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<br />2 <br /> <br />idea. Hooverwas more perceptive. Early on he recognized Carpenter's <br />mastery of the compact concept and asked him to draw up the first draft of the <br />Colorado River Compact. Within days of the Santa Fe signing, he wrote to <br />Carpenter expressing "the admiration and appreciation I have for the way you <br />have built up the whole conception of the compact from its start and for the <br />ingenuity and flexibility of mind which you have brought to bear on it,,4 After <br />the Boulder Canyon Act passed six years later, he wrote again to say that the <br />Colorado River Compact "was your conception and your creation, and it was <br />due to your tenacity and intelligence that it has succeeded. Sometime I want to <br />be able to say this and say it emphatically to the people of the West."s <br /> <br />More accolades would come later and many compacts would be signed <br />on other western rivers as a result of Carpenter's pioneering efforts, but as he <br />sat in his Pullman car heading to Washington in the spring of 1921, he still <br />had no victories to vindicate his theories. All he could do was rehearse in his <br />mind what w~re to him the ineluctable arguments for interstate compacts on <br />interstate rivers. <br /> <br />Constitutionally, he reasoned, the plan was solid. Article I, section 10, <br />paragraph 3 authorized states to enter into compacts with the consent of <br />Congress. The 10th amendment reserved to the states all powers not <br />specifically delegated to the United States Because the Constitution looked to <br />an indestructible union of indestructible and equal states, and because he had <br />witnessed a bold attempt on the part of the United States Reclamation Service <br />to claim ownership of water in western rivers,6 Carpenter believed that <br />interstate compacts were the only means of preserving the states' sovereignty <br />over their rivers On this subject he was articulate and inflexible Citing Chief <br />Justice John Marshall's opinion in Chisholm v. Georgia (2 Dall., 419, 435), <br />restated by a later court in Kansas v. Colorado (206 U.S. 46), Carpenter <br />argued that when states negotiated compacts they became "complete and <br />independent sovereignties with all the powers of independent nations <br />respecting the subject matter for which consent of Congress was granted <br />. . . ."7 Because water was the basis of life for many western states, control of <br />water meant control of state autonomy Except for navigation, Carpenter <br />stated, "Congress [was] without authority" in the ownership and distribution <br />