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~ 21.02[2] MINERAL LAW INSTITUTE 21-8 of the Interior to contract for the storage and delivery of wa- ter from Lake Mead and for the delivery of electricity to all sorts of users. It also approved the 1922 Compact and pro- vided that the operation of the Hoover,Dam and other works authorized by the Act would be subject to the Compact's terms. All of the Basin states except Arizona had ratified the Compac~ in 1923, although in the ensuing years some had qualified or rescinded their ratificat.ions. The Compact had become a dominating political issue in Arizona.l8 Populist Governor George Hunt fulminated against it with spectacu- lar results. Arizonans were perturbed by the potential loss of tax revenues caused by the likely preemption of proposed private hydro-electric projects on the Colorado by a federal plant. They were appalled to find themselves suddenly pitted almost alone against California for a share of Colorado River water without the assistance of the Upper Basin states. They were even more upset by the prospect of the Compact com- pelling them in the future to relinquish water from the Gila River to satisfy a Mexican treaty obligation19 or perhaps even to irrigate land in California. To Arizonans, the Gila had become a sacred river and its use by others a desecra- tion. The Upper Basin states preferred seven-state ratification, but they had concluded that their interests would be reason- ably secure if California were to ratify the Compact and also l8Se e generally Hundley, supra note 9, at 233-76. 19 The fact that Harry Chandler. owner of the Los Angeles Times. and other wealthy Californians held large tracts of land on the Mexican side of the border during that period was a ,particular irritant to Arizonans. To increase their exasper- ation, some of these speculators hired Chinese laborers. The rhetoric denouncing these circumstances was often intemperate. Thus, during the Compact negotiations, George Maxwell, the promoter of the high-line canal scheme in Arizona (the fore- bearer of the Central Arizona Project), telegraphed the Commissioners to 'beware of the "Asiatic Menace in Mexico more dangerous by far to the United States of Amer- ica than the original flood menace." He predicted they would cause "a crushing competition with American agriculture, labor and industry" and even embroil "Southern California and Arizona in an Asiatic War." 1 Minutes and Record of the Colorado River Commission Negotiating the Colorado River Compact of 1922, Sess. No. 14, 2-3 (Washington, D.C., Colorado River Project. Bureau of Reclamation) [hereinafter cited as 1 Record ].