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this property here, and have heard rumors as to his efforts. Do you know what he is trying to do?

Mr. ROSE. I understood that he has a resolution to purchase part of Sonora, some 10,000 square miles, and Lower California. Of course, that has been introduced several times in the Senate and House.

Mr. LITTLE. As a matter of fact, don't you believe that the people down there realize that the acquisition of that territory down there is inevitable for this country?

Mr. ROSE. It may be, but it will be absolutely the ruination of us until we get our water question settled so that we know where we are at, because under this Mexican company, which, of course, exists under the laws of Mexico, if you took this territory you would take the Mexican company and you would take whatever rights they have, and you would allow these people down there who have made contracts with the Mexican company for the delivery of water-you would give them the right to go into our courts and enforce them against us, and, naturally, that is what the people down there want. It would be a fine thing for them, but it would put them right into our own courts, to come right up and fight us. It would put a bunch of,millionaires against a bunch of farmers in my own State, and it looks to me like it would be absolutely ruinous to us. I can see no advantage to the United States in acquiring that.

Mr. LITTLE. It would depend upon whether the treaty reserved all those rights, of course.

Mr. SHAW. Isn't it a fact that the money spent to purchase Lower California would make possible the reclamation of only a very small portion of land down there, whereas if the same money was spent for storage on the Colorado River would develop millions of acres at present within the United States?

Mr. ROSE. Three hundred million dollars, which you would probably pay for that country, and which I have heard suggested as the price, would store every drop of water and would probably irrigate 5,000,000 acres of American public lands in our own country, where it would only buy 1,000,000 acres of land in a foreign country which belongs to half a dozen men. In other words, it would be taking $300,000,000, in my judgment, out of the United States Treasury and putting it into the pockets of half a dozen men.

Mr. LITTLE. I just wanted to take the land itself as it stands.

Mr. ROSE. Of course, you could confiscate those grants, but there were a great many Spanish grants in California, and I have never heard of one of them being canceled yet. In fact, all of southern California, the best of it, was in the boundaries of Spanish grants, and they all retained title, and I take it for granted that those people who are Americans and were taken into their own country would go into their own courts and retain theirs.

The CHAIRMAN. Let me ask you a question. It may not be very important it will depend on what the facts are-I have been asked why the different colors were there on that map representing land? Now, will you tell us what those different colors represent?

Mr. ROSE. This color here-this is the Imperial County line, and this is Riverside County [indicating on map]. This is Coachella Valley. This dark blue represents the lands which are irrigable from the all-American canal in Riverside County, which is included in

the Coachella Valley County water district, which is an irrigation district.

The CHAIRMAN. Now, that is the dark blue. Mention another color.

Mr. ROSE. The light blue represents an area of land which is irrigable from the all-American canal lying east of the present irrigable land in Imperial County, and the Laguna Water Co., which made this map, was organized for the purpose of irrigating that land. The CHAIRMAN. Now, there is another color. What do you call that?

Mr. ROSE. That is brown. This is organized by the Imperial West Side Irrigation Co. It is a mutual water company, organized by the proprietors and settlers on this public land over here, organized for the purpose of helping to build this canal around and irrigate this particular tract of land. That constitutes a couple of hundred thousand acres of land in the total.

The CHAIRMAN. Now, those different colors all represent irrigable land?

Mr. Rose. Not all of the land is irrigable, but it is all under gravity flow and the great portion of it is irrigable.

Mr. LITTLE. Is there anything in your bill that would prevent the Government of the United States from bringing water out from behind the Laguna Dam and sending it anywhere down the river they wanted to?

Mr. ROSE. There is nothing in our bill, but the silt of the Colorado River which comes down there, which amounts to probably millions of cubic yards, would prevent it, because it would fill it right up. When the Laguna Dam was built it was built some 12 feet in height, and in just about a week it was about filled up.

Mr. LITTLE. Does the silt prevent you from making a storage reservoir?

Mr. ROSE. Yes.

Mr. LITTLE. Then what becomes of this other storage proposition? Mr. ROSE. Way up the river?

Mr. LITTLE. Yes.

Mr. ROSE. Well, the Colorado River, of course, as it runs down it gets very silty. Now, from the headwaters of the Colorado River, the tributaries are clear water.

Mr. LITTLE. It isn't any more silty than other great rivers-the Nile, for example-are.

Mr. ROSE. Well, I don't know about the Nile, but I know the Colorado is very silty.

Mr. LITTLE. The Nile brings down enough mud every year to enrich the soil of all the land it reaches and overflows, and that is all it reaches. Yet they have built the greatest dam in all the world there. It don't fill up with silt.

Mr. ROSE. A storage dam or a diversion dam?

Mr. LITTLE. There are three storage dams on that river.

Mr. SMITH of Idaho. How do they keep the silt out?

Mr. LITTLE. I don't know that. I never followed that up, but they do it. There is more mud comes down the Nile than any other river in the world:

Mr. ROSE. I will answer that by saying this, Mr. Little, that there is no occasion for building down here and fighting the silt when

we can go up to the headwaters of the Colorado River, up to the tributaries--and there are many of them-and there are a great many splendid reservoir sites where the water is not silty, where it is clear water.

Mr. EVANS. You mean up a few hundred miles?

Mr. ROSE. No; way up. I have talked to Mr. Davis and have had them pointed out to me, but I couldn't tell you exactly the location. of them now. The committee could ask Mr. Davis to come down here an he would point them out to you very readily. He has pointed them out to me but I heven't them in mind.

The CHAIRMAN. Is there any place down along that line there where you have got a reservoir?

Mr. ROSE. No.

The CHAIRMAN. There is no place along this canal, the all-American canal.

Mr. ROSE. We have to-day a fleet of dredges, some six or eight dredges, working, pumping silt out of the canal, and we keep those working-we keep 200 men operating all the time on the first 3 miles of that canal to keep the silt out. So you see what it will do to a reservoir up there mighty quick.

Mr. LITTLE. Mr. Kettner suggests that at one dam I have mentioned they have sluice gates to take it out. I remember that now. Mr. ROSE. Yes; they sluice it out there.

The CHAIRMAN. Then the reservoir would have to be built way up the river?

Mr. ROSE. Yes; up in the headwaters of the river.

Mr. LITTLE. They have the biggest storage dam in the world on the Nile, and they don't have any trouble about it, and it is the muddiest water in the world.

The CHAIRMAN. Proceed, Mr. Rose, with anything else that you wish to say.

Mr. BARBOUR. Could you organize under the State irrigation act of California and issue bonds provided by that act? Have you considered that, Mr. Rose?

Mr. ROSE. We are organized under the State act:

Mr. BARBOUR. That is the present Imperial Valley Co.?

Mr. ROSE. The Imperial irrigation district. And here is this district here also organized under the State [indicating]; the white and the dark blue are organized under the State.

Mr. BARBOUR. And you pay the expense do you, by assessmentthat is, your original expense-by assessment of so much per acre on the land?

Mr. ROSE. Yes; a regular assessment, just like a county assessment, or a municipality.

Mr. BARBOUR. Then, after you are organized, after your works are completed, do you still raise your necessary money by assessment, or do you pay a rate per acre for water?

Mr. ROSE. We pay 50 cents an acre-foot for our water, and then in addition to that we pay an assessment, too.

Mr. BARBOUR. How is that assessed?

Mr. Rose. It is levied. It amounted to $1.62 an acre this year on the lands in the Imperial district.

Mr. BARBOUR. Is that just an arbitrary amount fixed, or is it according to the benefits?

Mr. ROSE. It is an arbitrary amount fixed. Of course, there is a little variation in that. There are some lands assessed at less, but the great bulk of it is assessed at $50 an acre, and that is the rate.

Mr. BARBOUR. But if you bonded your district under the State law for that amount you would not be able to raise money enough to carry this through?

Mr. ROSE. No.

Mr. BARBOUR. It would be too much of a burden?

Mr. ROSE. We couldn't sell our bonds. With the present high rates of interest, and with the Federal loans stopped, we couldn't sell our bonds. If we could sell our bonds we wouldn't be here at all, because that is all we are asking a guarantee of our bonds. If it wasn't for that we would go ahead and build it ourselves.

Mr. BARBOUR. The thing that prompted that question to me was the fact that you want this all-American canal so that you can sell the bonds?

Mr. ROSE. That is it exactly. Of course, as long as the big interests are able to control the floating of bonds-and there are only a few concerns that can handle $30,000,000 worth of bonds, and they must be Wall Street concerns, and of course those large interests are able to block us.

Mr. SHAW. Is it not a fact that certain moneyed interests of Los Angeles said that if we ratified the contract to build the all-American canal they would withdraw their loans from the valley?

Mr. ROSE. Yes; they sent representatives down there to make representations to the farmers that these large banking interests which are identified with the Mexican interests-they sent their representatives there during the ratification of this contract to tell them that the banks would withdraw their loans from the valley if the contract was ratified.

Mr. BARBOUR. I didn't catch that-if you ratified the contract for the building of the all-American dam-what was that?

Mr. ROSE. They would withdraw their loans from the valley.
Mr. BARBOUR. With whom?

Mr. SMITH of Idaho. Individual loans?

Mr. ROSE. Here is the situation: They send their money in to Los Angeles banks, where they can only get about 7 per cent on it, and they send it down there and loan it out to the farmers at 10 and 12 per cent. They have got a monopoly on it owing to conditions down there. Now, they said to the people: "If you people ratify this contract we will withdraw our loans from the valley." which was probably several million dollars that they have got in small loans, crop loans, and one thing and another, which the local banks are handling.

Mr. SMITH of Idaho. Did they do that?

Mr. ROSE. No; we all knew they would not.

Mr. BARBOUR. Who did that?

Mr. ROSE. That was Stoddard Jess. He is one of the stockholders of the Otis-Chandler Co., also president of the Banking Association of Los Angeles. He did that through Col. Holabird.

The CHAIRMAN. Are there any more questions of Mr. Rose.

Mr. ROSE. The Mexican concession that we operate under I wanted to say something on that, too-the Mexican concession which the Mexican company acquired. After Mr. Heber came back and tried

to get the United States Government to grant him 10,000 secondfeet of water from the Colorado River as a private company, not allowing it to run to the landowners, and was refused, he went to Mexico City in 1904 and acquired a Mexican concession from the Mexican Government, allowing him to carry water around through Mexico, in which he agreed to leave one-half of the water that they carried through Mexico in there for the use of the Mexican land. Now, the situation is simply this regarding the development in Mexico and the use of the water: If the territory south of the line to-day—if there were no contracts made between the Mexican companies so as to give them a title so far as the use of the water is concerned, they have acquired no water right even if they enter our own courts, but here is the situation: They agreed under that concession to leave one-half of the water which they carried through. It was a toll. They never diverted any water themselves; they have simply taken one-half. If that one-half was 1,000 second-feet, they were entitled to it; if it was 100 feet, they were entitled to it; if it wasn't any, they were not entitled to any. We never agreed, nor the Mexican concession does not agree, to carry any specific amount of water or any water through there, but it does agree to leave one-half of what it does carry through.

The CHAIRMAN. Now, what have they used of that?

Mr. ROSE. They have used at the very maximum about one-third of the water that we carried through there.

Mr. LITTLE. The water that is actually used all comes out of the river in the United States?

Mr. Rose. Yes, sir-well, there is a little diversion at Volcano during high-water period.

Mr. LITTLE. And it comes from a right that you Imperial Valley folks have yourselves?

Mr. ROSE. Yes; absolutely.

Mr. LITTLE. You could say to Mexico that none of it should go down there if you wanted to?

Mr. ROSE. Absolutely.

Mr. LITTLE. Can't you treat with them? Can't you go to them and say, "We won't let it go through there at all unless you give certain concessions"?

Mr. Rose. If they can block us from building that canal, they don't have to treat with us. They are getting water down there free. We have built every canal in Mexico out of our own money and paid for it.

Mr. LITTLE. But suppose you just said, "We won't put any more water down there," what would become of them? They couldn't do anything.

Mr. ROSE. They would dry up, but it would dry us up also, as they are between us and the river. They would then be compelled to come to the United States Government and ask for a treaty by which they could obtain water. That is what would become of them. That is what they would have to do. They are not going to let their country go back, and if they didn't do that they would dry up.

Mr. LITTLE. Really, if you could build this present canal you would be protected if the Yuma people did not interfere.

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