Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 77.djvu/335

Rh reserves, and the revocable system of leasing is, of course, not a satisfactory one for the purpose of inviting the capital needed to put in proper plants for the transmutation of power.

The statute of 1891 with its amendments permits the secretary of the interior to grant perpetual easements or rights of way from water sources over public lands for the primary purpose of irrigation and such electrical current as may be incidentally developed, but no grant can be made under this statute to concerns whose primary purpose is generating and handling electricity. The statute of 1901 authorizes the secretary of the interior to issue revocable permits over the public lands to electrical-power companies, but this statute is wofullywoefully [sic] inadequate because it does not authorize the collection of a charge or fix a term of years. Capital is slow to invest in an enterprise founded on a permit revocable at will.

The subject is one that calls for new legislation. It has been thought that there was danger of combination to obtain possession of all the power sites and to unite them under one control. Whatever the evidence of this, or lack of it, at present we have had enough experience to know that combination would be profitable, and the control of a great number of power sites would enable the holders or owners to raise the price of power at will within certain sections; and the temptation would promptly attract investors, and the danger of monopoly would not be a remote one.

However this may be, it is the plain duty of the government to see to it that in the utilization and development of all this immense amount of water power, conditions shall be imposed that will prevent monopoly, and will prevent extortionate charges, which are the accompaniment of monopoly. The difficulty of adjusting the matter is accentuated by the relation of the power sites to the water, the fall and flow of which create the power. In the states where these sites are the riparian owner does not control or own the power in the water which flows past his land. That power is under the control and within the grant of the state, and generally the rule is that the first user is entitled to the enjoyment. Now, the possession of the bank or water-power site over which the water is to be conveyed in order to make the power useful, gives to its owner an advantage and a certain kind of control over the use of the water power, and it is proposed that the government in dealing with its own lands should use this advantage and lease lands for power sites to those who would develop the power, and impose conditions on the leasehold with reference to the reasonableness of the rates at which the power, when transmuted, is to be furnished to the public, and forbidding the union of the particular power with a combination of others made for the purpose of monopoly by forbidding assignment of the lease save by consent of the government. Serious difficulties are