The provisions in the submitted bills by which the settlers themselves may parcel their lands may need further comment and elucidation. If the whole of the Arid Region was yet unsettled, it might be wise for the Government to undertake the parceling of the lands and employ skilled engineers to do the work, whose duties could then be performed in advance of settlement. It is manifest that this work cannot be properly performed under the contract system; it would be necessary to employ persons of skill and judgment under a salary system. The mining industries which have sprung up in the country since the discovery of gold on the Pacific coast, in 1849, have stimulated immigration, so that settlements are scattered throughout the Arid Region; mining towns have sprung up on the flanks of almost every great range of mountains, and adjacent valleys have been occupied by persons desiring to engage in agriculture. Many of the lands surveyed along the minor streams have been entered, and the titles to these lands are in the hands of actual settlers. Many pasturage farms, or ranches, as they are called locally, have been established throughout the country. These remarks are true of every state and territory in the Arid Region. In the main these ranches or pasturage farms are on Government land, and the settlers are squatters, and some are not expecting to make permanent homes. Many other persons have engaged in pasturage enterprises without having made fixed residences, but move about from place to place with their herds. It is now too late for the Government to parcel the pasturage lands in advance of the wants of settlers in the most available way, so as to closely group residences and give water privileges to the several farms. Many of the settlers are actually on the ground, and are clamoring for some means by which they can obtain titles to pasturage farms of an extent adequate to their wants, and the tens of thousands of individual interests would make the problem a difficult one for the officers of the Government to solve. A system less arbitrary than that of the rectangular surveys now in vogue, and requiring unbiased judgment, overlooking the interests of single individuals and considering only the interests of the greatest number, would meet with local opposition. The surveyors themselves would be placed under many temptations, and would be accused—sometimes rightfully perhaps, sometimes unjustly—of favoritism and corruption, and the service would be subject to the false charges of disappointed men on the one hand, and to truthful charges against corrupt men on the other. In many ways it would be surrounded with difficulties and fall into disrepute.
Under these circumstances it is believed that it is best to permit the people to divide their lands for themselves—not in a way by which each man may take what he pleases for himself, but by providing methods by which these settlers may organize and mutually protect each other from the rapacity of individuals. The lands, as lands, are of but slight value, as they cannot be used for ordinary agricultural purposes, i. e., the cultivation of crops; but their value consists in the scant grasses which they spontaneously produce, and these values can be made available only by the use of the waters necessary for the subsistence of stock, and that necessary for the small amount of irrigable land which should be attached to the several pasturage farms. Thus, practically, all values inhere in the water, and an equitable division of the waters can be made only by a wise system of parceling the lands; and the people in organized bodies can well be trussed with this right, while individuals could not thus be trusted. These considerations have led to the plan suggested in the bill submitted for the organization of pasturage districts.
In like manner, in the bill designed for the purpose of suggesting a plan for the organization of irrigation districts, the same principle is involved, viz, that of permitting the settlers themselves to subdivide the lands into such tracts as they may desire.
The lands along the streams are not valuable for agricultural purposes in continuous bodies or squares, but only in irrigable tracts governed by the levels of the meandering canals which carry the water for irrigation, and it would be greatly to the advantage of every such district if the lands could be divided into parcels, governed solely by the conditions under which the water could be distributed over them; and such parceling cannot be properly done prior to the occupancy of the lands, but can only be made pari passu with the adoption of a system of canals; and the people settling on these lands should be allowed the privilege of dividing the lands into such tracts as may be most available for such purposes, and they should not be hampered with the present arbitrary system of dividing the lands into rectangular tracts.
Those who are acquainted with the history of the land system of the eastern states, and know the difficulty of properly identifying or determining the boundaries of many of the parcels or tracts of land into which the country is divided, and who appreciate the cumbrous method of describing such lands by metes and bounds in conveyances, may at first thought object to the plan of parceling lands into irregular tracts. They may fear that if the system of parceling the lands into townships and sections, and describing the same in conveyances by reference to certain great initial points in the surveys of the lands, is abandoned, it will lead to the uncertainties and difficulties that belonged to the old system. But the evils of that system did not belong to the shape into which the lands were divided. The lands were often not definitely and accurately parceled; actual boundary lines were not fixed on the ground and accurate plats were not made, and the description of the boundary lines was usually vague and uncertain. It matters not what the shape of tracts or parcels may be; if these parcels are accurately defined by surveys on the ground and plotted for record, none of these uncertainties will arise, and if these tracts or parcels are lettered or numbered on the plats, they may be very easily described in conveyances without entering into a long and tedious description of metes and bounds.
In most of our western towns and cities lots are accurately surveyed and plotted and described by number of lot, number of block, etc., etc., and such a simple method should be used in conveying the pasturage lands. While the system of parceling and conveying by section, township, range, etc., was a very great improvement on the system which previously existed, the much more simple method used in most of our cities and towns would be a still further improvement.
The title to no tract of land should be conveyed from the Government to the individual until the proper survey of the same is made and the plat prepared for record. With this precaution, which the Government already invariably takes in disposing of its lands, no fear of uncertainty of identification need be entertained.
WATER RIGHTS.
In each of the suggested bills there is a clause providing that, with certain restrictions, the right to the water necessary to irrigate any tract of land shall inhere in the land itself from the date of the organization of the district. The object of this is to give settlers on pasturage or irrigation farms the assurance that their lands shall not be made worthless by taking away the water to other lands by persons settling subsequently in adjacent portions of the country. The men of small means who under the theory of the bill are to receive its benefits will need a few years in which to construct the necessary waterways and bring their lands under cultivation. On the other hand, they should not be permitted to acquire rights to water without using the same. The construction of the waterways necessary to actual irrigation by the land owners may be considered as a sufficient guarantee that the waters will subsequently be used.
The general subject of water rights is one of great importance. In many places in the Arid Region irrigation companies are organized who obtain vested rights in the waters they control, and consequently the rights to such waters do not inhere in any particular tracts of land.