in the historic national policy of using Federal funds and water resources to distribute benefits and opportunity widely. If the difficulties I have had in making an analysis of the effects of H. R. 9969 impede one with such advantages as I have had in understanding reclamation law, you can appreciate readily the difficulties of citizens generally in realizing how destructive of national policy H. R. 9969 would be. The San Luis bills before your subcommittee, unfortunately, appear to partake of the tradition of the unsuccessful efforts by former Congressman Alfred J. Elliott in 1944 (sec. 4, H. R. 3961), and by former Senator Sheridan Downey and Senator William Knowland in the 80th Congress (S. 912). While San Louis bills now before you make a gesture of recognizing Federal reclamation policy, I think the Congress and the American public should be told that they would encourage a partnership, the net effect of which would be infliction of catastrophic damage upon national policy. I hope your subcommittee will not approve a quick substitution of H. R. 9969 for H. R. 6305, because the latter has drawn the effective fire. No sleight-ofhand ought to be allowed to conceal the fact that both bills, while differing in details, have destruction as a common effect. San Luis has been profusely and persistently advertised in California as a project that recognizes Federal reclamation law. Nevertheless, analysis of the bills to construct it discloses the fact that no matter how richly clothed the emperor may be, according to his courtiers, actually he wears almost no clothing at all. Please print this letter when you publish hearings or other memoranda on proposals to build San Luis project. I favor construction of San Luis by the Federal Government, but only if all water using its facilities is covered by the excess land provision, as required by existing reclamation law. I see no valid reason for making San Luis an exception to national policy. Sincerely yours, PAUL S. TAYLOR. Senator CLINTON ANDERSON, BERKELEY, CALIF., May 5, 1958. Senate Office Building, Washington, D. C. DEAR SENATOR ANDERSON: Will you please put me down as in complete agreement with my esteemed colleague, Paul S. Taylor, as to the retention of the historic 160-acre water right recognized in the National Reclamation Act of 1902. Any departure from this wise provision would amount to limitations on the small farmer in favor of the large farmer, a course of action our Nation can ill-afford to take. SIR: It is my opinion that letters from citizens can help you to keep intact the 160-acre irrigation. It is my opinion that no change should be made in the excess land law at this time. It is my privilege, I understand, to ask that this letter be made a part of the record. Thank you. Respectfully yours, HANNA BAY. Senator CLINTON ANDERSON, 742 11TH EAST, SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH, April 28, 1958. Chairman, Subcommittee on Irrigation and Reclamation. DEAR SIR: It is conceivable that a family size farm no longer conforms to the specifications for efficient and economic operation of a farm. It is probable that large unit farms, with power machinery, can produce the lowest per unit cost delivery of a farm product. For example, I have a Canadian friend, a wheat farmer, whose cost of harvesting and delivering a bushel of wheat to the market is 14 cent. A family farm of 160 acres, T. Roosevelt's concept, could not compete. However, it occurs to me that in our American way, if there is any such, the ultimate objective of any type of production on the farm is the human product, not the least of which to the youth, is security, belonging, companionship, ownership, and other factors necessary to the production of individual integrity. Furthermore, in a nuclear age the concentration of population, so popular in our more recent historical past, may soon become evidence of our greatest developmental mistake. Cavemanlike dwellers in cities may well be living in their tombs. If this is not a madman's concept, it would seem that decentralization of population, insofar as family farms can be made to contribute, would be a partial answer to our dilemma. And again to drive the farmer family from the farm, is to drive them into labor. This is presently a serious social problem and will be aggravated by further increase in big business-efficiency farm units owned by absentee owners of various types including banks, millionaires, etc., who or which displace good citizens interested in living by drivers of power machinery interested only in making a living. It would seem that we cannot afford the luxury of efficiency production at the expense of the production of integrity. I suggest that my opinion be made a part of the record, for it is time we begin to recognize the importance of the individual or self-realization as an aspect of the American way of life lest we lose the integrity necessary to national perpetuation. HONORABLE SIR: No change should be made in the excess-land law relative to the 160-acre limitation. Please make this letter a part of the record. Sincerely, LLOYD W. GANSCHOW. 4312 NORTH FOURTH STREET, ARLINGTON, VA., Hon. CLINTON ANDERSON, May 2, 1958. United States Senate, Washington, D. C. DEAR SIR: I understand there are two bills now before your Subcommittee on Irrigation and Reclamation which would seriously weaken the "excess-land law." I am writing to you in opposition to any such weakening in order to circumvent the reclamation law of 1902 which limits to 160 acres or 320 acres for a man and wife the amount of land to be irrigated from Federal irrigation projects. I urge no change in the excess-land law. May I ask, please, that this letter be made part of the record? Thank you. Sincerely yours, MARY CONSTANCE FOLEY. Senator CLINTON ANDERSON, Washington, D. C. R. M. SCHAEFER LUMBER Co., DEAR SENATOR: Land is consolidating by economic necessity in some cases. Some not. However, what's going to happen?-500 corporations owning all but the land and 2 million large farmers the rest? Is this good for democracy? We'd better go slow on upping the 160 acres- or 320-family irrigated. I've farmed 5 acres irrigated all my life.-I tell you-320 acres irrigated is one lot of land. RICK SCHAEFER, Jr. 5315 SOUTH Cornell AvenuE, CHICAGO, ILL., April 27, 1958. DEAR SENATOR ANDERSON: I would urge you to oppose ill-advised recent attempts to remove the 160-acre limitation in Federal reclamation projects. This limitation is necessary to prevent monopoly and to encourage family farming. Respectfully, DAVID TECHTER. Senator CLINTON ANDERSON, MULLINAX, WELLS & MORRIS, Dallas, Tex., April 23, 1958. Chairman, Subcommitee on Irrigation and Reclamation, United States Senate, Washington, D. C. DEAR SENATOR ANDERSON: I have noticed that your subcommittee proposes to hold hearings upon recommendations to weaken excess land law which now limits the amount of land which any landowner may secure public irrigation to 160 acres or a half section for a married couple. In my opinion, such modification of the law would be a step in the direction of monopoly control of land by large landholders and is a step away from the idea of a family farm. Any such tendency toward monopoly ownership of land is against the family farm idea and is in my judgment bad for the Nation. Farmers are leaving the farm too fast as it is and efforts should be made to encourage them to remain on the farms. I would like to ask that this letter be made a part of the record of your hearing and to urge that there be no change in excess land law. Yours truly, OTTO B. MULLINAX. 1284 EAST 22D STREET, BROOKLYN, N. Y., April 22, 1958. Senator CLINTON ANDERSON, Chairman, Subcommittee on Irrigation and Reclamation, Senate Building, Washington, D. C. DEAR SIR: We wish to express our opposition to any attempt to alter the 160acre limitation of land which may be irrigated by any landowner from the public irrigation projects. The more the excess land law is weakened, the closer we will eventually come to the sharecropper condition extent in sections of our country today. Please make this letter part of the record. We oppose any change in the excess land law. Yours truly, MILTON G. WOLF. Senator CLINTON P. ANDERSON, CENTERPORT, N. Y., April 28, 1958. Chairman, Subcommittee on Irrigation and Reclamation, Senate Interior Committee, Washington, D. C. DEAR SENATOR ANDERSON: I am interested in the hearings to start this week on the proposed modification of the Reclamation Act to raise the 160-acre limitation on federally irrigated land. Inasmuch as there are already many factors making it difficult for small farmers to operate successfully, the further competition that would be created by opening up this irrigation privilege to big owners and corporations would most certainly cause the abandonment of more small farms. I hope the committee will realize that it is not true that people have lost interest in the American principles of widespread ownership of land and the operation of family farms. I wish to register my protest against any changes in the Reclamation Act which would give more privileges to the already powerful corporations engaged in agricultural work. The evidence does not convince anyone that a trend toward factory farming, large-scale corporate ownership, should be encouraged by the Congress with irrigation water developed by tax money. Sincerely yours, Hon. JAMES E. MURRAY, VELMA HONTZ. DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR, Chairman, Interior and Insular Affairs Committee, United States Senate, Washington, D. C. DEAR SENATOR MURRAY: Your letter of February 21, 1958, transmitted for our attention and consideration a communication from Mr. L. G. Clure of Gary, Nebr. It concerns excess-land matters as related to the North Platte project in Nebraska. The Commissioner of Reclamation has requested a complete status report on the excess-land situation on the North Platte project and we had hoped to have a full report for you by this time. With specific reference to the North Platte project, our records indicate that, while the problem is not completely resolved, slow but positive progress is being made. In 1946 there was 10.2 percent of the total project acreage in excess status. By 1952, the figure had been reduced to 5.3 percent, by 1954 to 4.5 percent, and by the close of 1957 to only 3.2 percent. This latter percentage represents 58 ownerships comprising a total of 7,355 irrigable acres out of a 226,323 irrigable acre project total with 2,653 ownerships. Please be assured that we will provide you with more complete information regarding the subject-matter as soon as the Commissioner has received the regional director's report. Mr. Clure's letter is returned, copies having been made for our files. DEAR SIR: I would like to present a few facts concerning reclamation in the North Platte project. This project was one of the first reclamation projects created by the Reclamation Act. I think it is time we analyze the reasons this project is not a success and endeavor to correct what is wrong. The local authorities do not recognize the statutes of land limitations which should control land ownership in a reclamation project. Owners of hundreds of acres of land and cattle companies are immune from the statutes of land limitations in this project. When this reclamation project was created all the water in the North Platte River watershed should have been controlled by the Bureau of Reclamation and not by the States of Colorado, Wyoming, and Nebraska as it is now. No man can serve 2 masters, so how do we expect water to successfully serve 4 masters? In order to successfully operate a reclamation project, irrigation, drainage, power, flood control, and hail suppression has to be controlled by the Bureau of Reclamation. Each one is dependent on the other. Local authorities are like spoiled children, they do not recognize Nature's God or Nature's laws, and when they get into trouble, they run to Washington for help, like they are on the Gering Valley flood-control project. I am enclosing a newspaper clipping concerning this project. Senator Barrett (Republican of Wyoming), introduced legislation to authorize the Secretary of the Interior to fix the size of farm units on Federal reclamation projects at more than 160 acres. I don't know why he would go to that trouble as the local authorities do not attempt to enforce the 160-acre limitation in this North Platte project. Part of this project has been in operation about 50 years and I believe it is time for the people in this project to account for their stewardship of this area. This valley is called The American Valley of the Nile, and if we are to successfully develop it as a reclamation project we will have to stop the selfish greed which is destroying it. I believe before Congress authorizes any more money for this project it would be wise to investigate and find out why it will not pay its own way as a reclamation project should if it is properly administered. Yours truly, L. G. CLURE. P. S. I would be glad to inform you on any of the local problems which I have a firsthand knowledge of, as I have lived in this valley about 45 years. Hon. JAMES E. MURRAY, TERRIL FARMERS UNION, Terril, Iowa, April 25, 1958. Chairman, Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs, Senate Office Building, Washington, D. C. DEAR SENATOR MURRAY: I am enclosing a statement representing the view of our Farmers Union local for the Interior Committee hearing April 30 on the 160acre limitation. Our family rents a 640-acre absentee-owned farm here. In our township 75 percent of the land is rented. Farm land is priced way above the ability of its production to pay for it. We have long thought of moving to new land when we buy a place. It appears almost impossible to pay for a good farm here by farming it. We also are troubled with asthma and other allergies which perhaps wouldn't bother us in a drier climate. As long as there remains the 160-acre-per-family member limitation on new land developed by reclamation, it is a source of hope and eventual ownership for people like us. We feel that if this limitation is removed, that the land there will become investment priced rather than productively priced. We feel that a system of tenancy would develop where otherwise a system of individual ownership would predominate. Perhaps without this limitation farming would be dependent entirely on hired help, thus leaving the people with less human dignity than even we renters now have. Personally speaking, my mon and dad, my brother and I, do sincerely hope that you and your fellow members are able to preserve and perhaps strengthen the 160-acre limitation on farm land developed by Federal reclamation. Yours truly, JIM MURPHY. TERRIL FARMERS UNION, Hon. JAMES E. MURRAY, Chairman, Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs, The United States Senate. DEAR SIR: We 47 farm families belonging to the Terril local of Iowa Farmers Union do respectfully submit our opinion for your consideration during the Interior Committee hearing on the 160-acre limitation. |