Excerpt from Twenty-Third Annual Report of the Bureau of Reclamation Transmitted to Congress in Pursuance of the Act of June 17, 1902 (32 Stat. 388) For the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1924 When this act was framed the country was still in the pioneer period Of development; irrigation works as a rule were neither large nor costly, areas watered from a single project were not extensive, and settlement Of these areas shaped itself without organization or plan except in particular cases like those controlled by the Mormon Church.\ It was the common belief that all that was needed to Obtain irrigated farms and prosperous homes was to provide water by building canals and reservoirs. The sponsors Of Federal re clamation believed it would be a simple matter to change arid, unimproved land into farms because they thought the settler would have Virtually free land, and that water would be cheap because the irrigation works would be constructed by the Government without profit, and with interest-free money. As a result Of this conception, the act dealt almost entirely with the construction and Operation Of irrigation works. The Obstacles settlers would encounter in subduing the land, equipping farms, and: meeting payments on water rights were not regarded, as serious enough to require a place in the development program. Time has. Shown that this was a mistake. Land has not been free; a majority Of the settlers had to buy their farms from private owners, in some cases at extortionate prices. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.