FIFTH SESSION

REPORT OF COMMITTEE ON CREDENTIALS

Wednesday, November 19, 1913, 2 p. m.

The report of the Committee on Credentials was presented at the opening of the afternoon session, Wednesday, November 19, by Mr. M. L. Alexander, Chairman. Mr. Alexander said:

Mr. President and Members of the Fifth National Conservation Congress: We, your Committee on Credentials, beg to report as follows:

After a careful review of the list of delegates presented, we find that a total of 722 delegates and members have registered at the time of making this report, and are entitled to seats in this Convention, all states being represented by delegates except the territories of Alaska and Hawaii.

You will also find attached to this report the number of delegates, by states, and the list of names of delegates from each

state.

In order that the voting power of each state may be thoroughly understood we append hereto and make a part of this report, Article 9 of the Constitution, as follows:

Article 9-Voting.

Section 1. Each member of the Congress shall be entitled to one vote on all actions taken viva voce.

Section 2. A division or call of states may be demanded on any action, by a state delegation. On division, each delegate shall be entitled to one vote; provided (1) that no state shall have more than twenty votes; and provided (2) that when a state is represented by less than ten delegates, said delegate may cast ten votes for each state.

Section 3. The term "state" as used herein is to be construed to mean either state, territory or insular possession.

Respectfully submitted,

M. L. ALEXANDER, Chairman.
FRANCIS CUTTLE.

MILTON E. DAMM.

W. A. FLEMING JONES.

F. W. RANE.

Committee.

As a supplemental report Mr. Alexander stated that the number of delegates present from each state was as follows:

By Hon. Francis G. Newlands, United States Senator from Nevada

SENATOR NEWLANDS-Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen: Having only recently returned from the far west, I was informed by my secretary this morning that I was on your program for an address. Hurrying here, I found that I had lost my place upon the program and that the Congress was considering the water power question. Your Chairman has been kind enough to say that a few words from me would be welcome at this time, and I gladly avail myself of the opportunity. I find that the discussion this morning, so far as I heard it, relates to the old contention between state and national rights, state and national functions, that contention which has been

engrossing the American people, and particularly our lawyers in Congress and in the state legislatures, for over one hundred years. I wish to suggest a method by which we can arrest this old contention of the lawyers as to abstract and theoretical questions, and bring their attention as legislators to the extreme necessity of framing legislation that will bring into co-operation these contending sovereignties, so that we can end the work of the lawyers and inaugurate the work of the engineers and the constructors. (Applause.)

We are dealing with the subject of water, one of the most valuable assets we have. Water, that elusive element, so essential to mankind, almost as elusive as the air itself, and in which, notwithstanding its elusiveness, sovereigns and individuals and corporations are claiming property rights. Science has never yet discovered a method by which water absorbed by the thirst of the sun and gathered in a condensed form in the clouds can be regulated so far as its output from the clouds is concerned. Science may discover some method for regulating the output of the clouds. But it is clear that science should be set to work to regulate the output of the clouds after it has fallen upon the earth and where it comes for the first time under man's dominion. It should be regulated in such a way as to promote every beneficial use and to prevent every destructive use.

We find the two sovereigns claiming jurisdiction over water, the national sovereignty under the interstate commerce power. That power, in the interest of navigation, involves the regulation and control of the rivers of the country from source to mouth, including the unnavigable portions as well as the navigable portions, for the unnavigable portions of today may be made by science the navigable portions of tomorrow, and the waters contained in the unnavigable portions today are tomorrow running in the navigable portions. So the national power, in the interest of navigability and interstate commerce, pertains to all our streams to their remotest sources.

But there are other uses to which water is put besides navigation. Water can be used for municipal supplies. The waters of our rivers can be used for irrigation of our arid plains. They can be used for the development of water power. They can be used even in our semi-humid and humid regions for intensive cultivation, and they can be regulated with a view to the reclamation of swamp lands. It is contended that all these uses, outside of navigation, are under the control of the states; that the nation acts outside of its jurisdiction when it attempts to exercise any control whatever over them for such other purposes.

I do not intend to enter into a discussion of the constitu

tional law. Let us assume that both sides are right or both sides are wrong. The thing we want to accomplish is a union of all the sovereignties, a union of all the proprietors that have any jurisdiction over or interest in the water; a union of plans, a union of works, under which the highest good of the entire country can be worked out.

So far as the National Government is concerned, we have numerous scientific sources entirely unrelated with each other, each of which is pursuing some study relating to water-the Geological Survey studying the sources and the supply of water; the Engineer Corps of the Army attending to the works intended to promote navigability of our streams; the Reclamation Service devoted to the reclamation of arid lands; the Drainage Service making a study of swamp land reclamation. Why should they be unrelated? Why should we not bring them together into one related service, under one commission? It seems to me the very first thing for us to do is to stand for legislation such as is advanced by a bill which I have had the honor to introduce in the Congress of the United States, entitled the "River Regulation Bill," with a view to co-ordinating all these services into one service through a co-ordinating board, so that they can mutually plan in such a way as to promote each one of these individual uses in the highest degree.

We have these services scattered among various departments -the Department of War, the Department of the Interior, the Department of Commerce, the Department of Agriculture. If we bring the heads of these various related services onto one board, called the River Regulation Board, we would in a measure separate them from their departments. How must that be met? It should be met by organizing a Waterways Commission, consisting of these four chiefs of departments, with the President himself at its head, giving them the power to organize this river regulating board from their subordinates, and setting them to work in a union of plans and works in which each individual service can finally accomplish, in the best form and the highest degree, that which it has set out to accomplish.

What should we have in addition to that? We should have some form of co-operation with the states; and the bill provides for co-operation between the National Government and the State Governments, with a view to recognition of the sovereignty of the state over certain phases of the water question, and with a view to enlisting them in this common cause of plans and of work, properly apportioning costs and benefits. What we wish to do is to furnish the people of the United States the machinery under which the sovereigns can cooperate, under which the nation and the states can co-operate,

and under which both can co-operate with corporations and individuals having any proprietary interest in the waters of the country. If we can accomplish that, we will find that all these vexed questions which are now disturbing us will absolutely disappear, and that instead of quarreling for one hundred years longer as to the respective powers and functions of sovereigns, we will find them all united in a common work.

My friends, we have been engaging in this work thus far in a sporadic way, in a feeble way, without effectiveness. The National Government has permitted one public servant, the railways, to sandbag another public servant, the waterways, and to practically drive it out of the service of the public by unfair competition. That should not be permitted. This bill involves a complete construction of our waterways as instrumentalities of transportation under plans which are the joint creation of these sovereigns and these different co-ordinating forces. It involves construction of a complete railway, with terminal facilities and transfer facilities and sites. We might as well attempt to build a waterway and make it complete without these transfer facilities and sites, and transfer facilities, forced by law, with railways, as to attempt to build a railway without stations, without bridges across rivers, and in sections here and there, absolutely leaving some places destitute of rails.

This is a national function, and in co-ordination with that the various uses of water must be considered, so that in the common plans every beneficial use will be promoted, both national and state, and every prejudicial use will be prevented.

We must also in this study take up the question of regulating the volume of the rivers themselves for navigation, which means stability of flow as far as that can be made practicable. This involves the control of every drop of water that falls from the clouds, first by proper methods of cultivation and plowing, which will make the land itself the storage place of these flood waters; second, by the construction of dams and reservoirs that will hold the flood waters; third, by spreading these waters over the arid lands where they can be used in cultivation and whence they will gradually seep back to the stream, restoring its volume at the time when it is most needed, during the period of drouth, for navigation. We must control the waters of the rivers themselves in such a way as to enable men to have the benefit of these vast areas of alluvial soil, called our swamp lands, which contain today the richest soils that, by a process of erosion, have been taken from the uplands and deposited there.

I suggest that this convention take up this question, first, of co-ordinating the national services that relate in any way to the