_Mr. Governor, Mr. Mayor, and you, my Fellow-Citizens_:
Colorado has certain special interests which it shares with the group
of States immediately around it. To my mind one of the best pieces of
legislation put upon the statute books of the National Government of
recent years was the irrigation act; an act under which we declare it
to be the national policy that exactly as care is to be taken of the
harbors and along the lower courses of the rivers, so in their upper
courses care is to be taken by the Nation of the irrigation work to be
done in connection with them.
Under that act a beginning has been made in Colorado, Montana,
Wyoming, Nevada, and the Territory of Arizona. There is bound to be
disappointment here and there where people have built hopes without a
quite sufficient warranty of fact behind. But good will surely come
at once and wellnigh immeasurable good in the future from the policy
which has thus been begun. In Colorado two-thirds of your products
come from irrigated farms, and four years ago those products already
surpassed fifteen million dollars. With the aid of the government far
more can be done in the future even than has been done in the past.
The object of the law is to provide small irrigated farms to actual
settlers, to actual home-makers; the land is given away ultimately
in small tracts under the terms of the homestead act, the settlers
repaying the cost of bringing water to their lands in ten annual
payments; and lands now in private ownership can be watered in small
tracts by similar payments, but the law forbids the furnishing of
water to large tracts, and the aim of the government is rigidly to
prevent the acquisition of large rights for speculative purposes.
The purpose of the law was, and that purpose is being absolutely
carried out, to promote settlement and cultivation of small farms
carefully tilled. Water made available under the terms of this law
becomes appurtenant under the law to the land, and can not be disposed
of without it, and thus monopoly and speculation in this vitally
important commodity are prevented, or at least their evil effects
minimized so far as the law or the administration of the law can bring
that end about. This is the great factor in future success. The policy
is a policy of encouragement to the home-maker, to the man who comes
to establish his home, to bring up his children here as a citizen of
the commonwealth, and his welfare is guarded by the union of the water
and the land.
The government can not deal with large numbers individually. We
have encouraged the formation of associations of water users, of
cultivators of the soil in small tracts. The ultimate ownership and
control of the irrigation works will pass away from the government
into the hands of those users, those home-makers, who through their
officers do the necessary business of their associations. The
aim of the government is to give locally the ultimate control of
water distributed and to leave neighborhood disputes to be settled
locally; and that should be so as far as it is possible. The law
protects vested rights; it prevents conflict with established laws
or institutions; but of course it is important that the legislatures
of the States should co-operate with the National Government. When
the works are constructed to utilize the waters now wasted happy
and prosperous homes will flourish where twenty years ago it would
have seemed impossible that a man could live. It is a great national
measure of benefit, and while, as I say, it is primarily to benefit
the people of the mountain States and of the great plains, yet it will
ultimately benefit the whole community. For, my fellow-countrymen,
you can never afford to forget for one moment that in the long
run anything that is of benefit to one part of our Republic is of
necessity of benefit to all the Republic. The creation of new homes
upon desert lands means greater prosperity for Colorado and the Rocky
Mountain States, and inevitably their greater prosperity means greater
prosperity for Eastern manufacturers, for Southern cotton growers, for
all our people throughout the Union.