The  connection  of  Elwood  Mead  and  Frederick  H.  Newell  was
entirely  perfunctory.  If  either  of  these  students  of  irrigation
law  had  prepared  a  bill  it  would  have  had  slight  resemblance  to
the  present  document.  Neither  was  present  at  the  sessions  of
the  Commission,  and  it  is  safe  to  predict  that  neither  will
undertake  to  defend  the  report.  As  to  the  two  college  pro-
fessors, Messrs.  Soule  and  Mary,  both  are  good,  true  friends  of
the  irrigation  cause,  but  in  their  anxiety  to  see  progress  of  some
kind  they  were  bamboozled  into  accepting  a  bill  which  they
must  know  to  be  highly  dangerous  to  the  actual  users  of  water,
as  distinguished  from  the  sellers  of  water,  and  to  be  an  abso-
lute stultification  of  the  Association  from  the  standpoint  of  its
former  declarations.
No,  the  bill  is  not  the  work  of  Chief  Justice  Beatty,  David
Starr  Jordan,  Benjamin  Ide  Wheeler,  Elwood  Mead,  Frederick
H.  Newell,  Frank  Soule  and  Charles  D.  Marx.  It  is  almost  en-
tirely the  product  of  the  mind  of  John  D.  Works.  His  is  a
mind  which  has  been  devoted  for  years  to  the  service  of  private


TWENTIETH  CENTURY  WEST  119

water  companies  until  it  has  become  thorougfhly  impreg'nated
with  their  view  of  the  eternal  fitness  of  thingfs.  To  say  this  is
not  to  impugn  the  integfrity  or  good  faith  of  Judge  Works.  Let
it  be  granted  that  he  is  an  honest,  an  able  and  a  sincere  man,
but  just  such  men  have  often  inflicted  injustice  upon  the  people.
