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1 1 1 1 The Missouri River Basin: The Agreements and the Results Before recounting these conflicts and the eventual compromises between upper and lower basin interests, it is important to describe the times in which they arose. First, a prolonged and widespread drought in the 1930s and the Depression had two major negative effects on the basin: values of farm buildings and lands declined dramatically and there were significant decreases in the farm population due to out migration. Second, the advent of World War II only exacerbated the out migration, leading demographers to conclude in 1943 "that about 600,000 persons would be seeking work or government assistance during the postwar period" in the Great Plains states of Montana, Wyoming, the two Dakotas, Nebraska, and Kansas.107 Third, decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1940 and 1941 were very troubling to upper basin irrigation interests, just as decisions of the Court two decades earlier had brought fear to the hearts of upper basin water development interests in the Colorado River Basin. ... No new basic principles of national water law had been announced by the Court's majority opinions in ... United States v. Appalachian Electric Power Company [311 U.S. 377 (1940)] ... and ... Oklahoma v. Atkinson [313 U.S. 508 (1941)]. In these decisions, however, the Court asserted that whenever the constitutional powers of the federal government and those of a state conflicted, the latter must yield. "... [T]he exercise of the granted power of Congress to regulate interstate waters may be aided by appropriate and needful control of activities and agencies which, though intrastate, affect that commerce." ' Upper Missouri basin interests feared that the federal government might use this broad activist interpretation of the commerce clause to impair rights acquired under state laws. ... [W]esterners were concerned that the ' federal government might claim unappropriated water under the navigation powers. ...108 Fourth, the notion of comprehensive and integrated river basin development emerged as a guiding principle of federal water policy in the 1930s. While it is beyond the scope of this paper to recount the history of the "comprehensive" planning efforts undertaken by the federal water agencies nationwide in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, it is important to understand that debates during this ' period about the development of the Missouri River Basin's water resources 107 J. FERRELL, suprn note 103, at 2. 10B Id. at 21-22. Footnote omitted. ' 35