vada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Washington and Wyoming, beginning with the fiscal year ended June 30, 1901, should be set aside as a special fund for the examination. and survey of lands and the construction and maintenance of irrigation works for the storage, diversion and development of waters in the reclamation of arid and semiarid lands in the states and territories named.

The act gave authority to the Secretary of the Interior to make examinations and surveys for, and to locate and construct, irrigation works and, prior to letting contracts for the construction of them, to withdraw from public entry the lands required for their location and also any public lands proposed to be irrigated. When the land is again open for entry or sale, it shall be divided into tracts not exceeding 160 acres to any one land owner, and not less than forty acres, the size being such as, in the opinion of the secretary, will, under the circumstances, support a family. Before water is turned on, all lands within the area to be irrigated exceeding 160 acres in one ownership shall be reduced to the maximum allowed by the law.

No sales may be made to any land owner unless he be a bona fide resident on such land or an occupant thereof residing in its neighborhood. The land owner shall assume the estimated cost of irrigating his land, payment to be made in not more than ten annual installments, title to remain in the Government until payments are completed.

The water supply for the irrigating works is to be protected by reserves, which will serve not only that purpose but also as forest reserves, assuring timber supplies for the local use of irrigated districts.

From June 30, 1901, to June 30, 1905, there had been set aside for the prosecution of this work $34,207,000. The subjoined table gives a fair idea of the action taken and in contemplation from the time the reclamation bill went into effect to the date last named above:

Estimates of the lands which may be reclaimed vary greatly, and no positive statement is possible, owing to the fact that there are many thousands of acres of arid land which could be reclaimed, but only at an expense which at present would be deemed in excess of its subsequent value. A conservative estimate, made by the engineers who have the work in hand, places the area at from 20,000,000 to 25,000,000 acres, figuring in only such land as is subject to irrigation at a reasonable outlay. Estimates of the work in hand place the average cost of reclamation at $17 an acre, while the last census gave $47 an acre as the average value of irrigated lands in the United States.

CHAPTER XXIX.

UNITED STATES-TARIFF LEGISLATION.

Since the adoption of the Constitution of the United States in 1789 this nation has been almost uninterruptedly committed, in a greater or less degree, to the policy of a protective tariff. Previous to the Revolutionary War the colonies had been administered more with a view to the commercial benefits which might be derived by the mother country than to those that might be enjoyed by the colonies themselves; and this was one of the chief causes of that remarkable contest.

Under English rule there were no import duties on articles of English manufacture. American manufactures were not promoted. American colonists were not simply discouraged in their efforts to manufacture their necessities, but were actually prohibited from doing so and from exporting articles which competed with British products.

Some instances illustrative of this policy may be of interest. In 1699 the British Parliament enacted a law which said that "After the first day of December, 1699, no wool, woolfels, yarn, cloth or woolen manufactures of the English Plantations in America shall be shipped in any of the said English Plantations or otherwise loaden, in order to be transported thence, to any place whatsoever, under the penalty of forfeiting ship and cargo, and £500 for each offence." In 1731 a similar act prohibited the exportation from the American colonies of hats or felts, and limited the number of hatters' apprentices.

In 1749 an act of Parliament was passed "to encourage the importation of pig and bar iron from His Majesty's colonies in America and to prevent the erection of any mills or other engine for slitting or rolling of iron, or any plateing forge to work with a tilt hammer, or any furnace for making steel, in any of the said colonies." In order to protect the English naval trade all the slitting mills in the colonies. were ordered to be destroyed, but pig iron could be exported to England free of duty to be manufactured in the mother country and then returned to the colonists.

In 1733 the British government undertook to protect its sugar planters in the British West Indies by compelling all the New England

merchants to buy all of their molasses from them and laid a prohibitory duty upon all sugar and molasses imported into North America from the French islands. The effect of this measure would have been practically to destroy the profitable commerce of the colonial merchants in fish and lumber with the French West Indies, from which they received molasses in return. It was not, however, until 1764 that this measure was enforced, and at the same time the trade between the American colonies and the Spanish American colonies was frowned upon. The next year, 1765, the Stamp Act was passed, bearing with special severity upon the internal life and business of the colonists.

In addition to the acts specifically mentioned above were numerous others in restriction of colonial industry. One prohibited the import of artisans, another the import of woolen machinery, and a later one the import of cotton machinery and artificers in cotton; still another the exportation from England to the colonies of iron and steel machinery and workmen, and another prohibited the import of colliers into America. In fact, British legislation sought to make the colonists producers of agricultural products and exporters of raw material only, and in return to render them absolutely dependent upon the mother country for goods. So successful was this series of legislative acts that in 1781 the imports of the colonies exceeded the exports by $13,760,000, a sum that appears remarkable when the volume of business in those days is considered. But England was sowing the wind and she reaped the whirlwind.

After the successful issue of the Revolutionary War the united colonies sought to exist under the Articles of Confederation, and did so exist until 1789, though with growing competition between the states and an increasingly vivid demonstration that the National government was too weak to preserve internal peace and promote domestic welfare, and that it did not constitute a government strong enough to take a prominent place in the sisterhood of nations.

Those Articles made a tariff on imports a practical impossibility, because Congress had authority to enact a general tariff only with the consent of every one of the thirteen states. In a country so large as that composed of the old English colonies, small as it was compared with the present area of the United States, such a unanimous consent would be impossible to obtain. The different states, then as now, varied in commercial and industrial interests. The first of the Articles of Confederation, following the declaration of the style of the confed

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eracy to be the "United States of America," declared that "Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom and independence, and every power, jurisdiction and right which is not by this Confederation expressly delegated to the United States in Congress assembled." This emphatic declaration of state rights merely put into definite form the feeling which dominated the states prior to and after its adoption. Article IV declared as follows: "The people of each State shall have free ingress and egress to and from any other State and shall enjoy therein all the privileges of trade and commerce subject to the same duties, impositions, and restrictions as the inhabitants thereof, respectively; provided that such restrictions shall not continue so far as to prevent the removal of property imported into any State to any other State of which the owner is an inhabitant."

In Article IX it was declared that "no treaty of commerce shall be made, whereby the legislative power of the respective States shall be restrained from imposing such imposts and duties on foreigners as their own people are subject to, or from prohibiting the exportation or importation of any species of goods or commodities whatever."

Thus it is seen that, aside from the lack of administrative power in the general Government, the states were so independent as to leave open the way for endless disputes. Some of the northern states were then, as now, largely engaged in manufacturing, and, consequently, favored a tariff by which their industries might be protected and promoted. The South, on the contrary, was then, as afterwards, consistently opposed to a general tariff on manufactured products. There was also at that time a superabundance of sentiment based on a distorted idea of what constituted liberty, while national pride was inchoate. Each of the newly formed states believed itself competent to manage the affairs which particularly pertained to it, and sought to regulate its trade relations with the other states and with foreign countries without regard to the interests of the nation.

In no phase of national legislation could this situation produce greater dissension among the states than in the consideration of the tariff problem, because that which was good for one seemed bad, and often was unquestionably detrimental, to another. There ensued the most remarkable tariff legislation with which the country has ever been afflicted. Pennsylvania provided for a duty of 23 percent on imports, but New Jersey opened a free port at Burlington, where the Pennsylvania merchants entered their goods and took them surreptitiously