Golden Rivers and Treasure Valleys

WEALTH FROM WASTED WATERS By George Hebard Maxwell

CREATE WEALTH AND STOP WASTE PREVENT CONFISCATORY TAXATION

INTRODUCTORY SUMMARY

THE ARIZONA TEN PROJECTS Each With Its Own GOLDEN RIVER AND TREASURE VALLEY TOMBSTONE ASH FORK SAN SIMON WICKENBURG so LOMONVILLE SALOME SPRINGERVILLE GILA BEND HOLBROOK TUCSON The Seven Cities of Cibola were a myth. Coronado failed to find them because they had no existence. Greater wealth than the Gold of the Incas was hidden in the rich desert soil of Arizona, but Coronado wanted only the gold that was yellow. He did not know how to get gold from the deserts by water- ing them and trading their products for wealth that could be exchanged for all human needs. The Seven Cities of Cibola were only Coronado's dream of wealth,—a dream that never came true ! We know now how to realize that dream by ourselves creating the wealth ! We have already done it in the Salt River Valley in An-

1 WEALTH FROM WASTED WATERS zona by building the Roosevelt dam for Water Conservation to Stop Waste and Create New Wealth. We know now how to harness the mighty Golden Colo- rado river by building at Glen Canyon, in Arizona, one big dam TEN TIMES BIGGER THAN THE ROOSEVELT DAM, and tunnels and canals to transport the waters of the Colorado river to the ARIZONA TEN PROJECTS, where the use of that water to plant new rain-making forests, and to create new garden-farms, will return to us, as the reward for our labor, wealth vastly greater than all the Gold of the Incas or the dreams of Coronado. Those Arizona Ten Projects will be based on and rest back against the Golden Colorado River-Glen Canyon- Verde River-Central Arizona Reservoir System as a National De- fense against the Devastations of the Deserts. TheArizona Ten Projects will be built around the City of Phoenix,—the heart of the Salt River Valley,—Paradise Val- ley-Deer Valley and Agua Fria Valley Projects. Farther west the lower Golden Colorado River will reclaim the Nile of America, with Parker as its Cairo and Yuma as its Alexandria ; and a Ship Canal from Yuma to the Gulf of California. The ARIZONA TEN PROJECTS, each of which is set, like a diamond encircled with gold, in a Treasure Valley of its own, and each with its own Golden River as a local source of water supply, are (1) Tombstone, (2) San Simon, (3) Solo- monville, (4) Springerville, (5) Holbrook, (6) Ash Fork, (7) Wickenburg, (8) Salome, (9) Gila Bend and (10) Tuc- son. No. 1: The TOMBSTONE PROJECT for its Treasure Valley has the San Pedro valley and is at the Gateway to the

11h CREATE WEALTH AND STOP WASTE

Sulphur Springs Valley, with both valleys contributing to its local water supply drawn from the surface flow of the San Pedro river, which is its Golden River, and the subterranean, lake or river under Tombstone that is replenished annually from the watershed of the Dragoon mountains and the mountains encircling the Sulphur Springs valley. No. 2: The SAN SIMON PROJECT comprises the San Simon Valley running far south beyond the Cienega and the Chenoweth Ranch to Rodeo in New Mexico, and spreading out to the north as far west as Bowie and as far north as Tanque, and taking in the whole Whitlock Valley with its Cienega. No. 3: The SOLOMONVILLE PROJECT takes in the Lower San Simon valley north of Tanque, including the Mesa sloping east from Graham Mountain, the Upper Gila Valley, and the adjacent drainage basins north of the Gila, extending to the base of the mountains on the north. The plan for this project is to a large extent already compiled with Maps and Report by Engineer Harry F. Olmsted. No. 4: The SPRINGERVILLE PROJECT embraces the territory now tributary to Springerville, including the towns of Eager and Colter, and extending on the south to Clifton and Morenci and north to Snowflake and St. Johns, one of the best watered regions in Arizona, and needing only complete Water Conservation on its own watershed. No. 5: The HOLBROOK PROJECT covers the country north of St. Johns and Snowflake, extending east to the eastern boundary of Arizona and north to the Indian reserva- tions, draining the watersheds of the Little Colorado and Zuni river, Rio Puerco, Cottonwood creek and Pueblo Colo- rado. No. 6: The ASH FORK PROJECT is in the center of

3 WEALTH FROM WASTED WATERS a large region capable of high development, extending from Prescott on the south to the Grand Canyon on the north, and from Flagstaff on the east to Peach Springs on the west. Whatever development is planned from Ash Fork would be with the purpose of making it a manufacturing city, and would be shared by Prescott, Flagstaff, Seligman and Peach Springs. The extent of the development would depend on the amount of water that could be economically pumped from the water surface level of the Glen Canyon reservoir to Ash Fork. The elevation of Ash Fork is 5143 feet ; of Prescott, 5367 feet ; and of Flagstaff, 6896 feet above sea level. No. 7: The WICKENBURG PROJECT is one of the most favorably situated of any of the projects for immediate development. The elevation of Wickenburg is only 2116 feet, from which the Colorado river water could be distributed over the Wickenburg acreage quota of 50-6,000 acres to each project, with expedition and economy, the land to be reclaimed lying adjacent to and immediately west from Wickenburg. No. 8: The SALOME PROJECT would be almost in the center of its quota of 500,000 acres, with its water dis- tribution accomplished by extensions of the Wickenburg canals over lands in the drainage basins of the Butler valley, McMullen valley, Vicksburg valley, Ranegras plains and Har- quahala valley. No. 9: The GILA BEND PROJECT is in the center of another immense area of fertile and easily reclaimed land of which a considerable area is already reached by the canal system leading from the Gillespie dam on the Gila river. The lands in the Gila Bend quadrangle can all be irrigated under this plan by gravity, and extend from Arlington on the north, Maricopa on the east, and Ajo on the south, to the Mo- hawk valley on the west.

4 CREATE WEALTH AND STOP WASTE No. 10: The TUCSON PROJECT, with its quota of 500,000 acres of irrigable land to be reclaimed for Homecroft Forest Plantations, date gardens, olive orchards and garden- farms, has sources of local water supply which make the TUC- SON PROJECT, like the TOMBSTONE, SAN SIMON and SOLOMONVILLE PROJECTS, available for immediate development under a progressive plan that would so utilize the local waters that they would be adequate for all• needs until the arrival of the water from the Colorado river system to those projects. A complete survey and study of the Tucson Project on the lines of the San Simon Valley Survey and Re- port by Harry F. Olmsted, should be made without delay so as to tie it in with the Colorado river plans when that great statewide system is perfected. Within less than one year the surveys and reports with complete plans for beginning Rural Settlements under the system could be made so as to be ready to start the settlements under those three projects in southeastern Arizona : the TOMBSTONE, TUCSON AND SAN SI1VION PROJECTS. The dam for the Charleston reservoir and the large dam for local storage under the Olmsted system in the San Simon Valley should be immediately begun and pushed to completion, with all possible expedition. THE RURAL SETTLEMENTS SYSTEM OF HOME-MAKING ON THE LAND. The Rural Settlements System for subdivision and Set- tlement to create Individual Independent Homes on the Land, highly diversified and intensively cultivated self-supporting homes, owned and tilled by the occupant with his own labor and the help of his family, has been advocated with far-flung success by the Rural Settlements Association for more than thirty years. That system should be immediately inaugu- 5 WEALTH FROM WASTED WATERS rated under all of the ARIZONA TEN PROJECTS. There is no need for delay. Water that can be pumped from underground sources, supplementing the conservation of natural rainfall and flood water that now runs to waste, will furnish all the water necessary for a long start before the works can be completed to make the Colorado river water available. Successful irrigation must go hand in hand with intensive diversified cultivation. The Rural Settlements System has been successfully in operation in Southern California for thirty or forty years. It was the ultimate objective of the Littlelands Movement organized by William E. Symthe. He founded several Rural Settlements communities. One below San Diego he christened San Ysidro. Another in back of Glendale was originally known as Littlelands but is now known as Tujunga. The Weeks Poultry Colonies have furnished another demonstration. Much remains to be done to fully develop and perfect the system. The System of Rural Settlements has reached its fullest perfection in the Mormon Colonies established more than a generation ago in Utah and Arizona. They have proved the benefits of Rural Settlements colonies or communities of small family garden-farms as a way of taking up the labor slack and thereby obviating unemployment. Unemployment has no terrors in the Mormon Rural Settlements,—in fact, they have demonstrated the Rural Home to be the national defense against social upheaval as well as against unemployment. Their success should reconcile the "doubting Thomas's" so they will no longer show their ignorance by their croaking. In the later chapters of this book every point summarized in this chapter will be clearly elucidated, explained and demonstrated. CREATE WEALTH AND STOP WASTE

THE SOIL CONSERVATION SERVICE AND CIVILIAN CONSERVATION CORPS AS A GATEWAY TO INDIVIDUAL HOMES ON THE LAND. The two most impressive successes that have been made by any of the Agencies or Services of the federal government in recent years have been made by the United States Soil Conservation Service, under the direction of Hugh Hammond Bennett, and the Civilian Conservation Corps, under the direction of Robert H. Fechner. Those two services need to be advanced just one step farther to immensely increase their opportunities for national benefit to all the people. The United States Soil Conservation Service should become the United States Water and Soil Conservation Service, giving full recognition to the fact that the conservation for complete beneficial use of all the waters of the nation is the primary objective of all their work ; or a new Service should be created to be called the United States Water Conservation Service. Its job should be to see that every drop of water that falls from the heavens in this country is fully conserved and used as many times over as is possible before it returns to the sea to be again evaporated into the atmosphere to re- peat its cycle of beneficial uses and complete utilization. The Forest Service, the Water Conservation Service, and the Soil Conservation Service, should be co-ordinated under an Act of Congress patterned after the Newlands River Regu- lation Amendment, and made permanent, and affiliated with the Civilian Conservation Corps as a great permanent Educa- tional Institution for the training of young men looking for a right start in life, and of old men who see themselves slip- ping towards the deadline where some younger man will soon take their job and send them to the breadline. Every such

7 WEALTH FROM WASTED WATERS man, young and old, should be trained to be a scientific forest-farmer and Homecrofter. The ARIZONA TEN PROJECTS, at this moment, need 500,000 such trained men. Each project needs 50,000 of them. All that is required to make a gigantic success of all those projects is that each one of them should have 50,000 trained able-bodied men who know how to get their living from their own ground with their own labor, and also know hpw to plant trees and make them grow into "Trees of Righteousness!" Failure after failure of one after another of their plans is the penalty the general government is paying for its refusal to understand human nature and how to inspire it to splendid achievement. The basic defect in all governmental schemes for the relief of unemployment is that they do not arouse the individual initiative and individual inspiration that is necessary to stimulate the individual to help himself or herself to become INDEPENDENT ON THE LAND! The most fascinating and attractive lodestone to draw the out-of-works away from the cities and get them back to Mother Earth as a source of food-supply is the idea of the FOREST FARM ESTATE or the HOMECROFT ORCHARD ESTATE which has been so persistently advocated by the writer for many years. A FOREST FARM ESTATE is a twenty-acre tract planted to forest, of which the Forest-farmer may become the owner, to which is added a five-acre garden farm to be occu- pied and tilled as a means of livelihood for him and his family. A HOMECROFT ORCHARD ESTATE is a ten-acre tract of which nine acres is planted to an orchard of olives, figs, avocados, nuts or some other non-competitive orchard crop, the remaining acre to be cultivated as a source of family food supply.

8 CREATE WEALTH AND STOP WASTE

THE GOLDEN COLORADO The Nile of America

THE DISCOVERY OF GOLD IN ARIZONA AND SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

Chapter I THE ARGONAUTS OF GOLDEN CALIFORNIA The boys of two generations ago, born on the rocky soil of New England, were brought up in the austere atmosphere of industry and devotion to duty which were the chief character- istics of their ancestors. They received a racial inheritance that embodied every uplifting influence and spur to high endeavor that has been bred by human experience. More deeply rooted in their hearts than any other in- stinct acquired by them as a part of that inheritance, was a love of liberty—a passion for intellectual freedom—the right to think for themselves, and act as their own consciences might dictate. That is possible only when the man himself, as the center of a family unit, is Individually Independent in a Home on the Land to which he is affectionately attached by the roots of unencumbered ownership struck deep into the soil. The ancient Greeks gave us that great Truth in the fable of Antaeus, who regained his strength every time his feet touched the ground. He was invincible until separated from Mother Earth. As a nation, we have refused to learn this basic lesson, taught by all human experience. We are massing humanity in congested cities, where contact with the land, or the intellectual independence which springs from it, is impossible for the individual enmeshed in industrial life. 9 WEALTH FROM WASTED WATERS

Nothing can save this civilization but the decentralization of industry, and a return to a foothold on the soil through the adoption of the whole Homecroft System of Life, Education, Industry, Home-making, Home-living, and Home-loving, on the Land, in all Communities. The Builders of our Big Congested Cities are slowly open- ing a chasm through which they will be engulfed in chaos. Their chief crime is that they are strangling and slowly destroying instincts which are our most precious racial inheritance and the source and foundation of our national strength. The Anglo-Saxon race has always been a land-hungry race, supplementing their love for Mother Earth with a stern courage and hardy endurance bred from centuries of contact with the perils of the sea. In their battle against the Wilderness in our own country there could be no more striking manifestation of this fact than those who followed Daniel Boone down the Wilderness Road into Kentucky. Many were afoot,—men with all their possessions in a sack on their backs,—women with children in their arms---often bare-footed, but never without the trusty rifle that was to be their defense against the Indians who con- tested their right to conquer the Wilderness. Those danger-defying pioneers were drawn onward by no Golden Hope that in America they might find again the riches of King Solomon's Mines. They were impelled only by their hunger for a place on God's Green Earth where they could, in the supreme security of fee-simple ownership, build a home and gather a family around its fireside. They were lured by no dreams of ease and luxury. They knew there were forests to clear, stumps to dig, and virgin soil to be broken to the plow. The only prize they sought was land of their own

10 CREATE WEALTH AND STOP WASTE on which they could found a self-supporting home. They cheerfully paid the price of hardship and tireless labor de- manded by the wilderness which they were to subdue. They gave the safe fruits of a fat land to those who have come after them, but we have wandered far from their high ideals. We have forgotten their sturdy willingness to do the necessary strengthening labor without which they could not have achieved their vision of an independent anchorage on the land. They walked down the Wilderness Road into an unbroken forest. They hewed away trees enough to bare a space where they could grow their food on their own ground. Their descendants, at least in Southern California, in a land of inconceivable fertility, want to ride in automobiles over paved highways, and buy their food from a Japanese gardener at his roadside market. But we shall hope that before it is too late the American people will wake up to the fact that the race that tills the soil will, in the end, own the country. • Among the multitude of boys who were born into this atmosphere of courageous self-sacrifice which was the inheritance of the early American pioneers, was one brought up on a farm near Stonington, Connecticut. In him the spirit of adventure Mn beside the hunger for a Home where ownership and fertility would unite to satisfy the longings of a pas- sionate love for all Nature's inspirations and satisfactions. He wanted a farm. He wanted to own it himself. He dreamed of the day when he could sit under his own vine and fig tree "and none should make him afraid." When he grew to young manhood, that dream stirred strongly in his heart the Viking Wanderlust of ,a long ances- 11 WEALTH FROM WASTED WATERS tral descent. It had been slowly gathering force since, as a little boy, too young to climb on a horse himself, he had been lifted up by strong arms to ride all day to mark out for corn. Then he had watched the golden ears come slowly to fruition under a sea of graceful tassels shimmering in the sun. He was not one of those who welcomed hardship without the inspiration of the lure of the Golden Fleece. From away in the far Southland it first shot into his vision, when it was reported that in the then distant State of Georgia there had been a discovery of Gold. That was before "the days of Old ; the days of Gold ; the days of '49" in California. The reported discovery in Georgia soon faded away. But it had set on fire the imagination of the New England youth. He was determined to find a mine some day that would yield him enough to buy a farm. Years afterwards, after he had, in the Golden State of California, found the mine, and from its proceeds bought the farm which had been the dream of his youth, he was asked why he did not stay in New England, and get a farm there, if all he wanted was a farm. His reply was that he had grown tired of tending the sheep and holding up their hind legs so they could get their noses down between the rocks to get the grass. But that was not all of it. As was the case with most of those of Anglo-Saxon blood who went into the wilderness in search of independence and a home, he felt the urge of the racial wanderlust. His Viking ancestors, the forbears of Maccus the Son of Unwin, had passed on to him the racial inheritance of cool, intrepid courage, the hunger for adventure and love of danger that had been bred from more than a thousand years of sea-piracy, and then filtered through six 12 CREATE WEALTH AND STOP WASTE hundred years of the stirring life of the Scotch Borderers, as portrayed in "A Land of Romance" by Jean Lang, and in "The Raiders" by S. R. Crockett. That racial inheritance was a fitting background for an Argonaut of 1849. In Georgia, the dream of Gold not being realized, the youth became an architect and builder. As such he was one of the pioneers of the city of Atlanta, designing and building some of the first houses built in that city after its incorpora- tion under the name Atlanta in 1847. When one looks at that city today, it seems hard to believe that we need to go back only to 1847 for its beginnings. The vision of its founders has been more than realized.

When the year 1849 was young, the discovery of Gold in California had dazzled the world. It started a hegira to that new Land of the Golden Fleece. Among the first to go was the New England youth, whose mind was again set aflame by the dream of a Mine from which he could dig the gold that would buy a farm. Early in 1849 he took the road through slave tilled plantations, primeval forests, treacherous swamps and boat-ways, from Atlanta to New Orleans. He had chosen the Crescent City as the Gateway through which to pass to the new El Dorado which was his destination, by the long sea route around South America. So the little New England boy, riding the big horse to plow out for corn, and dreaming the while of the day when he would own fields of his own, became "The Argonaut." He was now on the Sea-way to the fulfilment of that dream, for Fate had decreed that he should find the mine and own the farm. 13 WEALTH FROM WASTED WATERS On the bark Constitution he sailed from New Orleans down the Mississippi River, past the Belize, and out onto what were then to him the unknown seas of the future. As a passenger, he was not alone. There were as many as the ship could carry. In those days of the Pioneers, the hearts of men were drawn more closely together. Friendships were deeper and more lasting than in these modern times when men are less dependent, as they imagine, upon each other. The men who endured hardships together, and often faced deadly danger together, just as a matter of the day's work, knew the value of the friend who stood at their shoulder in those moments that smelted souls and showed what sort of metal was in the crucible. But great friendships have been born from loyal and devoted service in a common cause which exacted from its ad- herents high moral courage and unusual tenacity of purpose and self-sacrifice. Service in a common cause of such magnitude as that of obviating another World War by saving the Colorado River for Our Own Country, and developing it for the benefit of the people of the United States of America. instead of prim- arily for the benefit of American Speculators in Mexico, and ultimately for the benefit of Asiatics in America, may create friendships among men not less strong that those of the pioneer years which are gone. Those close-knit ties of brotherhood in a Great Cause may more than compensate for the sac- rifices necessary to be made for that cause by those united in its service. The strong bond of affection between men born of the long voyage of the Goldseekers to California in the bark Con- 14 CREATE WEALTH AND STOP WASTE stitution was shown by the following incident. Full forty years after that voyage ended at San Francisco, a visitor from Alaska, Chittenden by name, sat at luncheon at a table at the Pacific Club in that city, telling the thrilling story of his narrow escape from death by shipwreck in the Straits of Magellan when on his way to California in 1849. The Captain of the ship, feeling the urge to get as quickly as possible to the El Dorado which was their goal, tried to make a short cut through the Straits of Magellan. In that-- narrow and treacherous channel, one of those fierce sudden storms not unusual there, caught the ship, and nearly wrecked her. The storm passed as suddenly as it came, and after barely escaping the complete destruction of the ship and the death by drowning of all hands aboard, the crew and passengers managed to keep the battered and leaking ship afloat until they could "limp back to Rio" for safe harbor and re- pairs. What is now the beautiful city of Rio Janeiro was then a fever-hole known to all sailors as "Rio". They were laid up there for six long wearisome months before the ship was again ready to resume her voyage, this time by the longer but safer route around Cape Horn. And yet, notwithstanding this delay, which lengthened the voyage from New Orleans to San Francisco to nine months, the ship sailed into San Francisco harbor, and docked at Montgomery street, before the end of the year 1849. All the passengers of the "Constitution" thus became "Pioneers of '49," a distinction almost the equivalent of a title of no- bility among the early Californians. After the story of the narrow escape from shipwreck in the Straits of Magellan had been told, and the spell it cast over the company had been broken by a return to conversa-

15 WEALTH FROM WASTED WATERS tion, a son of "The Argonaut," who had been a fascinated lis- tener, asked : "What was the name of that ship ?" • "It was the bark Constitution." "Did you know a man named John Morgan Maxwell among the passengers on that voyage?" A flash like the blazing tip of long slumbering memories lighted the face of Mr. Chittenden, as he replied : "Did I know him? Well, I ought to have known him! I sailed with him for nine months, and weathered a storm with him when we all thought our last day had come." "Well, he was my father." "You don't tell me so. Is that possible?" And not another word was spoken by Mr. Chittenden during that luncheon. The following day the two met in front of the old Lick House on Montgomery street. After the exchange of greet- ings, Mr. Chittenden said : "Mr. Maxwell, I want to apologize to you." "Apologize to me? For what?" "Why for shutting up like a clam the way I did yesterday when you asked me about your father. But do you know it affected me so that 1 couldn't have uttered another word. It came over me all of a sudden that I am the only one left alive today of that whole Ship 's company of pioneers. Those who were my comrades on that long voyage are all dead. The dangers we went through together made us very close friends. As long as Governor Bartlett lived he and I were the only ones left. Now he is gone, and I am the only survivor." Today no doubt Mr. Chittenden too has joined his old comrades across the river, and there are none of them now

16 CREATE WEALTH AND STOP WASTE left alive. "The Argonaut" crossed that river into the Great Beyond in 1875, when he was only forty-nine years old, broken in health by the hardships of his pioneer life. He had often been heard to say that during the winter of 1849-50 in Klam- ath County he "never got his blankets dry." For years after that, in the Gold Bluff mine, when the tide was rising, he often worked in the water with his men as long as they could shovel up the gold bearing beach sand and throw it into a canvas sack on the side of a mule. To live exposed to the weather, to sleep in wet blankets, to work in the water and be wet and cold for hours at a time, is bad, and breaks men down, but it may not be as bad as the long nerve-strain of years of almost constant exposure to danger. Gold Bluff was remote from all the haunts of men. After they began to work the mine, there was no safe place to keep the output except in the room where "The Argonaut" slept, always, figuratively speaking, with his mind on the trigger. His greatest safety lay in that instant readiness known to everybody, to shoot in defense against any attempt at robbery. There was an inflexiblity that talked through his eye,— an intangible, inscrutable something in his personality that probably helped to protect him from attempts to kill or rob him, but he never could forget the possibility or be off his guard. Like many of his fellow pioneers, he was cautious to an extreme degree. Their theory was that unnecessary danger should always be avoided, but every necessary danger they faced without flinching. "The Argonaut's" philosophy of life was illustrated by some advice he once gave the writer when a boy : "George, learn to get on with people without quarreling or fighting.

17 WEALTH FROM WASTED WATERS Don't fight unless you are forced into it, but if you ever do have to hit a man, don't just hit him with your fist. Hit him with every pound of weight you've got in your body." It was close to sixty miles by the regularly traveled trail from Gold Bluff to Trinidad. The clean-up from the mine had to be got to Trinidad every month to get the money for the pay-roll to pay the men working at the mine. There was no safe way to get it there but to take it himself, and this is the way he did it, for eight years, and got through safely every time. No one at the mine knew when he would start. Some night during the dark of the moon,—the heavier the clouds, the thicker the fog, the blacker the night, the better,—some time after midnight he saddled his mule. He put the clean-up and some grub for the man and grain for the mule in the saddle-bags, put his pistol in its holster, threw his rifle across the saddle, and started. In the morning, all they knew at the mine was that he had gone with the clean-up to get the next pay-roll. When he had gone or what route he would travel, nobody knew. He was like a needle in a haystack, one lone man on a mule somewhere out among the trees of a trackless forest. It would have been a hopeless job for any highwayman to have found him and waylaid him and shot him down unawares from behind a bush or tree, as would have been done if he had followed the beaten trail. He rode through the darkness of the first night out from the mine by unfrequented ways and short cuts known only to him, over the precipitous mountains and through the forests, until the first glimpse of daylight. Then he led the mule into the densest brush he could find, loosened the saddle girths, 18 CREATE WEALTH AND STOP WASTE and man and mule kept a lonely vigil, without a sound, without a fire, without a wisp of smoke even from a pipe, without anything that could have disclosed their existence, until the darkness of night came again. Then the girths were tight- ened, the mule resumed his burden, and the two pathfinders again took their way towards Trinidad, traveling all the night, reaching there the second morning, and returning the next twe nights in the same secret way with the pay-roll. Very unusual precautions, some will say! Yes, but keep in mind that he carried that "Message to Garcia" every month for eight years, and went through to the end with it every time. The darkest night was the safest, and rain or shine, sleet or snow, fog or mist nothwithstanding, the clean-up went out and the pay-roll came in, without accident except to his own constitution, which was undermined by ten years of that sort of life. But the unconquerable spirit of "The Argonaut," who died before his time, lives on. The work he laid the foundation for will be carried on by others until it has been completed. The work of Men who build foundations never dies. Their courage and vision inspire other men who come after them, to build the superstructure.

Forty years or so ago, a son of "The Argonaut" made a trip from Yreka, in Siskiyou County, through Scott's Valley to Etna Mills, and thence over the mountains to Sawyer's Bar, on the North Fork of the Salmon River, a tributary of the Klamath River, to speak at a political meeting that night. Klamath County no longer exists. The territory it formerly embraced in the extreme northwestern corner of California, 19 WEALTH FROM WASTED WATERS now constitutes Del Norte County and a part of Siskiyou County. A pair of tough mountain horses and a strong buggy con- stituted the means of conveyance. There were then no automobiles. The road from Etna Mills to Sawyer 's Bar was at that time in the making. At several points the horses had to be unhitched and the buggy lifted around rocky points where the roadmakeis were still blasting. When that buggy finally reached Sawyer's Bar it was the first wheeled vehicle that had ever been seen in that town, except a little low truck with iron wheels that had been taken apart and carried in on mule back. It was used to truck things around the town. There were then grown men and women who had been raised in Sawyer 's Bar, and had never seen a railroad train or a steam- boat. The pack-mule was still the only means of transportation in that country. But the days of the mule-train were numbered. The trail of the "packers" was being broadened into a road for the "freighters", and soon the freight wagon would take the place of the pack-saddle. As evening approached, here and there, on level bits of land, could be seen the half circle of pack-saddles where the mules had been relieved of their loads. The mules were turned loose to graze during the night. When morning came, and it was time to resume the journey, every mule would come of his own volition, and stand with his nose at his par- ticular pack-saddle until loaded for the day's trip. When the hotel at Sawyer's Bar was reached, the buggy and horses were turned over to the hotel-keeper to be cared for over-night. In the morning he was asked to get the team ready. It was time to start back to Yreka, and there was a long mountain drive ahead. After waiting for him for so

20 CREATE WEALTH AND STOP WASTE long a time that patience was exhausted, the hotel man finally came in sight with his hat in his hand and a very crest- fallen look on his face. "Well, gentlemen," he said, "you'll have to come out and hitch up that pair of horses yourselves. I won't take my hat off to any man to saddle and unsaddle a pack-train of forty mules, but I can't hitch a pair of horses up to a buggy." What he had been doing, or trying to do, for an hour, until he finally convinced himself of that, must have been an interesting performance to have watched. At that time Sawyer's Bar was as typical a mining camp as any described by Bert Harte. In the evening, before the meeting, two young men who had been "Gophering" in some mountain-side drift or tunnel, no doubt themselves looking for the mine that would get them a farm, brought in a buck- skin bag such as the old miners used for purses when gold dust was the "coin of the realm." They poured out of it on the hotel counter a pile of nuggets they had dug out of a "pocket" that day. It was said the nuggets were worth about fifteen hundred dollars. They were steady-headed young men, not roysterers—just busy with their job of digging for gold. They had made a strike that day, and wanted to en- courage others not so fortunate to stick to their picks and shovels. Somewhere in that country "The Argonaut", soon after he went to Klamath County, in the -winter of '49, found his first nugget and from it had made a big gold Masonic ring which is still treasured as a family heir-loom. His son, on arriving at Sawyer's Bar at the close of the day's drive, inquired if there were any of the "Old Timers" still living there who had been there since the town began. He

21 WEALTH FROM WASTED WATERS was referred to two. He found them both—old grizzled miners, still living on the hope which springs eternal in the miner's breast, that he will turn it up under the next rock. Of one he asked : "Did you ever know a man named John Morgan Max- well around here in the early days?" A moment's thought and the memory of the long ago revived : "Wasn't he a great checker player?" "Yes, he was." "Oh yes, I knew him well over on Orleans Bar." There could be no mistake in the identification. Nine months at sea and laid up at "Rio". Every book aboard ship read and re-read. Except when they were "limping back to Rio" with split sails, broken spars and damaged rigging, and with every passenger taking his turn at the pumps, there was nothing to do but watch the long swell of the sea and dream of the distant El Dorado,—or play checkers. No wonder he learned to play checkers well. "Orleans Bar !" It recalled an incident without which this story would never have been told, for it saved the life of "The Argonaut" in a way that shows how an act of kindness, east out on the ocean of time, may "return again after many days"• to aid and comfort the giver, when least expected. In the placer mining days on Orleans Bar, when pick and shovel and rocker were the tools of the miner's trade, and his Home a tent or a brush shack under some great forest tree, the Klamath Indians came often to the miner's camps. "The Argonaut" learned to understand and speak their "lingo". One day a sick Indian came to his camp. It was 22 CREATE WEALTH AND STOP WASTE winter, cold and rainy,—small chance for a sick man to pull through out of doors. The miner's camp was at least a shel- ter. The Indian was taken in, fed and warmed and kept until he was again well enough to go his way. An Indian is as grateful as he is vindictive. He never forgets. That Indian did not. If he had, before many months had passed a dead Argonaut, lying scalped in the trail, his only requiem the winds sighing through the forest, would have ended this tale before it began. He would neither have found the mine, nor bought the farm with the gold he got from it, and the writer who now records these events of long ago would never have been born. To get back to Sawyer's Bar : The other old Miner, when asked if he had known John Morgan Maxwell, the Discoverer of the Gold Bluff Mine, instantly recalled what brings us now to the chief events of our story. Without a moment's hesitation, he replied : "I guess I did know him. I helped him saddle and unsaddle his pack train many and many a time right in the street of this town." And thereby hangs the tale of how the little Connecticut plow-boy finally found the mine that bought him the farm which had been the dream of his life—the farm that is still the Family Home and has been a Haven of Refuge against the Storms that occasionally overtake every family on the seas of life. Great-grand-children of "The Argonaut" have played under the trees he planted. The hardships that shortened his life, and cut. it off when it had been barely more than half lived, inspired others to lift up the load which he could no longer carry, and see to it that it was brought to the end of

23 WEALTH FROM WASTED WATERS

the trail. "The Argonaut" not only helped to unlock the Treasure Vaults of the Rivers of early California, but he laid a foundation which made possible much that could not otherwise have been done, to bring within reach the Treasure Vaults of the Colorado River,—that future El Dorado which now beckons to the Empire-builders of Tomorrow. Those Treasure Vaults of the Golden Colorado will re- main closed forever unless the "Open Sesame" that will unlock them can be given to the American people by the por- trayal to their minds of a Vision so vivid that it will become for them the pillar of fire by night and the pillar of cloud by day that shall lead them out of bondage on their way to the • promised land. An unusual mental background—experiences rare in human life—a mind that can both dream and achieve the fulfilment of its dream—a mind that can see the obstacles and at the same time see the way to overcome them—is necessary to first conceive that Vivid Vision of the future of the Golden Colorado. Then it must be so clearly communicated to others as to make it blaze with equal brilliancy as the vision of the whole mass of the people of the nation and lead them to WILL that it shall come to pass. Side by side with that vision must be shown the plan for its accomplishment, with a faith that knows no such word as failure. Before the vision could be achieved that plan had to have an existence in some one mind. Thought in the form of a mental conception must always precede its actual realization by construction. All that has been made possible, in the case of the Colo- rado River, because two generations have collaborated in its evolution, one following the other. With the life experiences

24 CREATE WEALTH AND STOP WASTE of "The Argonaut" with the Golden Rivers of California as an inheritance, the author of this book, his older son, has made the problems of the Golden Colorado River a special study for more than a half of a century, in the light of long years of related experiences in his own life. As one impression is photographed on another to make a composite picture, the first shading into the second and mellowing its lines, so the life experiences of "The Argonaut" with the Golden Rivers of California, furnished the background for the present vision of the future Golden Colorado and the plan for its realization, which is fully set forth in the pages of this volume.

Chapter II. THE DISCOVERY OF THE GOLD BLUFF MINE. The Land of Gold which had drawn the most venture- some of the Goldseekers to the Klamath river region in 1849 was on the western reaches and tributaries of that river, after it had flowed through Shasta Valley and cut its way down through the gold-bearing strata of the great mountains and the prehistoric Golden Rivers. In all of California there were no "diggings" more inaccessible. The country in every direction from Sawyer's Bar was an unbroken wilderness. The view from the crest of the range between Etna Mills and Sawyer's Bar will thrill the traveler of today with the inspiration of majestic mountains, stretching away to the setting sun in a succession of steep forest clad ridges, whose waves merge at last into those of the great Pacific, beyond the range of human vision. To the vast inland country lying north, east and south of this newly discovered El Dorado of gold bearing gravel in 25 WEALTH FROM WASTED WATERS the bars along the Klamath river, and its tributaries, in 1849, there were no roads,—not even trails,—and no connection with the outside world. Food the miners had to have, no matter at what risk of human life, and they could not work without clothes, or mine without tools. There was only one way by which these things could reach them,—a rough canyon and mountain trail, often steep and always dangerous, from Sawyer's Bar to Trinidad on the coast about a hundred miles away. There a connection was made with small coasting schooners which brought the food and other necessaries from San Francisco to Trinidad. From Trinidad to Sawyer's Bar the food had to be packed in on mule back, as well as everything else the miners needed. But the food was the indispensable thing. It had to be brought in at any risk, or the miners would starve. A packer killed by the Indians, now and again, made no difference. The miners had to have food, and they got it. The Klamath Indians were a fine race physically. Some- times they were peaceable, sometimes not. No packer who ever loaded his train of mules to go over that trail knew whether or not the Indians would let him get through. Any trip might be his last. No one knew that better than he did. When he started, he put his life in the hands of Divine Provi- dence. "The Argonaut" said that no man ever knew what it was to get close to God until he had slept in his blankets at night under one of God's Great Trees, in "A forest primeval," knowing full well that the next day he might be face to face with his Maker in another world. Thoughtful men, living in that constant atmosphere of danger, and knowing the uncer- tainty of life, often became deeply religious, as he did, but with

26 CREATE WEALTH AND STOP WASTE a sort of religion that gets deeper into a man's soul than any that lacks such a back-ground of life experience. Perhaps, in his case, it may have been partly because his later life hung from such a curious thread of chance that he might have been forgiven for believing it was saved by the interposition of Divine Providence, for which there must have been some reason weighing more than just a matter of one human life more or less. For ten years, from 1849 to 1859, except when on his annual visits from Trinidad to San Francisco, he never slept without his pistol under his pillow and a rifle within instant reach. His trusty old Colts revolver had been carried in its holster at the side of his saddle until the steel point of the pistol was worn off at an angle. And yet, strange as it may seem, when the time came that all these precautions failed him, and he looked death straight in the face, his life was saved because he had fed a hungry Indian. It is a well known fact that when there is a call for vol- unteers to walk with death to rescue their fellow-men from danger, the response never fails. It is in the blood of the men of our race. Men will risk their lives to serve their fellow men, when they will not do it for money. Was it a subcon- scious urge to serve, or was it sheer love of adventure, the zest for which increases with the danger, that led "The Ar- gonaut" to become a packer on that lonely, Indian-infested trail from Trinidad to Sawyer's Bar I No one will ever know. Perhaps he did not know himself. Men often do things without much self-analysis, and the pioneers of those days were hardened to danger. However that may be, the little New England plow-boy now became a packer. With the money earned by washing 27 WEALTH FROM WASTED WATERS the gold from the gravel on Orleans Bar, he bought a pack train and lived on the trail for many months. Those were the months during which his old friend who remembered him so well as the Discoverer of the Gold Bluff Mine, had "helped him many a time to saddle and unsaddle his pack-train right in the street of this town." But this period of immunity from the dangers of the trail came to an end. One day, with a helper, headed in from Trini- dad with a heavily loaded train, they had already gone far into the deep, gloomy canyons of the mountain wilderness, when they came on the bodies of two men lying scalped in the trail. They were friends and fellow-packers who had started over the trail a little ahead of them. The Indians had waylaid them and taken everything they had, including their lives. The packer was always a prospector. He carried the tools of his trade on the back of some one of the mules. With these two shallow graves were soon dug, and with a silent prayer those two dead men were laid in them by the two living men who then believed that for them too would soon come the end of the trail. Rough wooden crosses marked the lonely resting places of many who reached that last "end of the trail" in those wild mountain fastnesses, and "the folks back home" often never knew why they failed to return. The two packers who had buried their comrades pushed on. To have turned back would have been contrary to the instincts of men of that type, and it would have done no good. They knew that when the Indians took the warpath, their scouts located every packtrain on the trail. It was just as dangerous to go back as to go forward. It suited the grim courage of those men to go forward, always forward, with their faces to the danger. They had not gone far when they

28 CREATE WEALTH AND STOP WASTE found two more men, packers like the others, lying stark and gleaming white where a ray of sunshine shot through the dark foliage of the evergreens which draped the naked bodies dead beside the trail. As with the others, the Indians had taken everything, pack-train, clothes, boots, and then had scalped them to close the bargain. The two who lived could only bury them and push on, knowing that they were almost cer- tainly walking into the jaws of the same fate. In that dense and far-flung forest, where the trail for many miles kept to the bed of the canyon, following some stream or river to avoid scaling a mountain, the dense forest furnished an ideal cover for the warlike savages, for one could hide behind every tree. There was no chance to escape an Indian ambush. The deadly risk the packers ran was the chance of a dangerous calling and they accepted it with the peculiar fatalism of their kind of men. Before they had gone far they knew that their turn had come. Among the shadows of the great trees under which the trail wound,—lengthening shadows cast by approaching dusk, which came early in those deep canyons,—other dusky shadows flitted. Suddenly, at a turn of the trail, two men were surrounded by a hundred who had not sated their lust for blood and robbery by what they had already done that day. What were two men against a hundred—perhaps more. To have fired a shot would have been instant suicide. Wiser than they knew, they took the only chance for life. Might it be that in the mind of one of them, what seemed impulse, was a response to some psychic force generated in another near- by mind? For no sooner had the two white men been tied to trees, than one of the Indians called his companions together 29 WEALTH FROM WASTED WATERS for a "pow-wow," and insisted to the other Indians that these white men must not be killed. He told them how one of them had fed him and cared for him when he was sick and hungry. That white man heard and understood, and knew that the bread of kindness which he had east upon the waters had re- turned to him again after many days. The other Indians lis- tened and yielded. They all would have done the same thing under the circumstances. It was the Indian way. So the two white men were untied and turned loose. They were stripped of everything else, but thankful to escape with whole skins, and their scalps still fast to their heads. Life is made up of curious contrasts, but those whose experiences have sounded the lowest depths of misfortune and scaled the highest peaks of success, have felt the joy of living far more keenly than those who, through many monotonous years, pur- sue the even tenor of their way. Take the case of "The Argonaut" and his companion. In the morning of that eventful day, there was nothing to indicate that any special menace hung over them. Their first gruesome find told them there was danger lurking behind every tree. The second made it more certain that the same fate would soon be theirs. When nightfall had come, they were prisoners,—ambushed, suddenly surrounded, bound and helpless. What then were their thoughts? It is not an en- joyable sensation, even to try and imagine them. Then the miracle happens. The black cloud of death that hung over them lifts. The forest is again, to their minds, though dark- ened by approaching night, filled with the brilliant sunshine of life. At the same time "The Argonaut" realized full well that everything else but life was gone, even to the boots he had 30 CREATE WEALTH AND STOP WASTE stood in. The earnings of all his industrious years, the fruits of many months of labor as a placer miner and of hardship as a packer, had been swept away. There was nothing left. It does not happen to many men to lose everything they have in this world except what they were born in, and then, as the direct result of that strange disaster, to be lifted to the highest pinnacle of the hopes and ambition of years the very next day. For—on that next day—the Gold Bluff Mine was discovered. After it had been decreed by that Indian Court with jurisdiction to decide between Life and Death, that these two white men should not be killed, they were turned adrift in the forest, as naked as the day they were born. Their first nec- essity was boots and clothing, and none were nearer than Trinidad. So at last they turned back, stripped to the skin, to begin life over again, after they had found friends to feed and clothe them and stake them for another start. The cus- toms of those days were not communal, but they came mighty close to it. Men were scarce who would not share their last scrap of food with men who had none. The feeling of human brotherhood was deep in their hearts. A long night walk back down the trail, which they could feel out in the dark, brought them to a point where they could strike across to the ocean beach and find better going on the smooth sands for their unprotected feet. Walking on the beach they would escape from the brush that tore their skins. Having reached the beach, they were warmed by the morning sun as it rose from behind the impenetrable and mysterious mountains that shut them off from the world of men on the east. On the west the limitless sweep of ocean stretched to 31 WEALTH FROM WASTED WATERS the horizon, and the waves ran to them and laved their bruised and lacerated feet. The glorious sunshine of that magnificent morning was a sharp contrast to the events of the day before and the moments when they had faced the death agony in that dark canyon filled with its mysterious shadows. Nature again seemed kind, life was good to live, God had been Merciful, and Hope again rose high in their hearts, for with those men the ups and downs of life were all in the day's work, and the miners expected them. "The Argonaut", however, little anticipated that from the depths of the bottomless pit of yesterday he would lift his head above the clouds and stand in the sunshine on the mountain top today. The tNto living white men, filled with the elixer drawn from the air and the ocean and the mountains, swung bravely out on their long hike to Trinidad, perhaps thirty miles farther down the coast. They had not gone far when they turned around a headland, and there they saw something that made them stand speechless with amazed fascination. In their wild- est dreams of gold they had never imagined that such a sight could exist. There ahead of them along the beach, for a considerable distance, it looked as though some wizard of the fairy tales had rolled out a carpet of gold to welcome their weary feet and cheer them on their way. The sunlight glistened and glittered on the yellow flakes of the precious metal, mingled with the black beach sand. The blue canopy of the heavens looked down on a royal rug of black and gold framed between the dark green of the mountain rising to the east and the white crested waves of the ocean rolling in from the west. The grey beach in the distance form- 32 CREATE WEALTH AND STOP WASTE ed its top, while at the bottom of the picture stood two, until that moment, ruined men, naked but unashamed, dumb-founded, and gazing with speechless amazement at this apparently miraculous vision of enchantment. The curiosity of the reader may best be satisfied by an immediate explanation of this most uniquely interesting of all the gold deposits of the world. Ages ago, a prehistoric river, one of those Golden Rivers which were the source of so much of the placer gold of California, far down under the steep bluffs that lined the beach at this point, had taken its course westerly into or through a land now submerged under the Pacific Ocean. As the ages passed the ocean slowly ate its way into the land and wore down the high bluff, releasing from its confinement the golden sands which were imprisoned in the gravels forming the bed of the ancient river. The weight of the gold prevented it from being dissipated by the wave action. It clung to this stretch of coast across which the great river which was its first mother formerly ran. The gold remained there until this Miracle Morning when the eye of men first swept across its golden glory as it danced in the sun. And the Little Plow-boy had found his Mine ! We may well believe that no time was lost in reaching Trinidad with a true story of wild adventure and escape from deadly peril, but never a word about the Discovery of the Gold Bluff Mine. To have breathed a whisper of that would have started a stampede—a wilder rush than any within the experiences of the men of that gold bearing region. It was a matter of only a few hours to outfit, with help from willing friends, for a return to Sawyer's Bar, but on the way its fortunate discoverers stopped at Gold Bluff, gave it its name, put up their notices of location, and in due course

33 WEALTH FROM WASTED WATERS became the owners of the claims constituting the afterwards famous Gold Bluff Mine. "The Argonaut" bought the interest of his companion, formed a company in which he was the principal owner, became the superintendent and worked the mine until late in 1859, when he went back to civilization and bought a farm of 100 acres in California—the Farm which had been the dream of his life. Seventy-five years afterward, when this book is being written, it is still the family home of his descendants. On that farm the writer was born on June 3, 1860.

There are more reasons than those already stated why these facts from the life of "The Argonaut" are relevant to the object of this book and the plan it proposes for the development of the Colorado River. Stirring events that have actually occurred give greater weight to conclusions drawn from them than if those conclusions were sustained only by theoretical facts or generalizations. The realities of human experience count for much as a guide to right principles for human evolution and the development of a sound racial character. "The Argonaut" was merely the type of a class. He was only one of the multitude of land-hungry Americans who fought for Intellectual Independence by fighting every ob- stacle that lay across whatever path they had chosen as the way to a Home on the Land. The desire for such a home was the one dominating force that controlled their lives. Above all things else, it was their chief ambition. Those who were able to gratify that ambition, for several generations formed a majority of the nation's citizenship. They sunk the original roots of an enduring national government deep into the soil.

34 CREATE WEALTH AND STOP WASTE They gave it a stability impossible for a country that counts a majority of its citizenship from among those living in the modern kennels and cave-dwellings and human bee-hives that pass for homes in present-day congested cities and industrial centers. No truer words were ever written than those of David Star Jordan : "Stability of national character goes with firm- ness of foothold on the soil." Those early American Nation-builders transformed the wilderness into millions of rural homes which became bul- warks of human steadfastness, social safety and national stability. After it was known that there was gold in America, some of them sought their ultimate objective of a self-supporting home on Mother Earth, with the Individual Independence that it guaranteed, by the dangerous indirect route of those who followed the lure of the Golden Fleece. They went wherever they thought gold might be found, anywhere from Arizona to Montana and from the Rocky Mountains to Cali- fornia. They all wanted what they called "a stake"; and most of them wanted that stake so that they might with it buy a farm, and settle down and spend the remainder of their lives in comfortable contentment, economic security and intellectual independence. The majority, however, of the American pioneers, sought their opportunity by the straight-way course of clearing the forests, breaking the prairies, or reclaiming the desert wastes. They began when the Mayflower landed on the edge of the New England Wilderness and spread across a continent until every opportunity for a man without capital to get a farm had been exhausted. 35 WEALTH FROM WASTED WATERS They swarmed over Braddock 's Road into the Ohio Val- ley beyond the Allegheny Mountains, and lived in constant danger from Indian Wars until they changed it from an In- dian's to a White Man's country; they walked down the Wilderness Road with Boone in Kentucky and transformed it into the beautiful blue grass region; they settled the mountains of Tennessee and bred the sharpshooters who won the battle of New Orleans for General Jackson ; they fought with Clarke and walked through floating ice up to their arm-pits to capture Fort Vincennes and bring that territory under the American flag ; they went into the trackless forests of Michi- gan and Wisconsin and turned those forests into farms; they flat-boated down the Ohio and colonized Arkansas and Mis- souri; they crossed the Missouri into Kansas and Nebraska, made Kansas a free state, and finally pushed the frontier back until they stood on the border at the north gazing into Canada and at the south into Mexico, and on the west reached the shores of the Pacific Ocean. And now, in all the far-flung country where people live under the flag of this nation, there are no more farms to be had for the taking by hardy pioneers. There are today many millions more of men and women who want such farms, and would today, if opportunity offered, be quite as willing as were their fore-fathers and fore-mothers to endure hardship and defy danger to obtain and permanently possess the land for a self-supporting home. But the Great Gateway which once swung wide to that opportunity is closed to us of today. It must be opened again if the nation is to endure. The national public domain on which a home can be made by a man and his family whose only capital is their labor, is all exhausted. We will inevitably reach the danger-

36 CREATE WEALTH AND STOP WASTE point predicted by Macaulay when he wrote his famous letter of May 23, 1857, from which the following is quoted : "Your fate I believe to be certain, though it is de- ferred by a physical cause. As long as you have a boundless extent of fertile and unoccupied land, your laboring population will be far more at ease than the laboring population of the Old World, and, while that is the case, the Jefferson politics may continue to exist without causing any fatal calamity. But the time will come when New England will be as thickly peopled as old England. Wages will be as low, and will fluctuate as much with you as with us. You will have your Manchesters and Birminghams, and in those Manchesters and Birminghams hundreds of thousands of artisans will assuredly be sometimes out of work. Then your institutions will be fairly brought to the test. Distress everywhere makes the laborer mutinous and discontented, and inclines him to lis- ten with eagerness to agitators who tell him that it is a monstrous iniquity that one man should have a million, while another can not get a full meal. * "." "It is quite plain that your Government will never be able to restrain a distressed and discontented majority. For with you the majority is the Gov- ernment, and has the rich, who are always a minor- ity, absolutely at its mercy. The day will come when in the State of New York a multitude of people, none of whom has had more than half a breakfast, or expects to have more than half a dinner, will choose a legislature. Is it possible to doubt what sort of a Legislature will be chosen On one side is a states- man preaching patience, respect for vested rights, strict observance of public faith. On the other is a demagogue ranting about the tyranny of capitalists and usurers, and asking why anybody should be per- 37 WEALTH FROM WASTED WATERS

mitted to drink Champagne and to ride in a carriage, while thousands of honest folks are in want of necessaries. Which of the two candidates is likely to be preferred by a working-man who hears his children cry for more bread I seriously apprehend that you ,will, in some such season of adversity as I have described, do things which will prevent prosperity from returning; that you will act like people who should in a year of scarcity devour all the seed-corn, and thus make the next a year not of scarcity, but of ab- solute famine. There will be, I fear, spoliation. The spoliation will increase the distress. The distress will produce fresh spoliation. There is nothing to stop you. Your Constitution is all sail and no anchor. As I said before, when a society has entered on this downward progress, either civilization or liberty must perish. Either some Caesar or Napoleon will seize the reins of government with a strong hand, or your republic will be as fearfully plundered and laid waste by barbarians in the twentieth century as the Roman Empire was in the fifth ; with this difference, that the Huns and Vandals who ravaged the Roman Empire came from without, and that your Huns and Vandals will have been engendered within your own institutions." (From Appendix to "The Life and Letters of Lord Ma- caulay," by G. Otto Trevelyan. Published by Harper & Brothers. New York, 1877.) Macaulay was partly right and partly wrong. The time will come when the danger, as he depicted it, will stare us in the face. He was in error, however, both as to the cause and the remedy, partly because of changed conditions which no one in his day could have been expected to have foreseen. So far as our Government being all sail and no anchor is con- cerned, that now applies more forcefully to England than to

38 CREATE WEALTH AND STOP WASTE the United States of America. In both countries, they are today menaced—and it is an immediate and appalling menace —by the same danger. That danger—and it likewise threatens the stability of govesnments the world over—is the uprooting of the people from the land and herding them together in great congested cities and industrial centers, where humanity rots as industry thrives and prospers, so that cities get bigger and bigger and congestion gets worse and worse. The root of the danger lies far deeper than the fact that the human product of these conditions is the "Homeless, womanless, jobless man." It is transforming our national character,—changing what was once stable and dependable when our citizenship was the product of rural life, into the fickle and frivolous city multi- tudes -who live as best they may from day to day, and take small heed for the morrow,—whose chief thought in life is to get as big a wage as possible for as little work as possible, spend as little as possible of it for necessaries, and have as much fun as possible with the rest, and never be content so long as anybody else has more money, and for that reason, as they imagine, more fun. Industry is destroying humanity. Civilization will become chaos whenever those who at present control the industrial life of the people and are setting the pace, and think always of money and never of humanity, or of human character, have reached the inevitable goal of human deterioration and degeneracy toward which they are driving with such headlong recklessness and disregard for human welfare. The most extraordinary of all their blundering is their blind indifference to its consequences for themselves. They profess great concern about the safety of property while they 39 WEALTH FROM WASTED WATERS are laying the Axe at the very root of the tree which protects it: The stubborn stupidity of their shortsighted selfishness is inconceivable. It is only equaled by the hypocritical oily-gammon-ism of those who claim they want to prevent War by being pre- pared for War, and wanted the people to celebrate Mobiliza- tion Day with all the fervor of War enthusiasm, while at the same time they plan to make war inevitable by the cession of the waters of the Colorado River to a foreign nation to breed an Asiatic-American war which could only end in another Universal World War. What they call Patriotism is only smug Hypocricy, and in this case it is worse—it is nothing short of treasonable, glossed over by smooth, deceptive and un- truthful talk about international justice to conceal the gross- ness of the greed which is the ground-work of the subtle scheme of American Land Speculators in Mexico to steal the Colorado River. Whenever the Colorado River has been finally and forever rescued from this iniquitous and treasonable scheme, and is ready for development for the benefit of the whole people of the United States of America, it can and must be so developed that it will become the beacon light that will point the way for the world to create an industrial system on a sound economic foundation. It will be a system provided with a Balance Wheel for Industry that will put an end to unemployment in all countries adopting it, and protect all those governments from the danger of disruption predicted by Macaulay, which now faces so many of them. It will open the Gateway to millions of industrial workers in the United States of America to combine industrial employment with a foothold on the land that will satisfy all human cravings and

40 CREATE WEALTH AND STOP WASTE necessities for constant contact with Mother Earth. It will establish these conditions under a system that may be adopted and duplicated in every industrial center in this country. It will create a National Demonstration, world wide in its influence for human welfare, that will show all the countries of the earth how to prevent the destruction of humanity by industrialism, stabilize national character, and save civilization from another lapse into chaos and barbarism. * * * * Chapter III. THE ARGONAUTS OF THE GOLDEN COLORADO. The Golden Rivers of California, with their untouched treasure of placer Gold, were the Golden Fleece which drew The Argonauts of 1849 to California. The wealth now flowing to waste in the waters of the Colorado River will be the Golden Fleece that will draw The Argonauts of the years to come to the Country of the Golden Colorado in the United States of America. They will come in a vastly larger multitude, and with a stronger tide of migration, than the Goldhunters who went to California. But they will not come until the whole people of the United States have learned the value to this nation of ours of that great American river ; and have also learned the way to turn its mud-reddened waters into streams of gold by using it in the United States of America instead of in Mexico. The gold from the Colorado River will be in the form of the newly created wealth which will spring from the soil wherever the sunshine and the water have touched and fructified the desert and renewed its life. All the gold that has ever been dug or washed from Cali-

41 WEALTH FROM WASTED WATERS fornia's Golden Rivers, and from the gold-bearing channels and veins and rocks of her great mountains,—from placer mines, drift mines, hydraulic mines, and quartz mines, is small indeed compared with the wealth that will be brought into being by the use of the Colorado River for water power and sub-irrigation, as well as surface irrigation, in Arizona and Southern California. That stream of gold will not begin to flow until the now wasted flood waters of that mighty river, flowing southbound to the sea across the north line of Arizona, shall have been harnessed and used, first for water power, then led out upon the 17,280,000 acres of land which they. will reclaim and irrigate in Arizona and Southern California. Of that vast reclaimable area, 15,280,000 acres are in Arizona and 2,000,000 acres are in Southern California. Of the 15,280,000 acres in Arizona, 5,280,000 desert acres should be transformed into five to ten-acre garden-farms, on lands intensively cultivated to non-competitive crops, grouped in Rural Settlements, and organized as co-operative communities for the sale of their products, like the berry-raisers of the Puyallup Valley in the State of Washington. The remaining ten million irrigable desert acres in Ari- zona should be planted to rain-making forests to increase the rainfall, temper the climate, and provide perpetual sources for future abundant wood and timber supplies. Those new forest plantations would also produce nuts or beans for stock food. In addition to its possibilities for rain-making and non-competitive production of tree-crops and food-crops, this vast Water Conservation Project will provide water for innumerable gold-mining, silver-mining and copper-mining projects for which adequate water in unavailable from any 42 CREATE WEALTH AND STOP WASTE other plan for water development. This comprehensive Water Conservation Project must be inaugurated and carried to completion with all practicable expedition and "reasonable diligence," to prevent the loss of Arizona's rights by laches. The Americano-Mexicano Los Angeles-Wall Street Colo- rado River Conspiracy to secure the regulated flow of the Colorado River for lands for competitive agriculture in Mex- ico, is sleeplessly at work, and must be fought with its own weapons of tireless effort and constant watchfulness. Arizona and the United States of America will lose wealth so vast as to be incalculable unless they proceed with all "reasonable diligence" to build the Works of Water Conservation necessary to use in Arizona all the water that belongs to Arizona, and heed the warning of David Harum to "do it fust!" The Anti-American and Anti-Arizona Colorado River Conspira- tors seem at this time to be in the saddle, but they can be un- horsed if the people of Arizona will rouse themselves from their lethargy and fight for the rights of their State in a conflict which involves its very existence and future life. The Glen Canyon dam for Storage,—the Bridge Canyon dam for diversion,—and the Arizona-California Highline Canal for the transportation of the waters, supplemented by the other projects approved and recommended in the LaRue Report, between Glen Canyon at the north line of Arizona and Yuma at the south line, to be built in Arizona to "AN- NEX ARID AMERICA" and insure our national advancement and prosperity, will be blighted, and become impracti- cable unless all the waters of the Colorado River,—the Golden River of America,—are made available for use, and devoted to biologic beneficial use in Arizona, and not allowed to go to

43 WEALTH FROM WASTED WATERS

Mexico by gravity after being reservoired in the United States of America. The LaRue Report is "WATER SUPPLY PAPER 556 —WATER POWER AND FLOOD CONTROL OF COLO- RADO RIVER BELOW GREEN RIVER, UTAH,—by E. C. LaRue, with a foreword by Hubert Work, Secretary of the Interior." The whole GLEN-BRIDGE-HIGHLINE PROJECT is based on the LaRue Report, one of the most remarkably thorough, comprehensive and valuable reports ever issued by any of the agencies of the federal government having to do with the Conservation and Utilization of the Water Resources of the United States of America. The first unit of that magnificent project is the Glen Canyon dam for flood water storage, river regulation and the development of hydro-electric power. The Glen Canyon dam will develop 334,000 horse-power. The power line from Glen Canyon would run south through what is probably the most highly mineralized mining region already largely developed in Arizona. Starting at Lee's Ferry it would run to the Min- eral Canyon damsite on the Colorado River, then to Williams, Jerome, Roosevelt, Miami, Globe, Solomonville and Bowie to Tombstone. Throughout that entire region there are innumerable old abandoned mining shafts, tunnels and drifts from which, with that power from Colorado River available, water could be profitably pumped by the federal government. The federal government, with immense profits to itself, realized from the sale of the water for non-competitive beneficial biologic use, or its use by the government to create forest plantations, could pump the water from the Tombstone

44 CREATE WEALTH AND STOP WASTE mines, and make them again workable below the five hundred foot level where the miners were driven out by water close to fifty years ago. The miners could not cope with Nature's forces. The federal government can do it by making that great project a part of the "All-Arizona Project" for the complete utilization in the United States of America of the WATER RESOURCES of Arizona, surface and underground. As a part of that project, every available drop of reflow from return seepage could be profitably used by the federal government to grow new forest plantations. Wherever the federal government developed the water, it would own and control the water, and could use it to plant and irrigate vast plantations of new rain-making forests in Arizona, on lands it now owns as part of the public domain, which have not in the past been regarded as reclaimable. No objection to this use of the waters owned by the federal government could be raised on the ground that it would increase agricultural production, because the rain-making forests would create no competition with agriculture. On the contrary, their influence on agriculture would be of benefit to every farmer in the Southwest. The rain clouds from those new forests would in time precipitate in the midwest region where drouth has taken such a terrible toll the last few years, especially in Texas and Oklahoma. The Glen Canyon dam should have been built first, before any dam was built as low down as the Boulder dam. Now that the Boulder dam is built, the best possible use should be made of it for the benefit of the United States of America. To provide for the immediate use of the reservoired waters in Arizona, and prevent the water in the Boulder reservoir from running down into Mexico by gravity, the An-.

45 WEALTH FROM WASTED WATERS zona Highline Canal must be built forthwith, at least far enough to the north from The Needles pinnacles in Arizona to connect it with the waters stored in the Boulder dam reservoir. Then it will run from the Boulder dam reservoir south across the Williams river to the Vicksburg Valley and on to Lone Mountain Pass, where the surface elevation is 1300 feet. From Lone Mountain Pass it will run to a crossing of the Santa Fe Railway at Witman,—formerly Nadaburg,—and following the base of the mountains around the northern edge of Deer Valley and Paradise Valley and the Salt River Val- ley, crossing the Salt River above Granite Reef dam, and the Gila river above Florence, and swinging around Casa Grande to the plains south of the Southern Pacific Railroad, it will tail into the Waterman Wash. From that point the water from the Highline Canal will flow down the Waterman Wash to the Gila River. It can be diverted again from the Gila river at the Gillespie dam to supply the country from Gila Bend to Ajo and Yuma. If a "Y" extension of the upper section of the Arizona- California Highline Canal were built to a point as near as practicable to the Boulder dam, a pump lift of between 200 and 300 feet would raise the water from the Boulder Lake into a temporary, makeshift intake for the Arizona-California Highline Canal. That temporary pump-lift would supply all the immediate needs of both Arizona and California by gravity, the rest of the way to all points of use in both States. The proposed pump-lift in California of 1500 to 2000 feet over Shaver's Summit would be unnecessary. The water would run from Boulder dam to Los Angeles by gravity through the joint Arizona-California Highline Canal to the point of division of the waters near The Needles where the

46 CREATE WEALTH AND STOP WASTE

Colorado River Siphon would be substituted for the pump- lift over Shaver's Summit. Some day the good people of Southern California will wake up from their Rip Van Winkle sleep and rub their eyes and wonder why they spent so many millions of borrowed dollars to build a system to get water from the Colorado River to Los Angeles by pumping it over Shaver's Summit when they might just as well have had it by gravity and saved using up the 250,000 horespower required to do the pumping. The initiated have no trouble in understanding that. The more costly it could be made to get water to Los Angeles, the less Los Angeles would want and the more the Land Speculators in Mexico would get of the regulated flow from the Boulder dam without any law but the law of gravity, and without any cost for storage. The Glen Canyon Storage Dam and the Bridge Canyon Diversion Dam must be completed as soon as possible. Then the Glen-Bridge-Highline System will function as a whole as an ALL GRAVITY SYSTEM for both California and Ari- zona. The joint Arizona-California Highline canal will run from Bridge Canyon to near The Needles pinnacles in Arizona, whence the California branch will run to the Colorado River Siphon, and the Arizona branch will run to Lone Mountain Pass, skirt the northern edge of Paradise Valley and tail into the Waterman Wash, on its way back to the Colorado River at Yuma, replenished by the reflow from return seepage, and increased rainfall from forest plantations. Of the 2,000,000 acres to be reclaimed in California, 1,000,000 acres are in the Colorado River Basin, in the Palo Verde, Coachella and Imperial Valleys, and 1,000,000 acres are in the Coast Basin of Southern California, including all

47 WEALTH FROM WASTED WATERS the lands now unirrigated from Los Angeles to San Diego and from the base of the mountains to the shores of the Pacific Ocean. When the great works for irrigation and power have been built that will bring to fruition this plan for transforming the Colorado River into the greatest Golden River in the world, there will be no irrigable lands anywhere in the coast country of Southern California that will not be furnished with an am- ple water supply in all seasons and in all years. Every acre of plow-land on the rolling slopes or in the valleys will be raised to its zenith of profitable production. Villa homes dotting the picturesque hillsides will make them beautiful be-' yond description, all the way from Los Angeles to San Diego. The "back country" of San Diego, from the Linda Vista Mesa north to the foothills of snowclad San Jacinto, will be Home- sites to tempt the wealthy of the World to come and live in that incomparable climate and land of enchantment. Southern California has everything but water to produce wealth inconceivable, from a land clad in beauty so dazzling that the world has never before seen the like. The Colorado River, supplementing the proposed Mar- shall Plan Tunnel from Kings River, is the only source from which that water can be obtained in sufficient quantity. There is one inescapable condition precedent to the achievement of this vast vision of human advancement and wealth-creation in Southern California. The Colorado River will provide water in abundance, not only for the cities, but to spread a mantle of never-failing fruitfulness over the entire land—hills as well as valleys—fields and farms and villa homes and rural communities as well as a few larger munici- palities. It will irrigate the whole country between the base

48 CREATE WEALTH AND STOP WASTE of the Sierra Madre, San Bernardino, San Jacinto and San Diego mountains on the east, and the Pacific Ocean on the west. This cannot be done unless the menace of the adverse interest in the Colorado River now claimed by a group of American Land Speculators in Mexico shall be eliminated. They are scheming to secure the waters of the Colorado River to reclaim a vast area in the Imperial valley of Mexico, in the delta of the Colorado River, and on the great Citrus Mesa in Sonora, around the head of the Gulf of California in Mexico. The baronial principality they now own in Mexico embraces more than a million acres. They will ultimately reclaim two million acres in Mexico if their scheme should succeed. If they get the water for that land in Mexico, 15,000,000 acres in Arizona for all time to come will be dedicated to the desert, and the lands now unirrigated in the Coast Basin of Southern California will go unirrigated forever. The unpatriotic Conspiracy of those American Land Speculators in Mexico plans to create, where none now exists, the war-breeding menace and potential aeroplane base of a competitive Asiatic World Seaport and Manufacturing City, resting back against a vast Asiatic Farm Colony. Its estab- lishment would transplant from Asia to America the ruinous competition of Asiatic Labor in Industry and Asiatic Labor in Agriculture. It would develop racial and international competitive friction and industrial conflict that would in the end make a war with Asia unavoidable and inevitable. That Upas Tree must be pulled up by the roots. Its poisonous influence must be exterminated and forever destroyed, root and branch. We must negotiate with Mexico a Treaty by which the United States of America shall acquire 49 WEALTH FROM WASTED WATERS and extirpate every claim now made or which could by any possibility hereafter be made to a right to use any of the waters of the Colorado River in Mexico. Every temptation to advance such claims, and every possibility of international controversy over the Colorado River must be removed forever by that treaty. The Gadsden Purchase in 1853 furnishes the precedent. As this country then bought land from Mexico,—bought everything lying between the Gila river and the present boundary line between Arizona and Mexico, so it must now buy, pay for and thereby acquire the incontestable and in- controvertible ownership of every drop of the waters of the Colorado River. We must acquire by such a treaty the full right at any time to completely dry up the river at the international line. Until that treaty has been made the federal government should, as a measure of military safety, forbid any development of power at the Boulder dam or any dam below it on the Colorado River. The Bridge Canyon dam will develop a million horsepower,—enough to meet all the needs for power until other dams are built farther up the river from which all the power will be used in the United States of America. WE MUST BUILD WITHOUT DELAY ALL WORKS FOR WATER CONSERVATION NECESSARY TO IN- SURE THE USE OF ALL THE WATERS OF THE COLO- RADO RIVER IN OUR OWN COUNTRY, TO RECLAIM DESERTS AND BUILD AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS UNDER THE AMERICAN FLAG. That means that the whole Bridge-Glen-Highline System must be built immediately as a national project for military safety.

50 CREATE WEALTH AND STOP WASTE It is an ancient legal rule that every man must be pre- sumed to Intend the consequences of his own act. The inevitable consequences of this scheme of American Land Spec- ulators in Mexico to drive an Asiatic Wedge into the heart of America are so appalling that it becomes a treasonable conspiracy when viewed in the light of the fact that in the event of war this Asiatic City at the head of the Gulf of California would turnish an Aeroplane Base from which, within an hour, fleets of fast military aeroplanes, armed with explosive bombs and poison gas, could reach every city and town from there to San Diego, Los Angeles, Phoenix and Tucson and utterly destroy them. The announcement that war had begun would be made by wiping out of existence whole populations,—men, women and children, and the cities where they lived. A few explosive bombs would destroy the Los Angeles aqueduct and Roosevelt and Coolidge dams and every reservoir and surface source of water supply in Arizona and Southern California. That is the pleasant prospect which the Conspiracy to secure the Colorado River for Development in Mexico by Americans and Asiatics holds out to the people of Arizona and Southern California. If that scheme should succeed, it is inevitable that it would breed a war with Asia,—a war that would in its turn involve the world in another Universal War more cruel, relentless, devastating, foul and inhuman than the last war. The chief implements of warfare in the next war will be aeroplanes armed with explosive bombs and poison gas. It will be a war against noncombatants, against those too old and those too young to be soldiers,—against the sick in hos- pitals and homes,—against mothers with babes in arms and little children at their knees. It will be a war in which the 51 WEALTH FROM WASTED WATERS military objective will be the extermination of either the Asiatic or the American race in America. Whichever wins will take the country. And that war of extermination will be a war of five hundred millions against one hundred millions.

Isn't that an outlook into the future that might well cause • us to pause before we give away the waters from the Colo- rado River to be used to make that war a certainty? Are the - people in Arizona and Southern California, who contemplate permitting such a thing as that to be done, misled, or deluded, or hypnotized,—or are they insane ? The citizens of other sections of the United States might plead ignorance as an ex- cuse for apathy or lack of public protest, but not so those of the lower Colorado River country. The United States of America had far better voluntarily spend the money necessary to prevent such a war than be forced to spend it to fight the war. Our national government had better build the necessary engineering works to impound all the waters of the Colorado and use them in our own country than sit supine while the river is filched from us and used to breed this Asiatic-American War, with its ultimate Uni- versal World War. The building of the engineering works that may be necessary, and the doing of whatever else may be required to make sure that all the waters of the Colorado River are used under the American flag and not in adjacent foreign territory, are basic measures of military security. Every dollar spent that way is spent for the national defense, and to safeguard the peace of the world. That fundamental fact must be gotten into the minds of the people of the United States of America, all of them, everywhere. It is no sectional question. It cannot be relegated to the States of the Colorado River Basin. 52 CREATE WEALTH AND STOP WASTE

It is a national question of greater importance than any that will ever again come before the people of this country for national action. The right settlement of this stupendous national problem, —the settlement that will provide for the turning of this great Golden Colorado River out over the gaunt and hungry deserts of Arizona and the Colorado River Basin of California, and through the San Jacinto Tunnel into the Coast Basin of the Southland of that State,—will bring national economic benefits of such stupendous magnitude that nothing would dare stand beside them to be measured unless it might be the limitless cost of war. The latter is the cost of devastation, destruction, famine, disease, death and immeasurable human agony. The former is the cost of creating a paradise on earth and peopling it with millions of happy souls who through countless future generations will have found their Heaven on this Earth. Surely, with those two alternatives to choose between, it ought to be possible to induce the people of this country to adopt in this instance "The Moral Equivalent of War' ,— that great idea of William James,—and substitute a mighty conquest of Nature's Forces and their subjugation to the service of humanity, for military conquest,—substitute construction for destruction,—substitute human happiness for human agony,—substitute the Victories of Peace for the so- called Glory of War, as a spur to high endeavor, a compensa- tion for self-sacrifice, and a stimulus to terrific effort. Such a stimulus, in the past, has been furnished only by War and Human Conflict aimed at the destruction of the fruits of human labor. What a World this would now be if all the human effort

53 WEALTH FROM WASTED WATERS and energy put forth, and all the wealth. wasted and destroyed in only the last war, to say nothing of those that have pre- ceded it, had been spent for human advancement and constructive accomplishment.

We were told that those who fought the last world War were fighting a war to end all wars. Would it not be well to start the new era of a world without war by doing the things that will prevent an otherwise unavoidable war with Asia? Those things are the things necessary to be done to prevent international and racial conflict by providing for the use of all the waters of a great American river by Americans in the United States of America.

Is it possible to conceive a plan for national development that should arouse deeper enthusiasm or furnish a higher inspiration than the Constructive Plan herein proposed for the control of this vast national resource—this Golden Colorado River—for human benefit and human advancement in this and all future generations, in all its majestic immensity

In the province of Sind, on the Indus river in India, the British are building an irrigation system that may ultimately irrigate as many acres and which has some larger features of mere immensity, but no irrigation project ever before offered such a fascinating objective as the plan now proposed to roll a mantle of perpetual verdure over the whole region from the mountains to the sea in all of Southern California, and in addition create a new Egypt in the basin of the Colorado River, the Nile of America, in Arizona and California.

54 CREATE WEALTH AND STOP WASTE Chapter IV. A NEW LAND OF GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY—THE NEWLANDS PLAN FOR WATER CONSERVATION There will be a great difference between the conditions left by The Argonauts who struggled to possess the Golden Fleece that was the magnet which drew their caravans to California across desert and wilderness, and whitened the seas with the ships that carried them to the land of their Golden Vision, compared with the conditions that will result from the labors of those who build the works that will bring into existence the new wealth to be created by the Golden Colorado River. In the one ease, when the miners had reduced the yellow gold to possession, so they could hold it in their hands and feel it and touch it, their work was done. In the other case, when the great •engineering structures,—dams, aqueducts, tunnels, canals, siphons and power plants,—built by human labor, with the aid of electric power and modern machinery, to harness the Golden Colorado, have been completed, the men who build them will stand at the threshold of the Gate- way to a new Land of Opportunity. It will be a Land that will offer Homes and Human Happiness to millions in this generation, and through the countless centuries of the future. Once, and once only, did the miner, when he had wrested the gold from its hiding places, turn a stream of the yellow metal into the far ramifications of the world's channels of finance and trade. When the genius and labor of Man has forced the Golden Colorado to serve his will, it will continue to do so as long as mankind needs waterpower, and as long as water wedded to land will yield a new harvest of wealth each year. 55 WEALTH FROM WASTED WATERS

As we stand today and look down the aisles of the future with our present vision, we can see only fertility and enchantment increasing with the years as the fruits of the first great construction work that will harness the Golden Colorado for waterpower, reclamation and home-making in the United States of America. What a contrast is this to the scars left on the face of Nature by surface mining for gold, or to the utter obliteration of every trace of the work of the miners, which has so often happened. Where the flake gold once 'glittered in the black sand on the seashore nothing remains to indicate that it ever existed but the words "Gold Bluff" on a signboard beside the automobile road from Trinidad to Crescent City. At Yreka Flats you may wander among the gravel heaps, but only in imagination can you see the men at work with the rockers through which every shovelful of that gravel was sifted by human labor to extract the gold. The Yreka ditch which those men dug with picks and shovels to bring water a hundred miles to mine off the Yreka Flats, has been abandoned, and the water which once flowed into the miner's rockers now irrigates thousands of acres of green alfalfa fields in the Shasta Valley. Nature is always impressive in her Great Silences, on the deserts or the plains, in the forests or the mountains, or on the sea when it is stilled. There is something indescribably weird in the deadly silence and loneliness that hangs like a shroud over such abandoned workings as those at Columbia Flats, in Bret HARTE'S country, not far from Sonora, in Tuo- lumne County, California. You may drive out from Sonora, some evening at the full of the moon, to where years ago stood an old abandoned

56 CREATE WEALTH AND STOP WASTE church. There are points along the road, where it skirts the ancient diggings, from which you may look down into what seems like a forest of huge cromlechs, great granite boulders bigger than houses, rearing their white heads into the moon- light from the shadows of cavernous depths. Those immense excavations were dug out by hundreds of busy miners with picks and shovels to feed the rockers with which they washed the gold from the gravel. Not so ancient as Stonehenge, but more vividly suggestive of ghosts and eyrie forms among the shadows, are those huge Granite Gravestones. They are fitting monuments to the multitude of men whose feverish labor wrested the gold from the gravels under which they were once buried. In that same region lies Table Mountain, made famous by Bret Harte. From the stage road over which travelers were formerly carried from Milton to Sonora, are points of scenic vantage from which a perfect view can be had of that remarkable mountain. The flat line of its straight back juts out at right angles from the Sierra Nevada range. On what is now the top of Table Mountain, a prehistoric river once ran, back in the vastness of the ages that have passed into the abyss of time. Then from some crater came a river of lava, and ran down that prehistoric river,—turned its waters into steam and dried up its channel, which was filled with the flowing molten lava. The almost level slope of that age-old river is the slope of the lava river we see today. When it cooled it imprisoned beneath its snaky folds the gold which the prehistoric river had accumulated through the eons of time that went before the lava flow. You may see that river of black lava today if you want to go and look at it. It is now the top of Table Mountain. Ero-

57 WEALTH FROM WASTED WATERS sion has been at work for a period of time too long to be spanned by the human mind, carving out new hills and valleys more than a thousand feet below the floor of the great valley across which that prehistoric river once ran. The top of Table Mountain was the drainage channel of the ancient valley, as the bed of the Sacramento river, far below is now the drainage channel of the present valley. Anyone who will stand and look at Table Mountain, and then look off across the Sacramento valley, can realize what is happening in those valleys of the arid region, like the San Simon Valley below Bowie, where wheel tracks have become barrancas, and barrancas have widened into huge washes, and wide plains are honeycombed with deep, cavernous cuts. When the floods come those honeycombed lands dissolve into the rivers like great flat fields of snow slowly melting in the sun. Whole valleys are being loosened from their moorings to move from their anchorage of ages against the mountains, down onto the cultivated fields and into the reservoirs below to fill and destroy them. On the steeply eroded slopes of Table Mountain may be seen the dumps of the drift mines where the miners burrowed into the channel beneath the lava flow to get at the gold bearing gravels in that ancient channel. Once only that prehistoric river opened its treasure vaults and contributed the accumulated gold of a past geological era, for the use of man. kind. The Golden Colorado, when harnessed and made to work for Man will yield its Golden Harvest with each recurring season so long as the fields fertilized with its waters shall continue to be the habitation of the future generations of mankind. 58 CREATE WEALTH AND STOP WASTE The Golden Age of The Argonauts of California has passed. The Golden Age of The Argonauts of the Colorado has beguri, but only the remote generations of the future who may yet be living by its beneficence will see its end. In the one case, a single crop of gold was harvested. In the other case, countless golden harvests will be gathered. The town of La Paz in Arizona, not far from the banks of the Colorado, was once the center of a prosperous dry- placer mining district. It is now abandoned. But the waters of the Colorado River will restore prosperity to that country by harvests of Golden Oranges, Golden Dates, Golden Grapes, Golden Grapefruit, and an infinite variety of other fruitful crops that will yield a Golden Harvest. The Railroad traveler on the Overland Trains winding down the curving track from the crest of the Sierras into the Sacramento Valley can see from the car windows, in a number of places, great gashes in the mountains left by the hydraulic giants that tore their way into the ancient rivers and spread the slickens over the orchards and farms of the fertile valley below. In the early fifties, ships that had sailed around Cape Horn went up the Sacramento river and docked at Marys- ville. Now the bed of the river opposite that city has been filled with slickens and is higher than the level of its streets. Huge levees have been built to protect it from floods. Not far from Marysville there are large areas of once sightly ground that has been dredged over and turned bottom- side up and left in huge. ridges by the dredges that dug through it to get the gold that it covered. There the natural beauty is gone, the gold is gone, the dredges are gone, and fertility and scenic charm will never return to that blighted region.

59 WEALTH FROM WASTED WATERS

But there is another side to the picture of the conditions left by the old miners who built a network of ditches along the hillsides to lead the mountain water fed from the melting snows to their mining claims. Years ago those claims were worked out and worthless, but the ditches have been and are now used to bring irrigating water to hillside orchards over all that foot hill — region of the Sierra Nevada. The gold gained from the orchards and vineyards brings to the fruit- grower of today larger returns than the mining claims yielded to their owners in the earlier golden era when the miners dug the ditches. It is claimed by those who know the region, that the country lying north of the Gila river, and between that river and the Santa Fe Railroad running from Wickenberg to Parker, is the most highly mineralized undeveloped mining region in the United States, and that it will yield wealth in gold, silver and copper, of vast value, whenever its development is made possible by the incoming of water and transportation, as they will follow the building of the Arizona High- line Canal. No matter how great this mineral wealth might prove to be, its value will be small compared with the economic value of the waters of the Golden Colorado for waterpower and irrigation for non-competitive crops, preferably Tree Crops, as . advocated by Prof. J. Russell Smith, in "Tree Crops, a Perm- anent Agriculture," and for domestic and municipal supply, and for the growing of new rainmaking forest plantations, to perpetuate Arizona wood and timber supplies for all pur- poses. There are those who fear the need for its use will not ab- sorb the waterpower as rapidly as it is developed. Those who

60 CREATE WEALTH AND STOP WASTE think so know little of the latent resources of that region of miracles. The genius of man cannot develop the waterpower of the Colorado River as fast as it will be used, as soon as it can be made available, in all the states of the watershed of the river, and particularly in Arizona and Southern California. More than 5,000,000 horsepower of hydro-electric power can be developed in Arizona from the Colorado River. All of it will be needed, faster than it can be provided, for new mining enterprises, and for pumping water for mining pur- poses, and for planting and irrigating new rain-making For- est Plantations, to increase rainfall and create new mineral wealth to promote national prosperity.

Chapter V. THE NEWLANDS-OLMSTED "ALL-ARIZONA" PLAN FOR REFLOW AND INCREASED RAINFALL. The studies that have been made of the Colorado river in the past have never given as much thought or investiga- tion as should have been given to two aspects of the Colorado river problem which are of stupendous importance. Those two subjects that are so inextricably allied with the problem are : 1. REFLO NAT FROM THE RETURN SEEPAGE, where whole watersheds are rightly developed and irrigated with this ultimate objective in view ; and, 2. INCREASED RAIN-FALL CAUSED BY PLANT- ING NEW RAIN-MAKING FORESTS of which an aggre- gate area of not less than 10,000,000 acres should be planted and maintained by the federal government for that purpose in Arizona.

61 WEALTH FROM WASTED WATERS

The watersheds which should be developed with the special object in view of largely increasing the quantity of water available for the reclamation of the arid lands of Arizona are the Little Colorado, Bill Williams, Hassayampa, Verde, Salt, Gila, and Santa Cruz rivers, and the Centennial, Sacramento, Bouse, Cunningham, Bullard, Big Sandy, and San Simon Washes. There are many other smaller streams and washes draining minor watersheds that should be included. The complete development of all these watersheds under the Newlands-Olmrsted plan for Water Conservation, which would conserve for biologic beneficial use, all the natural rainfall, all the flood water that now goes to waste, all the underground water that may be made available as an emergency supply, supplemented by enough additional water from the Colorado river to insure abundant crops in all years, but not depending on that source of supply for more than was necessary in any one year, would in a few years increase the supply from all the rivers and washes above mentioned to the Colorado river so largely that the total areas irrigated in Ari- zona would be more than doubled and the supply left for Cali- fornia materially increased. One of the most promising and attractive projects in Ari- zona for development either by the State or federal government, or both in co-operation, as was contemplated under the Newlands Water Conservation Plan, is in the San Simon valley, extending from the Southern Pacific Railroad to the head of the valley. The San Simon valley has the best climate of any section of Arizona. The elevation tempers the heat, and it is never too cold to be comfortable. The streams coming out from the Chiricahua mountains furnish considerable water which sup.

62 CREATE WEALTH AND STOP WASTE plements the natural rainfall on the lands of the valley itself. If all the water that is available could be utilized, there would be enough for a prosperous community settled on 100,000 acres of land, provided a system of cultivation and irrigation by rainfall and flood waters were carefully worked out that would fit the local conditions. An association of the local farmers and land-owners was formed some years ago called the San Simon Valley Irriga- tion District Association. They employed Harry F. Olmsted to make a complete survey and report with all requisite maps for a system that contemplated that each farmer should have five acres for intensive— diversified cultivation and 160 acres for annual crops of grain or hay, for which no water was available except the annual rainfall on the land. This plan contemplated that each owner should supplement the local rainfall with his own pumping plant. It was a plan never before worked out in Arizona to utilize all the flood water, all the local rainfall, and all the water that could be stored in a surface reservoir, and supplement it by pumping from underground for an emergency supply. The war over the Colorado river broke off all opportunity to complete this San Simon valley system, because the hydro- electric power from Glen Canyon dam for pumping was an essential element in the plan, and so long as the construction of Glen Canyon dam is uncertain the San Simon project will lie in abeyance, awaiting the fate of the Glen Canyon dam. This is unfortunate for both the State of Arizona and the federal government. The federal government is now doing so much to mitigate the evils of erosion in the Southwest that the friendly co-operation of such a community as was being organized in the San Simon valley would have been of in- 63 WEALTH FROM WASTED WATERS estimable advantage to the United States Soil Conservation Service and the Forest Service and the Civilian Conservation Corps to make a Demonstration Model that would have proved the way to solve some of the most troublesome problems of forestry and erosion as they evolve in a country of erratic rainfall. Another deterrent influence that led the local farmers in the San Simon Valley to defer all further effort until the Colorado River controversy could be settled, was the fact that unless the Arizona Highline Canal is constructed to bring the water from the Colorado river to the Gila river at Florence, the claimants to the waters of the Gila river below Florence would fight the right of the farmers in the San Simon valley to stop the waters falling in that valley from coming on down into the Coolidge reservoir. It is thus apparent that the ultimate future welfare of a large valley in southeastern Arizona hangs by the thread of whether the Arizona advocates of the Arizona Highline Canal stand to their guns and save the rights of Arizona to the Colorado river by securing the completion of the Arizona Highline Canal. Both that canal, and the Glen Canyon dam for power, are vital to the future development Of the San Simon valley. The same is true of many hundreds of thousands of acres in the territory embraced in the Hassayampa plains, the Harquahala valley, the Vicksburg valley, the Ranegrass plains, the McMullin valley, the Butler valley, the Cactus plains and the Sacramento valley which broadens out south of Kingman into one of the most surpassingly beautiful desert valleys in the world, when viewed by any one who can en- vision its possibilities of development for human benefit. Send name and address with three cents postage to George Hebard Maxwell, 602 North First Avenue, Phoenix, Arizona, and copies of later chapters will be mailed without charge. 64