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70 HEARST'S In.tcrnational of the cruel foe from asserting any claim to any equality of cOIlsideration: whatsoever in ref~r~n~e to any water flowing down from his land "(0 tlleirs. His -1I1011umcnt might say: HHcrc lies the man because of whom the. brave men and virtuous women of our state can use up all t.he water in the Colorado River on their thrifty farms and in their God-fearing' homes if they want to." The super-sovereign state at Washington is a.ble {o head him off from that fame. The United States has appointed a delegate to be' the presiding delegate in the interstate con- ference for the apportioning and partitioning of the flow of the Colorado. The flow of the Colorado I besides creating 7,000,000 acres of crops, can create 6,000,000 horsepower of electric current. The area drained by that flow is four times the area of New England. The city of Los Angeles, OIl the PacirlC Ocean, wants some of . the electricity that will be made in Colorado River ]JOwer-houses. The city of Denv'er'drinks water' from 'hills that send part of their rainfall down towards the .s:ites of .those power-houses to help light the city of Los Angeles. Denver lies near the north- eastern edge of tbe' basin' of the Colorado. Salt Lake City lies near its north-west- ern edge. In the South and East, its limiting line is not far from EI Paso, Texas. In the South and West, it ap- proaches San :Diego, Cali- fornia. Those four points- Denver, Salt Lake City, El Paso amI"San Diego--can rough I y be said to be the poir1ts that pin the basin of tIle Colorado to the map. a. Utah has designs on the Colo,.ado River and GOVlr- nor Charles R. Mabey is con. ltantly on the j(Jb. P EOl'J.E in Wyoming, at the head of the Green River,. which is the Colorado's m03t northerly tributary, live at an altitude of 71500 feet. People in California., in the Imperia.} Valley, which is watered from the Colomdo by mcans of a ditch that makes an international dc- tour' through Mexico, live at whal can not really be called an altitude al all. It might be called a pro- fundi tude. It is n.level 2.')0 feet below the level of the sen.. These people arc suL- aquatic. (l. William D. The 'Colorado impends Stephens, ~ov- over them. 'It casts its shad- er~or of CaWor- ow upon them. Thev are ma, 6aJ hI! eYl t d. l' 1- 1 on the prolccc. no secure agams' It JY t le great ridge which it has built for itself with its silt. They are not secured against it by the levee which they themselves have built. The great river is too great-and too wayward. It tires of its channels. 'With its silt, it makes Hew channels. It carries great quantities of this .silt to its delta at its ouLlet across the Mexican border in the Gulf of C<;Llifornia. It lashes it there into ahvays shifting shapes. The people of the Imperial Valley live at the river's mercy: Their works and tlley are in the power of a shift of silt in a river's bank. As a Greek chorus might say, and often did say _~~L_n" ___... _..". . . .,,~ r . ' oi i The people in Wyoming in the -basin of the Color:1.do . arc glvtn to driving cattle'on forest ranges and they want water 'from the Colorado River in order to have irri- gated 'spots on which they will grow green forage' for morc cattle, which they will drive out for the remainder of their feeding on marc for- est rangcs. Thjs is ~heir sort of Ileed. 1~~1E rEOPLE in California in the bn.sin of the Colorado want water from the Colo- rado in order to have irri- galed spots on which they call grow (for instance) long staple cOttOIl; and it is their additional desire that what watN they do not want from the Colorado shall stay with- in the banks of the Colorado fi.nd leave the Imperial Val- ley unvisited. They therefore are very willing that all 'other people in the basin 'af the Colorado -in Wyoming and in all the rest of the seven statcs- should join with them in a brotherly spirit to apportion the 'waters of the Colorado and to catch those watcrs, store them, subdue them,' cOlitrol and regulate them. It -happens thereupon lhat s(').me of the other people 011 the upper reaches of the river afe inclined' to say: "If our brothers along the lower reaches of the river should get large amounts of water in reservoirs down there, they will draw upon that water. Today they ha.ve barely enough water for their present fields. With new reservoirs, tlley will lay ou t new fields and they will :file new claims on the flow of the Colorado for watedng tbose fields. IIThen when we want to make ncw fields of our own along the upper reaches of the Colorado, we may find that we.may have to go into (ourt somewhere and defend ourselves against these brothers, who may then say that they have taken out 'prior appropriations' 011 the water which we want to use -water that runs right by our homes and hearths. Whose waleI' is it? We must think." It would be extremely un- natural if they did not. They do. But to encourage them to think faster, the Federal Government en- acted a statute under which Mr. Hoover was chosen. to preside over the Colorado River Commission and its