Chapter 11 - New Lands

The endgame for the Newlands bill was a drawn-out affair. For most of 1901, Congress was out of session, and Newlands’ legislation languished in parliamentary purgatory. Newlands kept occupied, traveling between Reno, his office on the Hill, and the Chevy Chase development, and keeping in almost daily contact with Newell and Maxwell regarding the far-reaching impact of a pending statist irrigation bill in Wyoming.

Yet the quiet on Capitol Hill belied the turmoil elsewhere in the nation. On September 6, 1901, President McKinley stood shaking hands at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. As he extended his hand to a young anarchist named Leon Czolgosz, Czolgosz slapped McKinley’s hand aside and fired a .32 caliber revolver he’d concealed in a handkerchief. Eight days later, McKinley died of his wounds. America had a new President—Theodore Roosevelt. And Frank Newlands had an essential new ally in his fight.

The new Congressional session began on December 4, 1901. Right away, Newlands faced new threats from an old foe. Senator Warren, Wyoming’s veteran states’ righter, twice targeted Newlands bill. He failed to gain a foothold with each sally. The attempts to derail Newlands’ “nationalist” bill occurred in circumstances that should have favored the state-managed approach. But the western delegation had lost confidence in a state-run irrigation program. Nothing could bring back the states’ rights magic of the previous decade.

Of the two attempts at derailment, the first was the most serious. It came out of Warren’s home state of Wyoming, long home to the western brain trust on water issues. Wyoming had set the pace in water management. Its State Engineer Office was the model for administrative machinery. Now, Wyoming would be the last stand for the state-run approach to irrigation.

On June 10, 1901, the Wyoming state engineer had summoned to Cheyenne five other state engineers from adjacent states. The six engineers drafted a “state engineer bill” that followed the line of “demarcation” which Mead and Mondell had already laid out—“conservation and construction” reserved for the federal government, “application” for the states. In the engineers’ version, state control was bolstered further because the federally-built projects would be constructed at sites determined by the state engineer. As in the land cession bills of the last decade, dams and reservoirs would be built in the states where public lands had been sold. The state engineers’ bill elevated state experts over federal experts.

Barely a week and a half later, the state engineer approach fell apart. More state engineers, some western Congressmen, and George Maxwell arrived in Cheyenne. Maxwell and Mondell engaged in a running argument that disrupted the proceedings. Maxwell insisted that the new line of demarcation was impractical, and was not alone in his belief. In a blow to the Wyoming leadership, the bill was withdrawn. Amidst bad feelings, the meeting broke up.

In January 1902, as the 57th Congress began, the “state engineers” bill resurfaced. In his first speech to Congress on December 3, 1901, Roosevelt had declared that “The reclamation and settlement of the arid lands will enrich every portion of our country.” But he had left the details up to Congress. Warren grabbed the opening and convened a western delegation meeting. At Warren’s request, they had appointed a drafting committee of three pro-state members and two pro-national members. The statists were Warren, Mondell, and Shafroth. Speaking for the nationalist approach were Newlands and Hansbrough.

The numbers favored Warren, but the underlying details favored Newlands. While Shafroth was a states’ rights man, he was also a friend of Newlands. Better still, the meetings were held in the evenings at Newlands’ house. At their first meeting, Newlands proposed using his bill as the basis for negotiations. Warren countered and offered the state engineers’ bill. Hansbrough argued that the Senate preferred the Newlands bill. By mid-January, Newlands and Hansbrough had worn down Warren. Warren wrote to the president of the Burlington and Missouri Railroad, with whom he maintained close ties, that Newlands and Hansbrough had carried the day, but that he, Warren, had extracted some modifications. Warren was referring to a provision that required a majority of the revenue derived from land sales to be spent in the state where the land was located. The provision was a throwback to Warren’s discredited public lands “cession” concept, which made it all the more valuable to him.[1]

Ultimately, Francis Newlands outlasted Francis Warren.[2] The Senator from Wyoming withdrew from the fight in the middle of January 1902. On January 21, 1902, Newlands and Hansbrough introduced their nationalist bill— HR 9676 and S 3057—in both houses of Congress.

The Senate debated Newlands’ bill for several hours on March 1, in an unedifying discussion that largely reflected Eastern disdain for the West. A number of Eastern and Midwestern senators queried Hansbrough about irrigation as if it was an experimental technology, while Senator Stewart, an old hand at irrigation in the Senate, shared the load in explaining how irrigation worked. Seeing Newlands’ bill as further evidence of the evils of logrolling and pork, New Englanders like Massachusetts Senator George Hoar railed against the profligacy of the rivers and harbors bills. In an unintended but comic interlude, South Carolina Senator Benjamin Tillman—the volatile and racist “Pitchfork Ben”—asked if the bill provided funds for the Savannah River in his state. Senator Augustus Bacon, a Georgia Democrat, advised Senator Tillman that Southern rivers were “‘not in the class” of the western rivers. To laughter, Tillman acknowledged that “my few remarks have been made at random.”

Senator Warren, once the Senate’s guru on irrigation, did not participate at all. He had gone from being the boss on irrigation to a nonentity.[3] On March 1, 1902, the Senate unanimously passed Newlands’ bill by a voice vote.

A few weeks later, Warren left town to be with his gravely ill wife in Wyoming. He was gone for at least six weeks, further clearing the legislative field for Newlands. Yet one usual blockage remained: the anti-West bias of the House leadership, personified in Cannon himself. Unless the leadership softened its stance, the House would adjourn on July 1 without voting on the bill.

To save his signature legislative effort, Newlands turned to the new President. Roosevelt jumped into the breach and took charge of the bill—so forcefully that its passage has been forever associated with his leadership.

On April 9, 1902, Roosevelt convened the first of two legislative strategy meetings on the Newlands bill. They met at the White House flanked by Pinchot, Newell, and Maxwell—Newlands’ “experts” had become Roosevelt’s, gravitating to the pull of influence. Roosevelt invited the largely Republican western delegation; Newlands was the only Democrat in attendance. The sole topic on their agenda was passing the bill through the House.

Newlands and Roosevelt took the opportunity to count Democratic votes and Republican votes in the House. “I assure you,” Newlands told Roosevelt, “that the Democratic Party is going to support this bill.” Roosevelt expressed disbelief, noting that it was too “national in character” for the Democratic Party. The Democrats, Newlands promised the assembled group, were with him. Their only problem was the House Republican leadership, particularly Joe Cannon. To laughter, Roosevelt asked, “Uncle Joe? Who can do anything with Uncle Joe?”[4]

As it turned out, Theodore Roosevelt could. On May 7, 1902, Roosevelt held his second strategy meeting on the reclamation bill. The same experts attended. Invited was the leadership of the western delegation and Frank Mondell. Newlands was not present. Prior to the meeting, Maxwell had pressed Roosevelt hard on his fear that the bill, as written, could facilitate monopolies of newly irrigated land. It was a pet bugaboo of Maxwell’s and a point on which Roosevelt was sensitive.  At the meeting, Roosevelt told Pinchot and Newell that the bill should be modified along Maxwell’s lines. He asked Mondell to manage the modified bill on the House floor, and Mondell agreed.

On June 13, 1902, Roosevelt leaned hard on Cannon. He sent the powerful chairman a message asking him to step aside for the reclamation bill and let it come to a vote—the first time, Roosevelt noted, that he had ever asked for anything regarding an individual bill. Appealing to his fellow Republican, Roosevelt couched his concerns in partisan terms. Cleverly, Roosevelt pointed out that the party would look unfair if it sponsored river and harbor bills for the East and the Midwest, only to snub the West when its time came.

Roosevelt handled the House leadership flawlessly. After receiving Roosevelt’s letter, Cannon acquiesced. The iron-fisted chairman left the House early that day.[5] In Cannon’s absence, Newlands’ bill came to a vote and passed easily, 146-55. Newspapers across the West hailed its passage, while the Washington Post declared, “New Irrigation Law Opens up Immense Tract / Victory for Mr Newlands / Unique Campaign conducted by the Nevada Representative on Behalf of Measure.”[6]

There would not have been a Newlands Act without Theodore Roosevelt.[7] Nor would there have been a Newlands Act without Frank Newlands and his “unique campaign.” His setbacks had tempered and taught him—the near-collapse of the Bank of California, Sharon’s escapades, the failure of his General Plan for Nevada’s irrigation. In an impressive legislative push, Newlands had marshaled all his experts and his experience. All the dinners, hearings, and legislative maneuvering had paid off. The onetime “crank” with his diagrams and maps had triumphed.

The Newlands Act was a revolution in reclamation—ranking, in Pisani’s estimation, behind only the Homestead Act in its significance to the settling of the West. It disregarded state boundaries, overrode state governments, and bypassed the legislative appropriations process entirely. The law embraced the entire region of the American West, covering 15 states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, and Washington. In 1906, Texas was added to the list. Newlands’ legislation nationalized irrigation, granting the Secretary of Interior vast power over all aspects of an irrigation project, from surveying suitable lands and locating the project to managing the construction and selling the irrigated lands. And, in its greatest innovation, it funded irrigation projects through a revolving fund from the sale of public lands. The press hailed this financing mechanism as “comprehensive and automatic,” two of Newlands’ favorite adjectives.

All across the West, rivers would be dammed and diverted, and barren terrain made fertile. The Flathead and the North Platte; the Klamath and the Umatilla. Arizona’s Salt River, and the river that in many ways started it all for Newlands—the Truckee. According to the Bureau of Reclamation created by the Newlands Act, more than 600 dams now irrigate over 10 million acres of farmland. Watered by irrigation projects, the West would become the nation’s greengrocer, producing a quarter of its fruits and nuts and fully 60 percent of its vegetables. Those dams—their cataracts converted to kilowatts—would eventually power 53 power plants, yielding some 40 billion hours of electricity for the cities that sprang up in formerly desolate deserts.[8] The vision of one western waterman had brought forth, quite literally, new lands.

Francis G. Newlands would not live to see the full scope of his dream realized. On Christmas Eve, 1917, while preparing for investigative hearings into war-time railroad problems, Newlands suffered a heart attack in his Capitol office. He was rushed to his home overlooking Connecticut Avenue and Western Avenue, where a doctor pronounced him dead at 10:15pm. Fittingly, Frank Newlands died at the westernmost edge of Washington. He was buried at the Oak Hill Cemetery in Georgetown, at the edge of the park he had once paid Stewart to create. Nearby, along the edge of the graveyard, Rock Creek flows ceaselessly into the Potomac River.