you intend to recede from the unanimous statement of the committee?

DR. GEORGE F. SWAIN-I do not, sir.

MR. HENRY L. STIMSON-Do you know of any other member of the committee who intends to recede from that unanimous statement?

DR. GEORGE F. SWAIN-I do not know of any, sir.

MR. HENRY L. STIMSON-When you signed it it embodied the views which were held by you, did it not?

DR. GEORGE F. SWAIN-It did, and those views are practically the views set forth in the majority report, but not those in the minority report.

CHAIRMAN FISHER-Pardon me, gentlemen! I will interrupt to see if we cannot clear up the atmosphere.

I think it is a correct characterization of these three documents that, whether you call them reports or not, the so-called unanimous report embodied those things about which all members of the committee present are agreed. The majority report contains certain things with which the minority members did not agree. The minority report contains certain things with which the majority members of the committee did not agree and those things do not agree with each other.

Is not that the entire case, Professor Swain?

DR. GEORGE F. SWAIN-That is correct, Mr. Chairman. CHAIRMAN FISHER-Then I believe we may say the unanimous report covers those points upon which the members of the committee do entirely agree, but it does not go as far as either of the other reports.

REMARKS OF MR. DUDLEY G. WOOTEN, OF

WASHINGTON

MR. WOOTEN-Mr. Chairman, and members of the Conservation Congress: There is one phase of the water question to which hardly any attention has been paid, and to my section of the country it is equally as important as the different phases that have been discussed.

The committee which has made these reports is denominated in the list of standing committees and in the constitution as the "Committee on Waters," not the "Committee on Water Powers."

The waters of the country are useful for many things besides a mere monopoly of power for manufacturing purposes. In fourteen states of the Union heretofore the most valuable use for water was for irrigation. We heard here on yesterday afternoon the address of Senator Smith and the address of Dr. Wiley and the addresses of others extolling the value of the conservation of the soil and the conservation and improve

ment of food. It was the universal opinion of all those addresses that the foundation, the backbone of civilization and the prosperity of this country lies in the soil and those who till the soil.

If that be true, the application of water in those states where the only method of cultivation and production of soil is by the use of water in irrigation, is most valuable, the most practical present use in the great western country, and it is in that phase of the question that we are deeply interested.

My friends, consider for a moment the state in which I live. According to Dr. Van Hise, in his work on Conservation, there are thirty millions of horsepower undeveloped in this country. According to the report of the Geological Survey of the state of Washington, made in co-operation with the United States Survey, there are in the state of Washington 13,125,000 horsepower undeveloped in the waters and streams of our state-nearly one-half of the undeveloped power of the whole Union. We have this peculiar condition: The entire area of the state of Washington is in round numbers 42,000,000 acres, and fifty-three per cent of that area, or more than onehalf of it, is today bottled up in the forest reserves, national forests, monuments, and in the Public Domain of the United States. In Arizona and New Mexico the percentage of the domain of the state that is withdrawn from any sort of development for water purposes reaches the position of 95 per cent of the total area of those states. So that you see the question of conservation with us is not a question of conservation, but a question of turning the country loose and giving it a chance to develop.

Dr. Wiley correctly said yesterday afternoon that the true meaning of conservation is wise use, and that is all we ask for the waters of our states. (Applause.) The use of water in the state of Washington for irrigation purposes is dependent largely upon the permission that shall be given us to erect dams and create power plants for pumping water over vast areas of land that are high above the level of any possible irrigation ditch that can be constructed. Do you understand that in that state reclamation projects have already converted into fertile fields and orchards many thousands of acres? But a great part of the state and a great part of this land that can be reclaimed lies above the level of the irrigation ditches. You have to pump the water. It is being done now by gasoline engines, which means what-it means the consumption of the fuel and the waste of it

MR. M. T. BRYAN-Mr. Chairman, I notice you have called the speaker's attention to the fact that his time has expired. I move that the gentleman be accorded another unit of time.

CHAIRMAN FISHER-You must either hear a few speakers for a long time, or a good many speakers for a short time each. MR. M. T. BRYAN-Mr. Chairman, I move that the gentleman be given five minutes further time.

(The motion was seconded, put and carried.)

MR. DUDLEY G. WOOTEN-The delegation from Washington have traveled 3,500 miles for the purpose, if possible, of securing a fair hearing in this Convention. Since we have been here it has become very evident to us that whatever we might say here would be practically wasted, anyhow. But we feel we owe a duty to our constituency. It will be the last time, so far as I am concerned, that we will intrude into a National Conservation Congress. (Applause.)

REMARKS OF MR. R. HORAK, OF NEW YORK MR. HORAK-Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen: If man be the representative of God, man claims all that which somebody else has not put his hands on. So it has been with us in the old country and this. Wherever there is anything that human mind can conceive is worth while taking, man takes it. All these corporations and trusts are only the creation of our own sons and daughters. It comes right back to us. We are all liberal with something that we do not actually hold ourselves, but which belongs to everybody, and we are awfully stingy with what belongs to ourselves. These are the natural selfish tendencies of ourselves.

To make it short, I will say this, that whenever the great mass of the people do not keep clean, as they say in the different districts of New York, the board of health steps in, authorized by the masses of the people, to make things right. So also we will find with a great many of the necessaries of life.

Water! Water is a food that constitutes the mainstay of life. Whether it comes over the waterwheel or whether it makes you feel all right makes a difference. The waterwheel can wait, but when you feel dry you cannot wait. Water is such a character of material that it must be kept at all times just as free as air, even if they do make nitrate of sodas or other kinds of stuff out of it. There may be a time coming when we will have to pass legislation to restrict the use of even the air. Coal, for instance, is sometimes restricted.

The general tendency of the masses of the people in the large cities, who depend for their living upon sources outside of the cities, is to require good food, plenty of it, and good water. Those things should be regulated by a higher power than an individual power of a certain section of a state or city or

country. In the case of water, it should be universally restricted by the entirety, and there should be such laws passed as will make it so that no sectional feeling can ever interfere with the general good of the majority. This is the cry from the masses who have not got carfare to come here, who cannot perhaps speak as others can speak, who are all stages of the game tied down with family ties and cannot express their thoughts as they feel them; because it is a fact that one of you who had a good dinner cannot tell how the fellow feels who had not any dinner.

In these resolutions or these three reports which have been offered here, not one of them has in it a suggestion of regulation which makes the man that wants the power for his own commercial purposes liable to the authorities for non-compliance with his contract. Another thing they forgot to put in is that it makes it compulsory, as the resolution reads, for the country to go in and buy their worthless plants at an enormous price in the end and they get all their money back while we will have only the experience. (Applause.)

REMARKS OF HON. T. H. BANKHEAD, UNITED STATES SENATOR FROM ALABAMA

SENATOR BANKHEAD-Mr. Chairman and ladies and gentlemen: I deem it a very great honor to be permitted for a very brief time to speak to this remarkable convention. I would not have said a word from the platform if it were not for the fact that my state, the state I have the honor to represent, has been more frequently mentioned by the speakers in this Congress than any other state in the Union. Some of them seem to have taken pride in personal references.

Mr. Chairman, this morning, I believe it was, the distinguished Senator from Ohio (Senator Burton), my personal friend, with whom I have been intimately associated in this great work of the improvement of rivers and harbors of this country, made a most remarkable statement before this Convention. While I have the greatest admiration for his ability, I must say that his imagination is as vivid as the morning star itself. (Laughter.)

The distinguished Senator from Ohio said that not long since a bill was introduced transferring or giving all the water power in Alabama to the state for the purpose of development, and that great numbers of protests had come from every section of that commonwealth protesting against such action on the part of Congress. I have carefully examined the records, and I am here to say if any bill of that character was ever introduced

into this Congress, it failed to appear in the Congressional Record. There was a bill introduced authorizing a corporation to improve the water power of the Tennessee River, and my distinguished friend from Ohio was an advocate of the bill. He was active in the passage of that measure, and he and I together included a provision in the Rivers and Harbors bill creating a commission of army engineers to settle the whole question of its development and report to Congress what part the Government should take and what part the corporations should take, and what their proportionate share should be in the construction of that great work. So you see, my good friend's imagination ran away with him on this occasion.

The distinguished ex-Secretary of War stated from this platform that there were now being built five great dams on the Coosa River in Alabama for the purpose of creating power, I presume was the inference or impression attempted to be conveyed to this audience. I have had the honor to represent the state of Alabama in the Congress of the United States for twenty-six years. I know every foot of this territory. I have been over every mile of its navigable waters, and I am here to tell this convention that there is not a single solitary dam being constructed on the Coosa River by the Government today. There is one dam being constructed by private capital, intended to develop power as well as navigation. That poor old river-and it is one of the oldest in this country(loud laughter) has been an absolute orphan! (Laughter.) The Government of the United States has been intending to improve its navigability for thirty or forty years, but what has it done? It has constructed four dams, five perhaps. One of them is now in course of completion for navigation purposes, and there is not any one of them over eight or nine feet high, and they do not produce and cannot produce a horsepower, all of them combined. (Laughter.)

We did succeed in passing a bill through Congress authorizing private capital to construct dams on the Coosa Riverfor what? For a double purpose; for the purpose of improving its navigation, first. That was the first and original idea, and that was the idea that prevailed all through the bill and the discussion that led to its passage.

These gentlemen then come along and say, "We will build your dam. We will build your dam at a cost of several millions"-I do not remember exactly how many; three millions, I believe. They say, "When we have completed that, we will turn it over to the Government of the United States without a cent of charge except that they shall allow us the privilege of using the surplus power or the surplus water created by the dam for power purposes."