Excerpt from Handbook of the Irrigation District Laws of the Seventeen Western States of the United States: December 20, 1918; With Addenda Outlining Changes Made in the 1919 Session Laws Irrigation is as clearly the basic economic institution as the family is the basic social institution in large sections of the 17 Western States, which comprise about half the area of the United States. Without irrigation over extensive areas there would be but a sparse population dependent upon stock grazing, while in other sections of the same States irrigation shares in importance with the mining, lumber, and so-called dry farming industries and is in general a more important and obviously a more permanent industry than the others. Irrigation farmer not an individualist. - It is recognized in the humid parts of the country that farmers are the most individualistic portion of the American people. Their daily occupation provides fewer points of outside contact than that of any other part of the population. Accordingly, the farmer in humid climates has comparatively little occasion to develop the power to cooperate. This is not true, however, of the irrigation farmer. He must join forces with other prospective farmers in order to build the necessary canals, laterals, diversion dams, and other works, often including a reservoir, which are necessary before he can even begin irrigation; and thereafter he and his neighbors must cooperate in the perpetual maintenance and operation of the works. The proper discharge of these duties assumes an importance to irrigation farmers more intimately and obviously related under all ordinary circumstances to their personal welfare than the activities of local, State, and Federal Governments combined. The failure of the irrigation system to function properly for even a brief period means the loss of all the capital and labor invested in the crop. Irrigation as the fundamental institution. - Irrigation, therefore, is not only of public use and benefit and comparable in that respect with education, highways, and local government, but it is the fundamental institution in these communities, upon the cessation of which the population would so dwindle as to curtail and, in many localities, abolish other public institutions. Hence it is peculiarly appropriate that irrigation should be carried on by means of public corporations exercising the powers of taxation and enjoying freedom from the necessity for securing the universal consent of those benefited by exercising compulsion of the minority, the power of eminent domain, public ownership, and popular control. These powers for centuries have been fundamental in Anglo-Saxon institutions performing many functions of less public necessity than that of irrigation in arid regions. No one would think of saying to one who denied the benefits of education, "We will build the school and keep it running, and when you want to send children there you can begin paying." About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.