the dams and the reservoirs remain the property of Uncle Sam, and he is responsible for their integrity. This principle will probably be extended to the electric power developed at the government dam. The current is used for the benefit of landowners under the project (the charge for private lighting is one half a cent per kilowatt hour); but the water-users are responsible only for its economical and equitable distribution. The advantage of having the Reclamation Service assume deterioration charges for these costly plants is evident.

When I visited Minidoka in the summer of 1907, the settlers were complaining that the government was pretty slow, and there is no question that the promoters of the Twin Falls project were rapid by comparison. It is to the interest of a private company to push the work through to completion, collect the payments, and free their capital for a new enterprise, whereas the Reclamation Service engineer cannot work more rapidly than the revenues derived from public land sales will allow. The total receipts turned into the Reclamation Fund for 1907 were a little less th $8,000,000, and this sum had to be divided among thirty-c different projects. Minidoka's allotment for 1908 was but $70,88 not enough for the installation of the pumping and powe. machinery and the building of the lateral canals needed to conduct the water on to the farms. By consequence, hundreds of settlers who filed when the tract was first opened for entry in 1904 and who had brought half their claims under cultivation accord ing to requirement, were still without water. Some raised crops of wheat and potatoes by dry-farming methods, others, who were blessed with the wherewithal, put in windmill pumps; but it was a long, discouraging pull and many had fallen by the way. About half of the early settlers were still clinging to their hardearned claims, but there were numerous "relinquishments" and new comers had bought in the lapsed homestead rights. When in the spring of 1908, the authorities announced that water would not be available for the south side lands for another year, the people were at the limit of their well-worn patience. But the project engineer, came to the rescue with a brilliant idea. He proposed that all the government money should be devoted to the necessary power and pumping machinery, while the farmers.

The Act of June 25, 1910, forbids the taking up of land under a government project before the Secretary of the Interior has published the waterright charge and the date when water can be be furnished.

should build the connecting canals. The plan also provided that the Secretary of the Interior would pay for the labor of men and teams in "water-scrip" receivable in payment for any and all water rights. There is no man more conservative and individualistic than your well-seasoned farmer. It was not easy to persuade a body of thoroughly disheartened men to go into a coöperative scheme based on confidence in each other and in the government.

But the project engineer had full faith in the method and his enthusiasm was contagious. The water-users' association was organized, contracts for earthwork and excavation were given out in sections feasible for the farmer and his team, larger bids were rejected and sub-contracting was not permitted. Six hundred men set to work on April 17th, with an energy born of despair. The three "bench" canals, ninety miles in all, and the principal sub-laterals were completed by June 23rd-in less time than professional contractors had estimated the work could be done. It seemed a stroke of genius. Labor that was running to waste was brought to bear where it was most needed, and the farmers were enabled to forestall their obligations to the Government in their one available asset. Washington to meet the water right instalments as they fell due, No money need be sent to draining the region of its much needed cash. Meantime, the water-scrip was accepted by bankers and local merchants and served to pay for immediate necessities. It had been taken at a slight discount, but there was every reason to suppose that when the first water payments came due, and the scrip began to be redeemed, it would circulate at par. To be sure, certain eastern senators, held to be authorities on "emergency currency", protested the whole scheme on the ground that the Reclamation

Service was issuing

a form of paper money; but the device was

The

approved by Secretary Garfield, and adopted in half a dozen more government projects where a similar situation had arisen. Some $300,000 in water-scrip for work on the various irrigation projects was in circulation when, like a bolt from the blue, came Attorney General Wickersham's decision that the issue was illegal, since not specifically authorized by the Reclamation Act. financial foundations of these struggling little communities was suddenly called into question, and the whole service was disheartened by the uncertainties of the law. The water-scrip has since been redeemed at par (March 1910), and the issue of $20,000,000 in bonds against future revenues from water right payments,

authorized by Congress in accordance with the recommendation of President Taft, will make possible the completion of the works already under way. The army engineers, appointed to investigate the several undertakings and apportion the fund, have divided it among the fourteen projects where large expenditures are still called for, leaving the remainder to be provided for by land sale receipts.

The wisest and most experienced of the project engineers are agreed that the chief difficulty of the farmer on the government projects is lack of capital. Under the restrictions of the Reclamation Act, the homesteader cannot secure a title to his land until the expiration of the five year residence term. The commutation clause of the Homestead Law by which patent might be secured on payment of the government price of $1.25 per acre, was expressly excluded from the Act of 1902. Under these conditions the settler cannot borrow money on his holding during the initial years when his need is greatest. Mr. Thomas H. Means, until recently project engineer at Truckee-Carson, has made a study of the relinquishments among the 544 homesteaders who filed under that project, and his conclusions are based on a personal acquaintance with most of the entrymen. The number of cancelled and relinquished entries was 238 or almost half the total filings. Of the failures, 180 or 67 per cent were men and women who had filed in the spirit of speculation, with no intention of building a home, but in the hope of selling out their claim to some later comer. From such settlers no genuine effort to make a success of irrigation could be expected. Of the 327 bona fide homesteaders, 88 have relinquished their holdings, and 96 are likely to fail, leaving only 143 or 43 per cent in the successful class. In searching for the causes of failure, Mr. Means sets down 4 to lack of experience, 23 to adverse conditions-sandy or alkali soil, inability to get water in time to save crops, etc., and 34 to lack of capital and 35 to plain discouragement. It would seem that 71 per cent of the failures are due to conditions arising out of the long residence requirement. In the unpublished paper from which he permits me to quote, Mr. Means states: "The residence clause is one great stumbling block. A settler is required to move his family on his homestead within six months after his filing. He brings his family out to the sun-blistered desert without shade or grass, and this often does much to discourage his wife and his family. Could this man carry on his

improvements and let his family live in town or back east, he could accomplish more and suffer much less hardship. Improvements should be made the test, not residence." Again: "If a settler could obtain some form of title to his place more promptly and so have something on which he could borrow money, he would often make good where he now fails. In reclamation projects, the government would want to retain the first mortgage until the water right was paid for, but the second mortgage owner could at any time remove the first mortgage by paying up the water right charges." The clause in the Reclamation Act requiring "actual and continuous" residence for a term of five years was intended to guard against dummy filings, speculation and the accumulation of large estates-to reserve this last and richest portion of the public lands for the genuine farmer. But the bane of latifundia is less to be dreaded on irrigated lands, where intensive farming is alone profitable, than in a grain or cattle region. Congress has made the long-term residence requirement absolute just where it is least needed. If the commutation permissible under the Homestead Act were allowed, and a man might pay down the statutory price of the land, the position of the homesteader would approximate that of the settler under the Carey Act; but even more effective would be Mr. Mean's suggestion that the residence requirement be dropped or abated and that salable title be given as soon as a certain amount of improvement has been made. In this way the man with small capital but possessing those more valuable qualities of brains, pluck, and endurance, would be enabled to earn a farm by the labor of his hands, as truly as did his forbears in the humid states east of the Missouri River. KATHARINE COMAN.

Wellesley College.

HOW TARIFFS SHOULD NOT BE MADE

In the course of inquiries on the legislative history of the Tariff Act of 1909, I encountered some episodes characteristic of the tariff-making methods which have long been followed in the United States. These episodes will be described in the present paper. The changes in duty which resulted are not of great consequence. Most of them affect articles that are petty in comparison with the important and much debated articles. But the cases are typical and instructive. Concrete examples show better than any general statement what has been our practice in the past, and what are the reasons for substituting a procedure more open, more deliberate, more closely scanned.

No doubt

Let it be recalled that during the session of 1908-09 the committees of the House and Senate followed different policies in preparing the tariff bills for the respective legislative bodies. The House Committee on Ways and Means held many hearings and printed every document submitted to it. The Senate Committee of Finance held no hearings and published nothing. the hearings before the House committee were often unprofitable, and usually were extremely wearisome to the committee members. They gave occasion, too, for much political fencing. None the less, a great mass of material useful for understanding the tariff situation was submitted, and was printed in the eight bulky volumes of Hearings; a set of documents which, it may be added, has been indexed and arranged with unusual care. And at all events the House committee proceded openly. Just what happened in the Senate committee nobody knows. But it is an open secret that individual members were approached by influential persons interested in the tariff; that a mass of typewritten matter was submitted; and that there was expectation of considerable amendment at the hands of Senate leaders. The main difference between the procedure of the two committees publicity in the one case, non-publicity in the other-should be borne in mind when reading what follows.

The first episode to which I shall call attention is the change in the duty on structural steel. In the preceding tariff acts (1890, 1894, and 1897) the general trend had been toward a reduction of the duties on iron and steel. The process of reduction