Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/381

Rh what can be done during the rainy season. The Coast Mountains do not furnish living streams, and the Sierra Nevada water must run up hill to cross the valley and climb the western slope. How to get it over there is a problem vexing many minds. Several companies have been formed, and surveys have been made, for doing the work on different plans. One company proposes to lay iron pipes about fifty miles, at a cost of several millions of dollars. Another would carry the water in an open ditch above ground. At the lowest part of the valley-trough the ditch would have to be at least fifty and ought to be at least one hundred feet above ground, for several miles.

Under a new law of California, irrigation districts may be formed, and a vote taken as to what, if any, mains shall be constructed. A majority of residents rules. The minority, if they own land, help foot the bill. So do all non-resident land-owners. The district where these great iron pipes aforesaid are proposed would contain about eight hundred thousand acres. It was estimated that five dollars an acre would pay the cost. A gentleman interested as a landholder, however, assured me that his honest estimate would be not less than two hundred dollars an acre. With plenty of water the land, now practically worthless, would be well worth one hundred dollars an acre.

It will be readily admitted that such gigantic schemes of irrigation as these must raise new questions of both civil law and political economy. The constitutional conventions of the newly admitted States spent some time in wrestling with the problem of water rights. In all our arid regions property in land involves property in water. If by going higher up the river or canon your neighbor may divert and use the water you have depended on, he might as well be permitted to take your land also, for it is valueless without the water. Litigation over these water rights has already given the California courts much to do, at heavy expense to litigants.

The rights themselves vary. In some cases one man or corporation owns the water, while another merely has the perpetual right to a share of it on the payment of a reasonable rate. But this right pertains to a particular body of land, and not to the person. In other cases each landholder is a shareholder in the water company. The difference appears on the face of the stock certificate. In the former case the name of the association which has tapped, say, the Alpine Cañon, will be "Alpine Water Company," while in the latter case it will be "Alpine Land and Water Company."

There are a good many of these land and water companies composed of farmers. Here is a new element introduced into farm life an element of business and of co-operation. Sometimes it