The
population which the Reclamation Act has brought into the arid West,
while comparatively small when compared with that in the more closely
inhabited East, has been a most effective contribution to the National
life, for it has gone far to transform the social aspect of the West,
making for the stability of the institutions upon which the welfare of
the whole country rests: it has substituted actual homemakers, who have
settled on the land with their families, for huge, migratory bands of
sheep herded by the hired shepherds of absentee owners.
The recent attacks on the Reclamation Service, and on Mr. Newell, arise
in large part, if not altogether, from an organized effort to repudiate
the obligation of the settlers to repay the Government for what it has
expended to reclaim the land. The repudiation of any debt can always
find supporters, and in this case it has attracted the support not only
of certain men among the settlers who hope to be relieved of paying what
they owe, but also of a variety of unscrupulous politicians, some highly
placed. It is unlikely that their efforts to deprive the West of
the revolving Irrigation fund will succeed in doing anything but
discrediting these politicians in the sight of all honest men.
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