Sell the lands if you want to. Put whatever price you want to upon them. Colorado and the other people are willing to pay what they are worth. But perpetual ownership in the Government means a leasing system which is bound to be detrimental to these western states, and for that reason we oppose it. (Applause.) We contribute in our appropriations down. east. Our delegation has been voting for battleships $200,000,000 and more.

MR. FRANCIS CUTTLE-Will you yield for one more question?

SENATOR SHAFROTH-Just wait a little bit, please.

Our people contribute to the rivers and harbors. In the 61st Congress we contributed $88,000,000-that is, we helped to do it. We contribute to the defense of the nation in the way of harbor fortifications, and we do not get any of that back. We are in a position where we are not benefited except in a national sense. We are proud of our nation, because it is ours. We are not benefited, I say, except in a national sense, because Colorado is so far off that no army on earth could ever reach it. (Laughter.) But we contribute liberally to your appropriations because we believe that is one of the things the nation should have control of, and we pay to the Federal Government $5,000,000 every year in the little state of Colorado, when all that we raise for state revenue is $1,800,000.

It seems to me if you want to ask another question now, I am ready.

MR. FRANCIS CUTTLE-I understood you to say that the state of Colorado had no navigable streams?

SENATOR SHAFROTH-Yes, sir.

MR. FRANCIS CUTTLE-That being the case, can or does the Federal Government attempt to levy any tax on Colorado for the development of its water power?

SENATOR SHAFROTH-That is the proposition they make. Thank God, they have not yet done it, and they will not if I have anything to do with it. (Cheers.) They have attempted to do it in this way: They know they have no control of the non-navigable streams, but they say, "Now, since you have to put a water plant on public lands, therefore we will make a provision that before you can put your plant on that Public Domain"-generally among rocks that are worth nothing-"we will require that you yield up a gradually increasing amount until it gets to $1 per horsepower," and that means $2,000,000 a year ultimately out of Colorado alone, which none of these states, for their non-navigable streams, ever contributed a cent. New England and these other eastern states got their lands at even lower prices than any that the United States first gave. Their consideration was one penny or one peppercorn. That

was all the consideration, but it built up an empire here which contributes yearly enormous amounts to the United States Government. It was a wise policy, and the Government should not attempt to interfere with the states in their rights. (Applause.)

GENERAL WILLIAM H. BIXBY-Mr. Chairman, a question of information! I notice in the majority report, in paragraph 1 of the suggested items of legislation to be enacted, it reads as follows:

"That, without cost to the United States Government, they shall maintain the water in the pond created by such dam at such height as may be required by the Government to best. facilitate navigation."

The question is whether that was intended to cover the question of tolls for navigation on the pools, and whether it means the same thing as if it had added that navigation through the pools above and below the dam shall be free and without toll. CHAIRMAN FISHER-I do not know whether Dr. Swain can interpret that point in the report or not.

DR. GEORGE F. SWAIN-Mr. Chairman, I think I state the views of the committee when I say it was intended that that should be included. There was no intention on the part of the committee that there should be any tolls to pay by the Government for navigation on the pools.

MR. J. F. TUFTS, of Hamilton College-Mr. Chairman, there are three reports now before this Congress on the water power question. The motion made seems to contemplate only the majority report. There is a unanimous report that is entitled to considerable respect

CHAIRMAN FISHER-Pardon me, in order that I may set you right. The motion related entirely to the unanimous report. MR. J. F. TUFTS-Very well. It has then one great merit over the others, that of brevity.

MR. HENRY L. STIMSON-Mr. Chairman and fellow delegates: I wish to state just one word on the question raised by the eloquent speaker who has just closed-Senator Shafroth; that is, what interest has the Federal Treasury in the proceeds of dams upon our navigable streams?

SENATOR SHAFROTH-I said non-navigable.

MR. HENRY L. STIMSON-You addressed yourself to that also, but I said you also spoke of the interest of the Government in navigable streams.

SENATOR SHAFROTH-We have no river of that kind in Colorado.

MR. HENRY L. STIMSON-You spoke only for Colorado? SENATOR SHAFROTH-I spoke for the West.

MR. HENRY L. STIMSON-I am glad to see that you disclaim

that question, but it has been raised by others and I will address myself to it for a moment.

Governor Shafroth correctly stated the duty of the National Government in regard to the navigable streams as being the duty, as I noted his statement at the time, "to preserve and improve navigation." It is not simply to preserve what little navigation we may have. It is to go on in the course of the years and the centuries improving navigation on rivers which now may be susceptible of very little commerce, until in time they become the great arteries of the great nation to which we look forward. (Applause.)

In the course of that work-and it is going on now to the extent of millions of dollars-the inhabitants, for instance, along the lower Mississippi are asking for money from the National Treasury to improve the levees along that river. I am a resident of New York. They are taking the money paid by my fellow citizens and myself into the National Treasury, taking it for that purpose. Very often there are purposes in which we have no direct interest whatever. The citizens of Alabama are taking from the National Treasury millions of dollars to build five great dams upon the Coosa River, to improve the navigation of a stream which millions of us have never seen. I say it is of vital interest to us general tax payers who contribute that money, that the assets which may be realized from the water power produced at such dams shall be allowed to go to the treasury to diminish-because it never can equal-that burden of taxation which falls upon us all alike. (Applause.)

In other words, gentlemen, we are all fellow Americans, interested in this problem alike, and it is not possible for one locality to divorce itself from it and demand that its interests shall be considered apart from those of the rest of the nation.

I want particularly to call the attention of this great convention to the care with which the Committee on Water Power, even in making recommendation upon that undoubted right of the Federal Government, have shown to us that, by such an exercise of right, an undue burden shall not be put upon either the locality or upon the private interest that is building the dam or that is seeking to get the water power from the dam.

The method which the committee recommended was primarily the method of sharing the net profits which should arise from a realization of that great asset after a certain fair and reasonable profit should be allowed to the investor. That meets a tremendous number of objections which have been made to Federal control. The Federal Government is not seeking to thrust itself in advance of the local authorities. It is not seeking to regulate those activities which are primarily a matter of

local concern. But, as Senator Burton eloquently pointed out, there are many cases, innumerable cases, where the local control cannot be exercised. The recommendation of this committee is that the Federal control shall be exercised, the Federal compensation shall be exacted when the profits of the concern have reached a reasonable amount, and when it is eminently proper that beyond that the rights of the great national treasury should be recognized. (Applause.)

MR. W. H. POWELL, of Arkansas-Mr. Chairman, I would like to ask why, in putting a tax on these water power plants, it should not be put on the basis of kilowatt power, making the tax an equal one as applied to all such corporations, instead of merely taxing the companies that are to be formed in the future.

MR. HENRY L. STIMSON-Because, Mr. Chairman, such a tax as the gentleman suggests might be a very unfair one to the company in the light of the interest which it receives.

The lesson which we are learning in the development of the question of public franchises is that those franchises are often of very unequal value. Take the case of the river that has been very frequently mentioned here, the Coosa River in Alabama. That is a river, the value of the water power created by the dams of which has been admitted by all experts who have spoken to me as being very great. In other rivers the water power may be of very much less value and developed at very much greater expense. It is unfair that a kilowatt of power which may cost one company double or treble what it would cost another company, if situated at a place where God has given it cheap power, should be taxed at the same rate per kilowatt as the other one is taxed. Such a tax would not be uniform taxation. Such a tax would be non-uniform taxation. MR. W. H. POWELL-Is not that the basis on which they arrive at taxation?

MR. HENRY L. STIMSON-No, sir, not by any manner of means. I expect to pay a tax very soon under the Constitution, to which the large state of New York will contribute a very large amount, which would not come under that provision of the Constitution at all.

That covers practically the only point I wish to make. This report which, after a study of weeks, has been unanimously made by that committee, a majority of which committee, if I am not mistaken, were gentlemen who have had close acquaintance or professional training with the interests of power creation and power distribution, covers as fairly the full proposition as the study of the question given by impartial men can

cover. I speak earnestly in recommendation of the adoption of that unanimous report by this Convention. (Applause.)

CHAIRMAN FISHER-In order that we may have a perfectly impartial discussion of this matter, or as nearly so as practical circumstances admit, we are going to try to swing this pendulum back and forth, and I will assume that the other Senator from Colorado would be an appropriate representative of that side of the case. At all events, Senator Thomas is compelled to be absent this afternoon, and I will take the liberty of recognizing him at this time. (Applause.)

ADDRESS

By Hon. Charles S. Thomas, United States Senator from Colorado.

SENATOR THOMAS-Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen: I had not intended at this time to take any part in the discussion of the present subject, but as the Chairman has said, other engagements make a discussion on my part necessary now if I shall indulge in any discussion at all.

I realize quite as fully perhaps as any one can the tremendous importance of this question, not alone to the states as such and the people thereof, but to the nation as well. I know, as was said by the distinguished speaker who just took his seat, that the committee has given earnest, careful and religious thought to the solution of this great problem.

I have been, as I understand it, a conservationist from the start, and while I differ widely with many of the theories and views of my distinguished friend, Mr. Pinchot, I want to say that at the outset we were entirely in accord and no man has a loftier ideal of public duty and of the duty of meeting and discharging it than that most distinguished and useful citizen. (Applause.)

But I sometimes think that if we become too closely wedded to any proposition, we are apt to lose to some extent our sense of perspective. Possibly that criticism is quite as applicable to myself as to him. That of course remains to be seen.

I want to say at the outset that ever since I have been old enough to take part in public affairs, I have done what I could toward the solution of that mighty economic problem which lies at the basis of our future destiny. I allude to the proposition of monopoly. I have noticed that the march of consolidation, notwithstanding the opposition which it has encountered