres. 
 During the high water in June of an average water season there is a 
 supplv of water more than sufficient to fill the ditches already con- 
 structed, but during dry seasons, such as 1889 and 1890, and all sea- 
 sons after the high water time, there is not enough in the natural 
 flow of the streams to supply the present demand. There being 
 about 350,000 acres of land susceptable of irrigation in the county, it 
 is apparent that some artificial means must be ued to make these 
 lands available for settlement. It is also apparent that if the waters 
 which are constantly flowing ou? of the county during the hi^h water 
 season and during the time that they are not used in the ditches 
 could be utilized there would be plenty for all future demands. 
 There are at the sources of nearly all of the streams in the county, 
 basins and natural lakes varying from one-fourth of a mile to several 
 square miles in extent, which might be readily turned into reservoirs 
 for the storage of the surplus water. This would not be altogether an 
 experiment. The Rock Creek Ditch company, operating the placer 
 mines at Pioneer, constructed a reservoir several years ago by drift- 
 ing in and tapping the Rock Creek lake fifteen feet below the surface 
 of the water. Then a dam fourteen feet high was built across the 
 outlet to retain the waste water, thus giving them a body of water 
 twenty-nine feet deep, one mile long and one-half mile wide, from 
 which a good head of water is drawn. Nature has furnished us with 
 water in abundance; it remains for capital and muscle to utilize it so 
 that every acre of the land in this county may be reclaimed. 
 
 C. K~ HARDENBROOK. 
 
 DAWSON COUNTY. 
 
 Dawson County is the northeastern county of the State, is about 
 155 miles from north to south and 175 miles from east to west; an 
 area of 26,820 square miles, or a little over seventeen millions of 
 acres. A large part of this vast area consists of rolling uplands, cov- 
 
64 APPENDIX SHOWING THE STATE OF 
 
 ered with bunch and buffalo grasses, suitable for grazing of cattle, 
 horses and sheep, and which are too high above the water courses to 
 be available for the purposes of irrigation. 
 
 The county is traversed from west to east for nearly two-hundred 
 miles by the valley of the Missouri river, which divides the county 
 into two nearly equal parts, and in the southern part of the county 
 the Yellowstone, flowing in a northeasterly course, runs for some- 
 thing over a hundred miles within our borders. Branches of these 
 two large rivers flow into them both on the north and south, and in 
 the spring and early summer pour out vast quantities of water which 
 they drain from the broken and rolling country forming the divides 
 between the great rivers. 
 
 It is in the broad'valleys of the Yellowstone and Missouri rivers, 
 and on the bottoms lying along the smaller streams, that are found 
 the lands which, when irrigated and made fertile by the water now 
 flowing to waste by them, will make eastern Montana the garden of 
 the whole northwest. 
 
 At the present time there is but very little done in Dawson 
 County in the line of irrigation; a few small private ditches, convey- 
 ing water to a few hundred acres of land is all that can be called, by 
 any stretch of the imagination, irrigation. The reason for this is that 
 our best farming lands are not situated in such a way as to be easily 
 and cheaply irrigated by small and inexpensive ditches taken from 
 mountain streams, as in some other counties of the State, where every 
 man can own his own ditch or a few farmers can club together and 
 construct one suited to their needs and for their own use. 
 
 But in Dawson County, more than in any other locality in the 
 State, are found opportuities for irrigation on a large scale; and 
 when once the eyes of capital can be opened to the conditions here 
 -existing for profitable investments we look for an era of prosperity 
 unequaled by any country that is not built up upon the substantial 
 foundation of an agricultural population. 
 
 In the valley of the Missouri alone can be found at a low estimate 
 one-half a million acres of good agricultural land which can be irri- 
 gated by means of canals taken from the river, and there is at all 
 seasons of the year abundance of water for such a purpose. 
 
 Tributary to the Missouri are the Milk, Poplar, Muscleshell, Big 
 Dry and Big Muddy rivers, besides innumerable smaller streams, 
 which by a system of storage reservoirs can be used to irrigate the 
 lands along their borders. The valley of the Milk river is just now, 
 because of the settlement of that part of the county by the building 
 of the Great Northern railway, and the attention which has been 
 directed to that locality by the advertisement of that railroad, looked 
 upon as a suitable place for a successful attempt at irrigating a large 
 body of land. 
 
 But it is in the south part of the county, on the borders of the Yel- 
 
IRRIGATION IN THE COUNTIES. 65 
 
 lowstone river, that we look for the greatest practical results in the 
 near future. -This valley, which has by some one been called the 
 future "Mohawk Valley of Montana," is, in Dawson county, about 
 1 20 miles in length and on an average from four to five miles in 
 width from the river to the foothills, a prairie country unrivaled in its 
 fertility by any on earth. There is a heavy fall in the river for the 
 whole distance, and by a system of canals, easy of construction, the 
 whole valley can be brought into cultivation. 
 
 A movement is now on foot for the organization of a stock com- 
 pany at Glendive, the county seat, for the purpose of constructing a 
 ditch to be taken from the Yellowstone river, on the north side about 
 thirty miles above Glendive, which will irrigate about 100,000 acres, 
 known as Lone Horse prairie. The land in this locality is all sur- 
 veyed, is one-half unclaimed government land, which is open for set- 
 tlement, and the other half is covered by the Northern ^Pacific 
 railroad company's land grant. The railroad company has expressed 
 a willingness to give an irrigation company all assistance in their 
 power for the furtherance of such an undertaking, and if pushed with 
 energy it will doubtless prove a success. 
 
 Below Glendive, from that town to the mouth of the Yellowstone 
 river, are many places where canals can and will in the not distant 
 future be constructed, which will reclaim hundreds of thousands of 
 acres which are now only fit for grazing. 
 
 The lower Yellowstone valley has for the past ten or twelve years, 
 since the first coming of the Northern Pacific railroad and the wave 
 of immigration following in its wake, been looked upon as one of the 
 most favorable localities for settlement, and many attempts have been 
 made by farmers to locate and try to build up homes and make a 
 living. But it is only in a few favorable places that they have been 
 successful; and most of them have been compelled to leave what 
 improvements they have made and seek homes where the}' can raise 
 crops with greater certainty. 
 
 It is not claimed for the Yellowstone valley that it is a "granger's 
 paradise," as some parts of Montana are claimed to be; but when such 
 a system of irrigation is adopted, as it is sure to be in a few years, the 
 far famed Gallatin must look to its laurels. 
 
 Besides the lands above mentioned, which can be irrigated by 
 means of ditches taken from the rivers and creeks, there are many 
 thousands of acres of valuable agricultural lands which, if as is gen- 
 erally conceded we are in an artesian basin, can be watered by arte- 
 sian wells. If this proves to be the truth, and such irrigation proves 
 to be practicable and comparatively inexpensive, the quantity of 
 arable land will be of enormous extent, as there are thousands upon 
 thousands of as yet unsurveyed lands lying on all the high benches 
 which are equal if not superior to the bottoms and low bench lands in 
 their capacity for producing crops. 
 
66 APPENDIX SHOWING THE STATE OF 
 
 It is very difficult to estimate the amount of lands in Dawson 
 County which are located in such a way as to be susceptible of irri- 
 gation, for the reason that a very large portion of the county remains 
 unsurveyed, and at the best any estimate would be simply '"guess 
 work." However, to leave a large amount of allowance for "bad 
 lands," the following estimate will not, we think, be any too large: 
 Lands in the Missouri valley which can be watered from the river by 
 means of canals, 500,000 acres; bottom lands along the tributaries of 
 the Missouri, which can be watered by a combined system of ditches 
 and storage reservoirs, 2,000,000 acres ; lands in the Yellowstone Val- 
 ley which can be irrigated by ditches from the river, 250,000 acres; 
 bench lands which can only be irrigated by wells, either artesian or 
 for pumping, 5,000,000 acres; total, 7,750,000. 
 
 We think that from seven to eight millions of acres is a reasonable 
 estimate of the amount of land in Dawson County which can be irri- 
 gated and made fertile as soon as the time comes when all this will be 
 needed for settlement. 
 
 By what we have shown above it will be seen that, although Daw- 
 son cannot boast the rich mineral resources which are the birthright 
 of many of her sister counties, still in the wealth of resource which 
 underlies every agricultural section of the world she is rich in latent 
 wealth; and when the time comes, as it surely will, that these mil- 
 lions of acres are sending to less favored parts of the State their pro- 
 ducts in return for the gold and silver of Lewis and Clarke and 
 Silver Bow, and the other mountain counties, then and not till then 
 will Montana occupy the high place she is destined to hold in the 
 sisterhood of states. 
 
 FERGUS COUNTY. 
 
 Fergus County has 74,000 acres of land that is under ditch. The 
 main ditches covering this area are 242 miles in length, the building 
 of which has cost $160 per mile, which would make the total cost of 
 these ditcher $38,400, being a fraction over fifty cents per acre. The 
 lands that these ditches cover are situated along the bottom land or 
 valleys of streams. There are 17,000 acres taken up that is not yet 
 irrigated, and 1,000,000 acres of irrigable land not yet taken that 
 could be made productive by irrigation. The balance of the lands of 
 the county are hilly and mountainous, and are only fit for grazing. 
 The principal streams within the county are Judith river, Wolf creek r 
 Big Spring and Flat Willow. The waters of these streams are 
 already appropriated, with the exception of the overflow in high 
 water times or such times of the year as it is not used for irrigation. 
 
 The government has reserved two sites tor reservoirs on the 
 Judith river, which are situated in the right place to cover large 
 
IRRIGATION IN THE COUNTIES. 67 
 
 tracts of land not yet irrigated, but are impracticable for two reasons: 
 First, they would be dangerous to the lives of the people living along 
 the streams below where these reservoirs are situated. Second, 
 reserving water in the beds of streams is not far-reaching enough in 
 comparison to their cost of building. The beds of streams generally 
 are narrow and with a heavy grade of fall. The water stored would 
 be limited to a small fraction of the actual overflow in high water 
 time. But this overflow could be carried out in canals and stored in 
 outside basins, of which there are quite a number to be found in Fer- 
 gus County. JAMES ETTIEN. 
 
 GALLATIN COUNTY. 
 
 The mileage of private farm ditches in the Gallatin valley, i. e., the 
 cultivable portion of Gallatin County, Mont., it would be exceedingly 
 difficult to give. Some attempt, however, must be made in order 
 that a stranger to the situation may form a tolerably correct idea of 
 the extent of irrigation in this locality. 
 
 Hundreds of miles of private farm ditches exist; these come out 
 of some twenty or more creeks and streams, including the East Gal- 
 latin river a small feeder to the West Gallatin, which latter is a 
 strong mountain stream of heavy fall to the mile, and of large 
 capacity of flowage, which I will state later on; so lhat portions of 
 more than a dozen townships are supplied, more or less, with irriga- 
 tion facilities, and some thoroughly. This valley, so far as the culti- 
 vable area is concerned, may be roughly said to be four townships 
 wide by five townships long, allowing great sinuosity on the marginal 
 exteriors, mainly sloping with undulations from south to north, with 
 counter slopes from the circumference; everywhere surrounded by 
 mountainous country, which is indented with deep cuts or canyons 
 on the easterly and southerly borders, from which issue permanently 
 flowing streams. From all these streams except the West Gallatin 
 river every drop of water is conducted into small and large private 
 farm ditches, and utilized for irrigation. From the West Gallatin 
 river, also, many di'ches are taken for farm use; from this river 
 alone are taken out the three large canals owned by incorporated 
 companies, named in order of time of construction, the Gallatin Canal 
 Company, the West Gallatin Irrigation Company, and the Excelsior 
 Canal Company. 
 
 By far the greater part of the water of this river runs to waste; it is 
 many times in its flowage the volume of all the water taken into its 
 tapping ditches. 
 
 There are no reservoirs of water in this valley, from which con- 
 served waters are drawn. Up the Bozeman canyon there is Mj ^Hv 
 lake, some fourteen miles from Bozeman, some 2,000 feet in he'.jht 
 
68 APPENDIX SHOWING THE STATE OF 
 
 above this valley, where a dam twenty-two feet high is being built 
 now to hold back water, to be run down the natural channel of great 
 and rapid fall, and then to be drawn off into ditches for foothill and 
 bench-land irrigation. The capacity of this pond may be understood 
 from its size, about one mile long by one-half mile wide, and great 
 depth may be secured. 
 
 The only land companies are the Manhattan Malting Company 
 and the We;>t Gallatin Irrigation Company, the latter constructing a 
 large canal to supply water to its own lands, and grantees of its land, 
 and still owning some 25,000 acres; the former owning 160 acres in 
 townsite at Manhattan and some 10,000 acres for its own farming 
 purposes, mainly for the cultivation of barley. 
 
 fgZ^j/l' The Gallatin Canal Company's ditch is twenty miles long; cost said 
 N> to be about $60,000; built about three years ago; taken out of the 
 
 I east side of the West Gallatin river, well up to the canyon; carries 
 about 8,000 inches, it is said; built with inexpensive headgate and 
 
 l_ jwing sieve dam of no great cost. 
 
 ^. The Excelsior Canal Company's ditch is twelve miles long; built in 
 1890-91 ; cost about- $40,000, as estimated, and built by syndicate of 
 farm owners under it, supplying water to its stockholders only; car- 
 ries about 8,000 inches, it is stated; built with slight structure of head- 
 gate, and no dam. 
 
 /____ The largest and most costly canal is that of the West Gallatin Irri- 
 gation Company, constructed 1890-91, and at present some twenty- 
 four miles in length, on a high line to cover bench lands; taken out 
 of the west side of the West Gallatin river; still in process of exten- 
 sion in length. 
 
 /Location. The canal is taken out of the West Gallatin river 
 near the centre of Sec. 28 38 4E., Montana, and runs through sec- 
 tions 28, 21, 16, 9 and 4 in 38 4E., and through sections 23, 33, 27, 28, 
 21, 22, 16, 17, 20, 19 and 18 in 28 4E., ending near the centre of 8ec. 
 13, 1 8 4E., about twenty-four miles from its head. A plat and profile 
 of the canal show it to be very crooked, and the ground is more tor- 
 tuous than the plat, because there are many short and sharp turns 
 that could' not be shown on a plat of small scale. This was necessary 
 in following the contour of such a rough and broken country as most 
 of the canal is built over, which is a succession of long ridges and 
 deep gulches, pointing in a general direction toward the northwest. 
 
 Dimensions. Canal is finished to twenty-four miles. The first 
 1,300 feet from the head is twenty-four feet on the bottom, and from 
 there to the twenty-third mile k narrowed to fourteen feet on the 
 bottom, but widens in many places to sixteen and eighteen feet. The 
 narrowest place on the bottom anywhere in the whole twenty and a 
 half miles is full fourteen feet, twenty-three and a quarter miles from 
 the head, and the next three miles is wider and shallower, but is in- 
 tended to carry the same amount of water as the rest of the ditch. 
 
IRRIGATION IN THE COUNTIES. 69 
 
 Grade. Is constructed on a fall of 6-100 to 100 feet, or three feet 
 to a mile, except the first 1,300 feet below the head has a fall of two 
 and a half feet in the 1,300 feet, or over ten feet to a mile. 
 
 Slopes. Are one to one, except in solid rock, where it is one-half 
 to one. 
 
 Banks. Are from five to eight feet high above the bottom of the 
 canal, and are from twenty-five to forty-five feet wide at their base, 
 solid and firm, and slope evenly on both sides. All the earth and 
 rock from excavating the canal is placed on the lower side (on the 
 north and east), as nearly the whole length of the canal is built on 
 side hills. 
 
 Headgate. Is twenty-four feet wide in the clear, with five gates, 
 built of timber 10x12 and 8x12, well braced and bolted, and most 
 thoroughlv built throughout. The bottom of the head-gate being 
 four feet below the surface of the river at the present low state of 
 water, which, with the two and a half foot fall 'n the first 1,300 feet, 
 makes the canal capable of receiving water fully five feet deep in it 
 should it ever be required. There is no dam. 
 
 Flumes. Are all built of heavy square and two-inch plank, in the 
 most thorough manner. 
 
 Tunnel. In the ninth mile from the head is a tunnel, 241 feet in 
 length, and is five and a half feet d^^Bby twelve feet wide, with a 
 fall of 60-100 feet to loofeet; timberWJra little at each end, balance 
 solid rock; highest point of ground aboye bottom of tunnel is forty- 
 seven feet; distance around the hill or spur from upper end of tunnel 
 to its lower end is 4.750 feet, the tunnel making a saving of distance 
 of 4,509 feet. 
 
 The canal will carry water four feet deep, and could very easily be 
 made to carry four and a half feel. In this canai, fourteen feet wide on 
 the bottom, slope one to one, water four feet deep, with its grade of 
 three feet fall to the mile, will flow 10,695 miners' inches of water, 
 from which will have to be deducted a reasonable per cent, for seep- 
 age and evaporation. 
 
 Remarks. This canal will carry 3,510 more miners' inches of 
 water than on- twelve feet wide on the bottom, slope of one to one, 
 water three and one-half feet deep, grade two and one-half feet to 
 the mile. 
 
 The most of the country over which it is built is very rough and 
 broken, its location coming on steep side hills and around and over 
 deep gulches. The grade is maintained even, and all slopes made as 
 smooth as possible with pick and shovel, and no rock or coarse gravel 
 left in the bottom, thus reducing the friction of the water on the 
 Avetted perimeter of the canal to the lowest minimum, thereby 
 reducing the loss from that cause and increasing the flow of water. 
 
 The canal from end to end in all particulars is most thoroughly 
 and honestly built, showing in every foot of its length that it -was 
 
 \ 
 
7O APPENDIX SHOWING THE STATE OF 
 
 made with the view of it being permanent and lasting, and to carry 
 a large volume of water. The cost of this canal so far is about 
 $90,000. 
 
 In this connection it is not important to state the area cultivated 
 under these canals separately. Under the two first named canals the 
 total capacity of the ditches is required for the ground under them, 
 and such land is already mostly in cultivation; under the last-named 
 ditch the lands are mainly new and unbroken, and are just brought 
 into such relation to water as to be cultivable. There lie under this 
 ditch, as it may be extended, sixty thousand acres, being more than 
 the ditch has capacity to supply with water. 
 
 Wit!\ caution held out that an estimate must be considered some- 
 thing of a guess, I should say that under great and little ditches there 
 are about 50,000 acres in cultivation, under crops in one year, and 
 in this I am not counting the fallow ground of that year. 
 
 The Auditor's report for Montana for 1890 gives the number of 
 ranches in Gallatin County at 460, and the acreage in ranches in Gal- 
 latin County as 127,684 acres, and the ranches fenced as 115,374 acres. 
 No scrutiny is made in these returns into the number of acres 
 plowed. Ufce acreage and number of ranches have increased consid- 
 erably since such figures wereniade up, and these figures are returns 
 for assessment purposes onU^^H include railroad lands cultivated or 
 uncultivated in the county. ^Wrch of such lands may not be culti- 
 vated. No such return is an index of what is cultivated area; let us 
 go, therefore, to crop returns. The crop returns in the Auditor's re- 
 port are not to be relied upon as coming up to the magnitude of area 
 or yield per acre. We know individually of one tract of 1,200 acres 
 now in cultivation, not embraced in 1890 year returns; we know of 
 several tracts of 100 acres and upward, brought recently under the 
 plow, not in such estimates. Fifty thousand acres arc assumed as 
 proximately the area in cultivation over and above what is fallow, 
 i. e., it is approximately the area cropped in a year. Taking the crops 
 and hay and the vegetable and small fruit crops, and we may assume 
 a yield of $1,250,000 in value. There are thirty-five threshing ma- 
 chines here. These may be estimated as threshing 60,000 bushels 
 each, on the average. This gives 2,100,000 bushels. 
 
 The average price of the three staples I place at an assumed figure, 
 which 1 am advised is fair, and from this I get $1,250,000 as a year's 
 yield in value. 
 
 These figures are less than some stated statistics[in advertisements 
 of this famous valley. 
 
 To mark on a map all the ditches would be to run out tc rtuous 
 lines from every creek and river as thick as branches and their twigs 
 from the main stem of a tree. A great fertile expanse, gridironed 
 with circumfluent lines of ditches, bright and golden in harvest time 
 with grain, and hay meadows in green for relief, and after harvest 
 
IRRIGATION IN THE COUNTIES. 71 
 
 with stubble as a plush carpet is with its short, upreared filaments, is 
 not an overdrawn picture of this valley. 
 
 Barley is great in yield and supreme in quality here; oats triumph 
 in weight and measure to the acre, and wheat yield is as high in aver- 
 age as in any known region. A little table of crop reports of 1891, 
 printed without selection or partiality, just as made by chance returns 
 from ranchers for neighborhood use, is printed by the Bozeman Avant 
 Courier. 
 
 You ask for the price of water. Water is not retailed here, but the 
 price as understood by the canal companies is $2 per statutory inch 
 as measured in accordance with the statutes of Montana. This is a 
 reasonable price, per year. 
 
 Prices of crops paid to farmers in 1890 is about this: Average 
 oats, stated about $1.50 cwt.; average barley, stated about $1.15 cwt.; 
 average soft wheat, stated about 75 cents per bushel; hard wheat, 85 
 cents per bushel; No. i timothy hay, about $14 per ton; wild hay, 
 about $2 to $2.50 per ton less than timothy. Oats sometimes as high 
 as from $2 to $2.10; barley, sometimes as high as $1.55 per cwt.; hay, 
 $14 per ton. 
 
 The crop of 1891 was large and the following are s^me of the re- 
 turns: M. H. Allen, twenty-four acres of oats, 3,100 bushels; 129 
 bushels to the acre. J. H. Gallo^fc^ acres of wheat, 6,800 bushels; 
 sixty-five bushels to the acre. 2^BrMorgan, 300 acres wheat, 16,381 
 bushels; fifty-four bushels to the acre. William B. Reed, 213 acres 
 oats, 20,251 bushels; ninety-five bushels to the acre. M. H. Penwell, 
 450 acres wheat and oats, 23,383 bushels; fifty-one bushels to the 
 acre. Wm. Flannery, 575 acres wheat and oats, 30,950 bushels, fifty- 
 four bushels to the acre. 
 
 This shows a few representative crops; these are not given as 
 average samples, and would exceed the average. 
 
 Gallatin County produces, approximately, about one-third of the 
 cereals of the State. 
 
 There are in the Gallatin valley proper, approximately, 350,000 
 acres of arable land, and in the county about 400,000 acres. To irri- 
 gate this, there are in the valley 100,000 inches of water outside of the 
 main West Gallatin river, which has 300,000 additional inches. This 
 is an estimate, and exactness is not to be expected, and we take the 
 water at its high stage in irrigation season. 
 
 That part of the agricultural area on the Madison and Jefferson 
 rivers is amply supplied with water from those streams. 
 
 In closing, I am advised that there is an ample supply of water 
 flowing in this valley and county to irrigate all the area that is culti- 
 vable, supposing proper provision is made for running the water to 
 the plow lands. C. A. GREGORY. 
 
72 APPENDIX SHOWING THE STATE OF 
 
 LEWIS AND CLARKE COUNTY. 
 
 There are practically six irrigation valleys in Lewis and Clarke 
 County, containing nearly all of the available farming land. First is 
 the valley of the Big Prickly Pear, in which is situated the Capital of 
 the State. This valley is fourteen miles in width and about sixteen 
 in length. While all of this is fine farming land, it is not available 
 because of the lack of water. There are, however, about 10,000 acres 
 under irrigation, deriving its supply of water from the Big Prickly 
 Pear creek. In this area are some of the finest farms in the State. 
 The magnificent farm owned by Mr. W. C. Child eclipses all other 
 farms in the Northwest. Mr. Child has under fence about 2,000 acres, 
 irrigated by a perfect system of ditches. In connection with his 
 farming ditches is a water power generating fifty horse power, with 
 which he grinds feed for several hundred head of thoroughbred 
 stock and furnishes power for a very complete creamery, wherein is 
 to be found all the latest machinery for separating cream from new 
 milk and immediately turning it into butter. Mr. Child has erected 
 in addition to his creamery a barn costing $25,000, in the basement of 
 which he stables about 500 milch cows. In the second story are enor- 
 mous bins containing grain and other feed. 
 
 Among the other valuable fa^^^of this system may be mentioned 
 the fine horse and grain farm of^^P W. G. Preuitt, Secretary of the 
 Montana Live Stock Association. This form contains about 1,000 
 acres and is under a very high state of cultivation. The large farm 
 known as ''Lowlands," belonging to Mr. Donald Branfor % is an ex- 
 ample of what may be done with Montana soil, well irrigated. "Low- 
 lands" embraces 1,000 acres of very rich wash loam, that produces an 
 average grain crop of 60 bushels and 250 bushels of potatoes. Lower 
 down the Prickly Pear hay ranches predominate, producing from two 
 to three tons of blue joint and other valuable hay grasses per acre. 
 Upon Ten-Mile creek the farm of Mr. John J. Fant is situated. This 
 farm contains about 640 acres and produces rich crops of hay and grain. 
 
 The Little Prickly Pear valley lies northwest of Helena about 
 twenty-five miles. Irrigation is used only to a limited extent in this 
 valley, the soil being impregnated with water from springs. The im- 
 portant hay crops are nourished without the aid of ditches. This fact 
 enabled the use of the waters of the Little Prickly Pear creek on 
 lands situated upon a rising plateau running towards the City of Hel- 
 ena. This scheme embraces about 2,000 acres. 
 
 Rock Creek basin, lying between the Little Prickly Pear and Dear- 
 born valleys, includes several rich farms, the most important being 
 that of Mr. D. A. G. Floweree, containing 1,700 acres. Mr. Floweree 
 constructed just above his farm a reservoir that catches the spring 
 waters of Rock creek, distributing them during the season of irriga- 
 tion. This reservoir is the most complete in Lewis and Clarke 
 
IRRIGATION IN THE COUNTIES. 73 
 
 County, if not in the State. North of this is situated the Dearborn 
 canal system. The Dearborn valley is richly endowed with every 
 attribute of wealth. Comprising all that territory bounded on the 
 south by the picturesque Dearborn river, on the north by the Sun 
 river, on the east by the Missouri river, and upon the west by the 
 main range of the Rocky Mountains, it is a splendid arrangement of 
 nature. Its topographical features are unique, the valley being di- 
 vided into four separate and distinct slopes, all of them deriving their 
 water for irrigation from the Dearborn river, the waters of which are 
 diverted about one and one-half miles above the mouth of the Grand 
 Canyon of the Dearborn and conveyed by means of the Dearborn 
 canal to Summit Lake, from which point the water is conveyed by 
 smaller canals to the heads of the streams known as Flat creek, Au- 
 chard creek, Dry creek and Simrns' creek. Each of these creeks runs 
 down the center of a narrow valley and distributes the waters to the 
 ditches belonging to the farms lying along its course. All the terri- 
 tory between these streams is undulating, furnishing the settlers in 
 the valleys a magnificent pasture free of cost and immediately at their 
 doors. Its water rights are perfect, the company having absolute con- 
 trol of the whole Dearborn river. Its water supply is first-class, with 
 a reservoir system covering 5,000 acres, at an average depth of forty 
 feet. The main canal is 38 feet wide, 6 feet depth of water, and has a 
 grade of 3.1 feet per mile. Its whole construction is based upon 
 safety and utility, without regard to cost. Its dam and head gates are, 
 combined, 300 feet in length, and have withstood the onslaught of the 
 greatest of spring floods. The main reservoir will be independent of 
 the canal supply and outlet, thus insuring the settlers against the lack 
 of water because of breaks in either the canal or reservoirs. These 
 reservoirs will hold sufficient water to supply every acre of farming- 
 land in the valley during the whole season of irrigation. Thus it will 
 be seen the settlers are safe from drought beyond a peradventure. 
 
 Recognizing the naturally adverse interests existing between the 
 owners of canals and the users of water, the management has origi- 
 nated and will put into practice the plan of organizing the farmers of 
 each creek's slope, district or valley into associations, such assoriation 
 to elect its own water master or superintendent, who shall receive the 
 waters from the canal management and distribute them in the way 
 desired by the farmers. A board of trustees, composed of farmer*,, 
 shall pass upon all disputes as between the farmers and shall manage 
 the building of laterals and the distribution of waters through the 
 water master. They shall assess benefits, collect water rents aed set- 
 tle with the canal management for the water. In this way there will 
 be no conflicts between the canal company and the farmers. The 
 water will be delivered to and .measured through weirs at given points 
 and paid for in advance according to such measurement. This board 
 of trustees shall be elected by the owners of the lands irrigated the 
 
74 APPENDIX SHOWING THE STATE OF 
 
 next preceding year, each voter to have as many votes as he had acres 
 irrigated. New irrigators or those desiring to increase their area of 
 land to be irrigated may become voters providing they contract for 
 the necessary water to cover the acreage commanding the votes. The 
 company will establish a price per cubic foot per second. The trus- 
 tees will decide upon the quantity of water necessary for the land and 
 purchase from the company accordingly. This will insure economy 
 in the use of water and will enable the company, because of such 
 economy, to cover a larger area. 
 
 The results will be economy both for the consumers and the com- 
 pany, no conflicts, no irritation, a greater number of acres irrigated. 
 
 The officers of this canal are L. U S. Ames, President; Henry 
 Semple Ames, Vice President; Donald Bradford, General Manager; 
 general offices, Helena, Montana. 
 
 With the exception of Big Prickly Pear valley, the whole of Lewis 
 and Clarke County is well supplied with water and will be quickly 
 occupied by settlers of a superior class. Its markets are the best in 
 the Northwest, as it is close to the three largest and most important 
 cities, and it has direct railroad connection with every mining camp. 
 
 MADISON COUNTY. 
 
 The Madison and Jefferson rivers, with the tributaries of the latter 
 stream, such as the Big Hole, Beaverhead and the Ruby rivers, fur- 
 nish the principal water supply of Madison County, and have their 
 source high up near the main range of the Rocky Mountains. With 
 the discovery of the famous placer mines of Alder Gulch early in the 
 year 1863, which caused a heavy influx of population and settled the 
 valleys, the large mining industry that sprang into existence in a day 
 created a demand for all farm products, which had to be supplied at 
 that time from the valleys of Utah, and although the farmers of the 
 then new country at once turned their attention to the raising of 
 grain, hay and vegetables to the extent of their ability, still it was not 
 until four years later that a supply sufficient for the wants of the pop- 
 ulation could be produced at home. The production of grain was 
 greatly retarded, owing to the difficulty experienced by the farmers 
 in procuring seed and the myriads of grasshoppers that swarmed into 
 the valleys and consumed every spear of grain before it was fairly 
 headed out. So that with the exception of those who had engaged in 
 raising potatoes and other vegetables and in cutting wild grass for 
 hay, which sold at fabulous prices, very little was accomplished in the 
 matter of irrigation until 1864. At thai time the streams were all full 
 until late in the season, and very few large ditches or canals were 
 constructed, but those engaged in the business contented themselves 
 with what might be termed high water ditches, that seldom exceeded 
 
IRRIGATION IN THE COUNTIES. 75 
 
 a mile in length. From this small beginning the agricultural industry 
 has grown, so that at present there are 536 farms, containing an acre- 
 age of 166,812, of which 143,409 acres are under fence and nearly all 
 supplied with water ditches for irrigation. In many instances these 
 ditches are owned by individual farmers. They vary in capacity from 
 25 to 250 inches and the length varies from one to five miles. In 
 other cases several farmers have associated themselves together and 
 constructed canals from five to twenty miles in length to convey 
 water to their lands along the line. The Madison river, which has its 
 source high up in the fire holes of the National Park, west of the Yel- 
 lowstone lake, has the largest surplus of unappropriated water of any 
 stream in that county, and whilst there are a large number of farms 
 in the valley under irrigation, still few farmers use the waters of the 
 main stream, but have appropriated the waters of tributaries flowing 
 in from either side. On the eastern side, where the largest body of 
 agricultural land is situated, the waters of the Jordan, Jack, Cedar, 
 Bear, Indian, Wolf, Moose and Squaw creeks are largely used for 
 irrigation, and on the west side are Horse, Ruby, Cherry, Wigwam, 
 Moores and Spring creeks. A great portion of each are appropriated. 
 One of the largest canals in the county is that from Spring creek, 
 which is t > enty-three miles in length, is about eight feet by six and 
 two feet deep, and conveys the waters of Spring creek to the table 
 lands south of Meadow creek, and land, where a few years since 
 nothing but cactus would grow, is now producing large crops of grain, 
 alfalfa and timothy hay. The early settlers as a general thing took 
 up what seemed to them the most desirable hay lands, giving less 
 attention to agriculture, and where their attention was given to the 
 subject, failed to produce as good results as have since been attained 
 on the grease wood and sage brush land, as the soil of the former 
 contained more alkali, and the inexperienced grangers knew but 
 little how to eradicate it. 
 
 On the Ruby valley for a distance of fifty miles in length, and 
 varying from three to ten miles in width, the greater portion is under 
 irrigation. On either bank ditch after ditch and canal after canal are 
 constructed, and the waters of the main stream, as well as those of 
 Wisconsin, Indian and Mill creeks, Ramshorn river, Alder, Idaho and 
 Greenhorn gulches on the east, with Ledford, Robb, Sweetwater, 
 Garden and HLich creeks and Silver Springs on the west, the waters 
 of the whole are utilized to their full capacity. Until storage reser- 
 voirs are constructed we are of the opinion that f large canals con- 
 structed on each side of the stream and the smaller ditches abandoned, 
 there would be a great saving of water from seepage and evaporation. 
 It would certainly be more easily handled and we think produce bet- 
 ter results than are now obtained and much expensive and vexatious 
 litigation would be avoided. 
 
 The Beaverhead valley, from the Beaverhead rock north some 
 
76 APPENDIX SHOWING THE STATE OF 
 
 fifteen miles, was settled early, and many of the settlers engaged in 
 stock growing, but all had their gardens, grain fields and wild meadow 
 lands, upon which they constructed ditches and irrigation mains. No 
 great effort was put forth towards the reclamation of arid lands on the 
 upper Beaverhead until the advent of the Utah & Northern Railway 
 and markets were opened with Glendale, Butte and Anaconda for 
 farm products, at which time the subject of irrigation received a great 
 impetus, and several large canals were constructed and the waters 
 diverted to such an extent that in dry seasons the bed of the stream is 
 practically dry from Dillon north to its confluence \ ith the Big Hole 
 river and forming the Jefferson river. 
 
 The Beaverhead river, with Red Rock one of its principal tribu- 
 taries, is perhaps the longest branch of the Missouri, having its source 
 in the southern part of Madison County, in and around Red Rock 
 lake, near the Idaho line, running thence in a westerly direction, 
 throwing a broad loop into Beaverhead County, and, after a journey 
 of 100 miles, returns again to Madison County. A few miles below 
 the Red Rock lake, in what is called Centennial valley, is a point 
 where the solid rock ledges approach from either side. Here is one 
 of the most favorable locations for a storage reservoir in the State. 
 The stream from the lake to this point is very flat, and a dam could 
 be easily constructed that would back the water up into the lake. 
 This point was selected by the engineers of Major Powell as the most 
 desirable site on the stream, and the lands on each side of the river 
 and around the marshy lake were withdrawn from entry so as not to 
 interfere with the storage of water. A small appropriation by Con- 
 gress for the erection of a storage reservoir at this place would be of 
 inestimable value, as there are yet many thousands of acres of arid 
 lands that could be reclaimed from that source alone, and cannot be 
 successfully irriga'ed in any other way. The Big Hole river produces 
 more water than either the Ruby or Beaverhead. It has but little 
 irrigable lands as compared with the other streams, as it runs through 
 canyons and narrow valleys until within ten miles of where it is 
 joined bv the Beaverhead and Ruby, forming the Jefferson river. 
 Several large canals are completed, and the waters are used on the 
 level valley between the rivers. On the Jefferson valley quite a 
 number of large canals are already completed and in use, whilst others 
 are in course of construction on both sides of the river, from Silver 
 Star northward. At Waterloo is a fine, prosperous community that, 
 in addition to the waters of Spring creek, have a canal from the Jef- 
 ferson about twelve miles in length, and are engaged in the construc- 
 tion of another and longer canal. There is still a large amount of 
 unappropriated water in the Jefferson river, which courses through 
 and forms the north line of Madison County for a distance of forty 
 miles, receiving the waters of Fish creek, the North and South 
 Boulder rivers and several other smaller streams. From the South 
 
IRRIGATION IN THE COUNTIES. 77 
 
 Boulder a large amount of water for irrigation and placer mining has 
 been appropriated. The waters of North and South Willow creeks 
 are largely appropriated, so that during dry seasons but little if any 
 runs to waste. The same may be said of Norwegian and Hot Spring, 
 Cherry and Pole creeks, also South Meadow and Leonard creeks. 
 North Meadow is a larger stream than either of the last named, but 
 at the low stage of water but little remains unappropriated, and there 
 are several small lakes on this stream that attempts have been made 
 to improve for the purpose of storing water. There are large [placers 
 at and about Washington bar, where the waters of this stream are 
 used before it reaches the valley for general irrigation purposes. 
 There are, according to reports at hand, nearly 600 miles of ditches 
 and canals in Madison County in the aggregate, with a capacity of 
 about 150,000 inches of water, and, as heretofore stated, until storage 
 reservoirs are constructed, no surplus in any of the s-treams except a 
 small amount in Big Hole, a still larger amount in the Jefferson, and 
 the largest amount of any single stream in the Madison river. 
 
 R. O. HICKMAN. 
 
 MISSOULA COUNTY. 
 
 I have been unable to secure complete statistics relating to the 
 subject of irrigation in the County of Missoula, and am at a loss 
 somewhat as to how to formulate a satisfactory report. I know of at 
 this time but three or four irrigation schemes on what is anything 
 like an extensive plan, or idea. One of these is the Republican 
 Ditch Company, taking water out of the Skalkaho creek and Bitter 
 Root river. The ditch perhaps in its greatest length is about twelve 
 or fifteen miles, carries about 2,000 inches of water and irrigates 5,000 
 acres of land, possibly more. It is a joint stock company, the owner- 
 ship of which is largely held by Marcus Daly, and very much of the 
 water is used by him on his extensive farm at Riverside, in this 
 county. The remainder of the stock is held by the neighboring 
 farmers, who use the water of the ditch in their various farming 
 projects. 
 
 The Surprise Ditch Company takes water from the Bitter Root 
 river, its greatest length being fifteen miles. It also passes through 
 the Daly ranch. More or less of the stock of this company is also 
 held by Mr. Daly, the remainder by quite a considerable number of 
 Bitter Root farmers, among others being Cortez Goff. This ditch, 
 perhaps, furnishes water for two or three thousand acres. Then 
 there is the ^Etna Ditch Company, also taking water out of the Bit- 
 ter Root river, the water from which irrigates perhaps 1,000 acres. 
 The leading spirit in this last 'ditch is L. Frankton Warner. 
 
 There are an innumerable number of lesser irrigation schemes and 
 individual water appropriations, taking in fact all of the waters of 
 
78 APPENDIX SHOWING THE STATE OF 
 
 Skalkaho creek, Willow creek, Girds creek, Burnt Fork, Three- 
 Mile, Eight-Mile, Sleeping Child, Tin Cup, Grant creek, Rattlesnake, 
 Lavalla creek, O'Keefe creek, Lynch creek and some of the waters of 
 Lo Lo. There is also a company organized, composed principally of 
 citizens of the city of Missoula, known as the Canon Ditch Company. 
 It has now under construction and rapidly approaching completion a 
 ditch taking the waters of the Hell Gate or Missoula river about five 
 miles up the river from the city of Missoula, crossing the farm of 
 Daniel E. Bandmann, coming out of the canyon on the south side of 
 the river, thence following along the foot of the mountain with later- 
 als, reaching to various tracts of land on the south side of the Mis- 
 soula river. This project reclaims several hundred acres heretofore 
 desert lands. It is expected to be made available for making the 
 yards, lawns and orchards of South Missoula grow and blossom as a 
 rose. It is estimated that this ditch will carry between four and five 
 thousand inches of water, and the cost will be about $30,000. Its pro- 
 prietorship is composed largely of the owners of the land on the south 
 side of the Missoula river at Missoula. 
 
 I might add that there is a vast quantity of land in Missoula 
 County now desert that could be reclaimed, but the expenditure 
 necessary is greater than the individual farmers, or even a collection 
 of farmers, could undertake; but a magnificent field is presented to 
 the enterprising capitalist, as there is in our mountain streams, rivers 
 and lakes a vast quantity of water, that by the expenditure of what 
 would not to a man of means be a very considerable amount of 
 money, could be used for the purpose of reclaiming this large tract 
 of arid or desert lands, and the returns on the investment would be 
 very large. 
 
 Missoula valley is exceedingly fertile and the county is peopled 
 with quite an enterprising, frugal and industrious people, who, how- 
 ever, have not been able financially to cope with the physical condi- 
 tions, have made the lands yield abundant harvest of fruit, grain, hay 
 and all kinds of vegetables. A. G. ENGLAND. 
 
 MEAGHER COUNTY. 
 
 The situation in Meagher County as regards this problem of irri- 
 gation may be gathered with reasonable correctness from a few facts 
 that I shall be able to give you. The Assessor of Meagher County 
 reports for the present year 333 farms. These farms are none of them 
 less in extent than 160 acres, many of them much larger, the average 
 being over 500 acres. They all need irrigation to make them pro- 
 ductive. 
 
 Our agricultural lands, and in that term I include all lands that, 
 with water for irrigation, will produce crops, are confined principally 
 
IRRIGATION IN THE COUNTIES. 79 
 
 to three large valleys: The Missouri valley, extending from Canyon 
 Ferry southerly some forty miles to the southwest corner of the 
 county, and embracing some 102,400 acres. The Smith River valley, 
 extending from about ten miles south of White Sulphur Springs to 
 old Fort Logan, some thirty-five or forty miles north, embracing 
 96,000 acres. The Musselshell valley, extending from its forks east- 
 erly about sixty miles, embracing 192,000 acres, making a total of 
 390,400 acres. Of this area 27,000 acres (about) are cultivated, leaving 
 363,400 acres of arid lands within our boundaries. About all cheap 
 sources of water supply have been exhausted. All the water flowing 
 during the irrigating season in the streams of the valleys I have named 
 has been appropriated. 
 
 The ditches used are mostly small, constructed for single farms. 
 In the Missouri valley several large ditches from the Missouri river 
 supply each from four to ten ranches. A canal has been projected in- 
 the Missouri valley that directly and indirectly will reclaim from 
 8,000 to 10,000 acres. The stock is mostly subscribed, and it is hoped 
 to commence the work of construction the coming spring. The op- 
 portunities for improving our present condition would seem to be by 
 the construction of reservoirs in each of these valleys. Sites favora- 
 ble for their construction are found in each, and the flow of water in 
 the streams now appropriated for irrigating purposes is sufficient, if 
 held in check by reservoirs through that season of the year when not 
 used by the farmer, to nearly if not quite supply the entire area of 
 agricultural land. J. E. KANOUSE. 
 
 PARK COUNTY. 
 
 I am not very well posted in regard to what has been done in the 
 western portion of our county, but will give you what I know about 
 the water and irrigation in my district. I can answer a great many 
 questions in a few words. With water we can raise anything that 
 could be expected in this latitude, and without water nothing. As 
 for the supply of water, there is plenty for all the arid lands in this- 
 vicinity if it was properly handled and stored. I will first mention 
 the Big Timber creek: This water could be stored with a very good 
 reservoir site, and then it could be taken out with a small expense 
 and thrown over into Otter creek, where there is a great deal of good 
 agricultural land. Then comes the Sweet Grass, which throws a 
 large amount of water in June and July. There could be a canal 
 taken out of this stream and carried on the edge between Sweet Grass 
 lake basin and White Beaver basin, where it could be distributed so it 
 would supply all the arid lands in those places, and also supply the 
 present demand on the Sweet Grass, and do away with all the present 
 ditches now in use and under construction. Nature never formed a 
 
80 APPENDIX SHOWING THE STATE OF 
 
 better reservoir site than on the Sweet Grass. A dam eighty feet 
 high and not to exceed one hundred yards in length on top, would 
 store a body of water averaging one mile wide and five miles long, 
 and from fifty to eighty feet in depth, and covering no arid land what- 
 ever. Then the waters of Sweet Grass would supply hundreds of 
 farms and increase our population 500 per cent. 
 
 As for the work that has been done, it i^s all the work of the farm- 
 ers and stock men, who have combined together and taken out such 
 ditches as would supply their own wants. There are twelve or fifteen 
 ditches now taken out of the Sweet Grass, carrying from 200 to 1,200 
 inches, and I would venture to say in June and July 25,000 inches 
 runs to waste. There is plenty of land on which to utilize it all if it 
 was properly distributed. There is a great deal of land lying dormant 
 along the Yellowstone, which all could be covered, but it will take 
 large capital. Nowhere in Montana have I seen a section where 
 water could be stored and utilized as cheap as in Big Timber and the 
 Sweet Grass. W. A. HARRISON. 
 
 Sweet Grass. 
 
 SILVER BOW COUNTY. 
 
 Hon. W. A. Clark, of Butte City, to whom was delegated by the 
 late State Irrigation Convention the task of preparing a statement 
 showing the status of irrigation in Silver Bow County, w r as unex- 
 pectedly called east. In his stead I am invited to make some state- 
 ment in reference thereto. 
 
 It is well known to every one residing within the State that this 
 county is geographically located in the southwestern portion of Mon- 
 tana and on and along the western slope of the main range of the 
 Rocky Mountains. Being the smallest county in area in the State, 
 with an average altitude of over 5,000 feet, it is not surprising that it 
 should contain less than a township of arable land, and being so high 
 up in the mountains what little it has is pretty generally reclaimed 
 by independent private enterprise. It has, however, valuable reser- 
 voir sites, where, by proper engineering development, large storage 
 of water could be had and used for the benefit of Deer Lodge valley, 
 if it could be spared here and should ever become necessary. The 
 great uses of our water supply will be its storage and distribution in 
 the upbuilding of manufacturing and reduction industries tributary to 
 Butte City. 
 
 However much our water might be of benefit to its natural uses in 
 agricultural lines, and however much of it the skill of intelligent en- 
 gineering may develop for us, the great demand in the direction I 
 have indicated will make it stand to us in value next to the commodi- 
 ties of gold, silver and copper. The ruling valuable component parts 
 
IRRIGATION IN THE COUNTIES. 8l 
 
 that go to make up the source of Silver Bow County's prosperity is 
 labor, gold, silver, copper, water and fuel. In all of these items we 
 are peculiarly interested, and in our economic system each is inter- 
 dependent on the other. When, in simple truth, we recite that in 
 fifteen years the life of Butte City as an ore producing center, by rea- 
 son of our recovering from the earth gold, silver and copper, the 
 world has been made richer in a sum greater than $200,000,000, and 
 when we further state, without the fear of successful contradiction, 
 that this calendar year of 1892 will add, of these materials, a value of 
 over $30,000,000, with evidences of an annual increase as years roll by, 
 and when the character of our low grade ores is considered, requiring 
 for its dressing the primary element of water, then conceding to us 
 the great growth of manufactories already on every hand, and the 
 great industries to come, we may well say that we have no water to 
 spare for irrigation in the sense of reclaiming arid lands. 
 
 Notwithstanding all of this, and for the very reason of this, we, of 
 Silver Bow County, are greatly interested in the reclamation by irri- 
 gation of the great arable plateaus of Eastern and Northern Montana. 
 We say to you that we are the great consumer of the results of the 
 husbandry of Montana, and may for that reason, if no other, be 
 counted upon to take a great interest in all questions relating to re- 
 claiming the arid lands of the State of Montana. 
 
 Whether that reclamation is undertaken by the State or United 
 States matters to us of Silver Bow County only as to which is deter- 
 mined to be the best agency. That it should be undertaken by one or 
 the other immediately is seemingly an impending necessity. 
 
 GEO. W. IRVINE II. 
 
 YELLOWSTONE COUNTY. 
 
 Yellowstone County has an area of 3,390 square miles, and an esti- 
 mated irrigable area of 500,000 acres. Its northern and southern 
 boundaries are respectively the Musselshell and Yellowstone rivers, 
 which constitute also its ample sources of water for irrigation. 
 
 As the Musselshell has its heads among mountains of low altitude, 
 the melting snows by which it is fed become exhausted early in the 
 season and its waters consequently fail when most needed. For the 
 reclamation of the drainage basin of the Musselshell resort must be 
 had, therefore, to storage reservoirs in which the spring freshets may 
 be impounded until needed. 
 
 The Yellowstone river, on the other hand, heading as it does 
 among the perpetual snows, rolls down its floods during the months 
 of greatest heat and when the thirsty earth is in greatest need. The 
 volume of the Yellowstone during hot weather is estimated at 
 4,000,000 miners' inches, which for practical irrigation could by 
 
82 APPENDIX SHOWING THE STATE OF 
 
 means of storage reservoirs be greatly increased. The hydrographic 
 basin of the Yellowstone, with interruptions, is about 400 miles long, 
 and, including the adjacent mesas, reclaimable by high-line ditches, it 
 has an average width^ of from eight to twelve miles. Expert esti- 
 mates place the irrigable area of the entire Yellowstone basin as high 
 as 8,000,000 acres. The capacity of the Yellowstone, conserved by 
 storage, may therefore be regarded as ample for the most exacting 
 droughts which are likely ever to be made upon it. The fall of the 
 Yellowstone is so rapid that it offers especial facilities for the con- 
 ducting of water onto the adjacent plateaus, and the time is probably 
 not far distant when large areas of table-land which are now utilized 
 only as ranges for cattle and sheep will be dotted with farm houses 
 surrounded by fragrant orchards and by waving fields of green and 
 gold. 
 
 Yellowstone is one of the youngest counties of the State. Its set- 
 tlement practically dates from the advent of the Northern Pacific 
 Railroad into Eastern Montana, in 1882. Adverse influences, which it 
 is unnecessary to explain in this connection, have greatly retarded its 
 agricultural development. Enough has been done, however, to dem- 
 onstrate that in all-round capacity for production Yellowstone is sec- 
 ond to no county in the State. 
 
 Aside from a few small ditches on the Musselshell, the principal 
 development has been in Clark's Fork Bottom, a name applied to an 
 enlargement of the valley of the Yellowstone, reaching westward 
 from Billings for thirty miles. The ditches of this bottom aggregate 
 perhaps 12,000 miners' inches, the largest of them having a nominal 
 capacity of 5,000 inches and a length of thirty-nine miles. The area 
 of Clark's Fork Bottom is nearly 60,000 acres. 
 
 The soil of Yellowstone County grades from a light sandy loam to 
 heavy clay loam, clay loam of moderate weight predominating, and 
 it is admirably adapted to the growth of grapes and cereals. Oats 
 rarely weigh less than forty pounds per measured bushel, and yield 
 from forty to eighty bushels to the acre, according to the skill of the 
 cultivator. Wheat readily yields from twenty-five to forty bushels 
 per acre, and owing to our comparatively low altitude, 3,io feet > and 
 our hot summers, hardens so perfectly as to have been pronounced by 
 experienced Eastern millers to be equal, if not superior for flouring 
 purposes, to the choicest Dakota No. i hard wheat. Our barley fully 
 sustains the reputation of the State for the production of this cereal 
 in exceptional quality. Dent corn grows here as well as in Northern 
 Ohio; while potatoes, squashes, melons and vegetables in general, as 
 elsewhere in the State, for size and quality trench upon the mar- 
 velous. 
 
 Of the hay-producing grasses, bluestem has been its habitat, and 
 attains its highest perfection; but as it degenerates eventually under 
 irrigation, timothy is being substituted gradually, and yields from 
 
IRRIGATION IN THE COUNTIES. 83 
 
 two to three tons to the acre. In respect to alfalfa, Yellowstone is 
 easily the banner county of the State. This marvelous plant thrives 
 on all our soils, but especially on the sandy loam. With but a single 
 irrigation after each cutting it yields three full crops yearly, aggre- 
 gating from five to six tons per acre, of a hay so rich in nutritive 
 value that it will m;ike mutton or beef during a Montana winter, with 
 the help only of shelter and water. All the small fruits, including 
 grapes of medium season, grow luxuriantly. The hardier varieties 
 of plums and of standard apples also do well. 
 
 Yellowstone County offers exceptional inducements to thrifty, in- 
 telligent farmers seeking homes. The best unimproved lands may 
 be had here, under ditch, at from ten to fifteen dollars per acre, and 
 under irrigation excellent crops can be taken from the sod within 
 four months from the time it is broken. No county in the State is 
 susceptible of more varied farming. The facility with which barley, 
 peas, alfalfa, Hubbard squashes and corn can be raised affords the 
 finest possibilities in dairying and in the making of hams and bacon, 
 two industries scarcely represented in the county. Alfalfa is peerless 
 for bee-farming and for poultry raising, while the making of beef and 
 mutton from alfalfa, both green and dry, is destined to become a 
 leading industry of the farmers of Yellowstone County and to add 
 thousands to their wealth. Yellowstone County is without a flouring 
 mill, and a fortune awaits the man who shall first build one here. 
 Cheese and beet-sugar manufactories could command here the best 
 of working material and an appreciative market. 
 
 Winter commences in Yellowstone County with great regularity 
 during the closing days of December, and breaks in from two to six 
 weeks. The chinook begins in February, and the 5th of March 
 usually finds the farmer putting in his seed. The summers are long 
 and hot. 
 
 A fact of immense practical importance to the future of Yellow- 
 stone County is the assurance of the sustained fertility of its lands. 
 During the summer months the watej-s of the Yellowstone are thick 
 with silt, the fertilizing wealth of the mountains from which they 
 flow. The process of irrigation distributes this soil-laden water over 
 the luxuriant fields, supplying their waste and quenching their thirst 
 as from the fountain of perpetual youth. So that bountiful harvests 
 suggest to the farmer no disquieting fears of the exhaustion of his 
 soil, but rather remind him of his debt to that kindly Providence 
 who by wonderful provision has thus ordained that by giving his 
 fields shall not be impoverished, and that by the lapse of the years 
 their natural force shall not be abated. B. F. SHUART. 
 
 BILLINGS, Jan. 23, 1892. 
 
84 APPENDIX SHOWING THE STATE OF 
 
 ST. MARY'S LAKE COUNTRY. 
 
 It was my fortune to be able to visit the northwestern po tion of 
 the State east of the Rocky Mountains during the past autumn season. 
 The purposes of my visit were an examination of the soil, nature of 
 the country, and the possibilities of irrigation. Almost uniformly 
 the soil on the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains, to the Missouri 
 river, is of an excellent quality, and produces a vigorous growth of 
 native grass. A portion of it still being, and all of it having been until 
 recently, included in an Indian reservation, but little is as yet known 
 as to its adaptability for growing domestic products. I would like to 
 say in this connection, however, that I saw here what I never saw be- 
 fore flax of excellent quality growing native and wild, indiginous to 
 the country. Also in several places I found native timothy growing, 
 making a very excellent grass. Several streams have their origin in 
 the Rocky Mountains, flowing eastward, and convey more or less 
 water to the Missouri river. Chief among these are the Teton, the 
 Marias and the JMilk rivers, with their smaller tributaries. It is a 
 noticeable feature of them all that in crossing over a strip of land 
 somewhat irregular but probably fifty miles in width, all of them part 
 with more or less of their water, and actually carry less water when 
 emptying into the Missouri river than is found in them nearer to 
 their source. This fact may possibly have connection with the arte- 
 sian flow of water so generally found further down on the eastern 
 slope. All of these streams when leaving the mountains are well de- 
 fined and the flow continual, and carry considerable quantities of 
 water. Their sources being so much above the general level of the 
 country below, all of them can be taken from their native channel at 
 varying expenses and conveyed over the lands below and used in con- 
 verting into productive soil which would otherwise be uncertain in 
 production for lack of moisture. Running in a northwesterly direc- 
 tion in the vicinity of the source of the Milk river is a high ridge 
 which separates the chief source of that stream from the main range 
 of the mountains. This state of affairs will account for the fact that 
 late in. the summer season but little water is found in the lower Milk 
 river, because there is but one branch of that stream that has its 
 origin in the Rocky Mountains. 
 
 Immediately behind this high ridge, and between it and the Rocky 
 Mountains, lie the beautiful lakes known as St. Mary's lakes. The 
 lower one of these lakes is about six miles in length, varying in width 
 from one-quarter to one-half mile. The upper lake, which is about 
 fifteen miles in length and somewhat wider than the lower one, lies 
 further into the mountains, and is really the receptacle of nearly all 
 the waters flowing into the two. The outlet of these lakes is the St. 
 Mary's river, which runs in a northeasterly direction, following the 
 north side of the high ridge above referred to. After a run of about 
 
IRRIGATION IN THE COUNTIES. 85 
 
 ten, miles it crosses the boundary into Canada. Emptying into St. 
 Mary's river, about two miles below the lower lake, is the Swift Cur- 
 rent, a stream about one-third the size of St. Mary's. This stream 
 could easily be turned into the lower St. Mary's lake, thus increasing 
 the volume of St. Mary's river about one-third where it leaves the 
 lake. Within a mile or two of the Canadian boundary is a deep 
 chasm in the high ridge above referred to. I am led to believe from 
 the imperfect observations it was possible to make that the highest 
 point within this chasm is considerably lower than the level of the 
 water at the outlet of the lower lake. I am also led to believe that a 
 careful survey would show that it were possible and feasible to take 
 the waters out of St. Mary's river through the chasm referred to, and 
 following the east side of the ridge formerly spoken of, crossing at 
 the water level the various tributaries of the Milk river, adding these 
 streams to the water in the ditch until the water could be brought out 
 upon the high plain and distributed over the same. 
 
 The feasibility of the distribution I think is unquestionable, in view 
 of the fact that there is a very perceptible incline in the whole coun- 
 try from the mountains east for several hundred miles. I am also led 
 to believe that the large tributary of the Marias, known as the 'Cut 
 Bank," could also be taken from its channel and made to join the 
 waters of the St. Mary, and thus could be secured sufficient water to 
 reclaim by irrigation at least 300,000 acres of excellent soil, which is 
 otherwise unproductive for want of irrigation. The benefits that 
 would be derived from such a vast reclaim of otherwise unproductive 
 territory is in keeping with the magnitude of the undertaking. The 
 possibilities of benefits to be thus derived are so great that it seems to 
 me a matter well worth the consideration of Congress and justifying 
 a suitable appropriation to determine whether such results are really 
 possible. To ascertain this a topographical survey should be made. 
 At present no person is sufficiently interested, otherwise than Con- 
 gress, to justify the expense in making such a survey. A very trifling 
 amount only would be required to ascertain whether the waters could 
 be obtained in the manner indicated. If such were found to be true, 
 then a more complete survey could be made. If it should transpire 
 that it were not possible to carry the waters in the manner indicated, 
 no further expense need be incurred. 1 am satisfied that here is the 
 greatest opportunity now presenting itself in this State for Congress 
 to do a great service to the State, and I sincerely believe you will be 
 entirely justified in calling the attention of Congress to this matter 
 by urging action on its part necessary to determine the true situation 
 of the case. J. BOOKWALTER. 
 
86 APPENDIX. 
 
 MISCELLANEOUS COMMENTS. 
 
 At the special request of Senator T. C. Power the fol- 
 lowing is printed. 
 
 NEW DEPARTURE MINES, BEAVERHEAD Co., MONT. ) 
 FEBRUARY 2oth ? 1892. \ 
 
 Senator T. C. Poivcr, Senate Chamber, Washington, D. C.: 
 
 DEAR SIR: I am glad to learn that you have so far recovered from 
 jour late illness as to resume your seat in the Senate. I feel now as 
 if I am justified in writing you what I have intended to write ever 
 since the adjournment of the "Arid Land Convention," at Helena. 
 Allow me to congratulate you on the stand you have taken on the arid 
 land question. It is the only tenable one for us, in my judgment. 
 The government owes it to the whole people to reclaim these lands 
 and make them fit for cultivation and habitation. To cede them to 
 the states and territories is to give to them the bone after the flesh has 
 been taken from it. Those favoring the cession say sell the lands and 
 with .the proceeds reclaim them. Who would buy them? Not one 
 section to-day could be sold individually or separately were they ceded. 
 To sell them would bring us back to your idea as expressed at Hel- 
 ena. Trusts and corporations only would eventually acquire these 
 lands, and the people would be under their yoke and at their mercy. 
 Much can be said against the cession of these lands. I fully endorse 
 your course and it meets with my unqualified approbation. 
 
 Yours Truly, LAWRENCE A. BROWN. 
 
 In explaining his position on the arid land question, in 
 the San Francisco Chronicle, Senator Power said: 
 
 I spoke only for my own State, where the people do not want arid 
 lands thrust upon them, i cannot speak for California, because the 
 conditions may be such that what is good for us might be bad for that 
 State. My claim is that the plan to take the arid lands away from the 
 Federal Government is the scheme of a few men, acting in conjunc- 
 tion with the railroads, to increase their holdings and place in their 
 hands a supreme power that cannot be otherwise than vicious. More 
 than that, a consummation of this big job would result in the organ- 
 ization of a giant political machine, that in far-reaching effect and un- 
 limited possibilities would cause Tammany to appear as a pigmy. 
 
 For instance, in Montana there are 40,000,000 acres of unsurveyed 
 arid lands; the railroads have 1 7,000,000 acres more. If this scheme 
 should be carried out there is nothing to prevent these men from 
 going to the railroad men, who are willing, and saying to them, 
 "Here, we are mutually interested in this thing. We will pool our 
 
APPENDIX. 87 
 
 issues and combine our strength and elect a Governor who will be our 
 creature. Thus we will control all appointments, and we will control 
 all this land, as well as politics generally." 
 
 Now, do you see the immense power these men would have? I 
 will show you more. To survey these lands in Montana alone would 
 cost much more than a million dollars. Do you see the possibilities 
 in that single little item? Now, to go further, Montana is forced to 
 run into debt to survey its little school lands. To survey all these 
 arid lands would pitch it head over heels in debt, and with a body of 
 unscrupulous men in control it would never extricate itself. Then 
 the State would be forced, just as any unsuccessful business man is 
 forced to do with his goods, to virtually give the land away in order 
 to realize enough to pay its indebtedness, and that is the point in the 
 proceedings where these political bosses and unscrupulous conspira- 
 tors would step in and for a song increase their holdings. 
 
 This is all feasible, and I charge that there is now a conspiracy 
 afoot in which all those points have been considered and adopted. 
 Of course the railroads are in it. The biggest man in the Salt Lake 
 Convention, which swallowed the bait, hook and all, and the man who 
 more than any other carried the scheme through, was the general land 
 agent of the Southern and Central Pacific railroads. He absolutely 
 joked the Convention into adopting his policy. In Montana we want 
 the arid lands to be kept in control of the Government, and we want 
 that Government to adopt some plan by which a portion of the land 
 can be sold and the proceeds applied to the reclamation of the whole. 
 We stand ready to adopt anything that is fair to all the people. 
 
Photomount 
 Pamphlet 
 
 Binder 
 Gaylord Bros. 
 
 Makers 
 
 , N. y. 
 
 JAN 21, 1908 
 
 583217 
 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY