2. The construction branch would consist of the consulting engineer in the Secretary's office, accountable directly to the Secretary, a chief engineer, whose work would be largely confined to the field, and five or six supervising engineers in charge of the reclamation districts, to whom would be given direct supervision over the local engi neers engaged in work on the various projects, and who would be held responsible for the work in their respective districts. Plans, contracts, and all matters relating to construction would come directly from the chief engineer or supervising engineers in the field to the Secretary and be immediately passed upon by the consulting engineer and chief law officer in the Secretary's office.

3. The Director of the Reclamation Bureau would be in charge of a bureau with three principal divisions:

Examination of surveys, which would deal with all preliminary examinations and` reconnoissances of projects and proposed projects, with soil surveys and with the surveys subdividing the irrigated lands into farm units, which division would have a suitable office force and a field force.

The Division of Settlement of Lands with a suitable office force and such field assistants as might be necessary. Information, settlement of lands, and experimental farming on projects.

Division of Accounting and Finance, which would deal with accounting and fiscal matters both in the office and in the field, and would be composed of an office and a field force.

Mr. VERTREES. Mr. Newell, I here show you a leaflet which bears the legend, "Truckee-Carson Irrigation Project, Nevada. Opinion filed by the United States Reclamation Service September 15, 1909," and ask you to state what you know about that?

Mr. NEWELL. This was one of the series compiled by Mr. Perkins in accordance with his arrangement with the railroads in connection with this black-tent lecture.

Mr. VERTREES. Are the statements therein contained correct? Mr. NEWELL. I have not read it, and I am not prepared to say. Mr. VERTREES. Pass it back to me please. There is one I want to call attention to, the one entitled "Area of irrigable land," at the bottom of page 6. Will you read that and say whether that is correct or not? Is that correct?

Mr. NEWELL (after reading). I think that is fairly correct; yes, sir. Mr. VERTREES. Is it correct that there are 50,000 acres there in the one project open to settlement?

Mr. NEWELL. I think there are even more open to settlement. The area is quite large. Not all of it has water, however. Mr. VERTREES. You think there are even more?

Mr. NEWELL. There may be. I do not recall that matter accurately.

Mr. VERTREES. That was issued September 15, 1909, was it?
Mr. NEWELL. That is the date on the outside, yes, sir.

Mr. VERTREES. Then if there is that much, and probably more, the statement of Mr. Davis that there was none, or very little, is incorrect is it not?

Mr. NEWELL. I do not understand that question.

Mr. VERTREES. If he made any such statement as that?

Mr. PEPPER. Have you some reference to give to him?

Mr. VERTREES. Yes, sir; page 1921 and 1788, and the further statement of Mr. Davis that there have been no inquiries, and you have been very careful not to encourage settlement within the last year, is also untrue, is it not?

Mr. NEWELL. I have not encouraged settlement there. The land is open.

Mr. VERTREES. What did you mean by sending such a thing as that cut as late as September if it is not for the purpose of encouraging settlement?

Mr. NEWELL. I have stated that Mr. Perkins sent that out without

Reorganization Reclamation Service proposed by Secretary Ballinger December 4, 1909.

our knowledge. I did not know about it until after Mr. Perkins had prepared and issued it.

Mr. VERTREES. Mr. Perkins was representing that bureau, was h not, your service?

Mr. NEWELL. He was supposed to be, but he
Mr. VERTREES. When did you first hear of that?

70923°-S. Doc. 719, 61-3, vol 5-33

Mr. NEWELL. When I passed through Chicago in connection with these gentlemen-I think it was in August some time; yes, sir; I think it was August or September.

Mr. VERTREES. That was issued in September?

Mr. NEWELL. Yes, sir; it is dated so, but I did not see it.

Mr. VERTREES. You were there long after that time, September 28, which would be nine days after this?

Mr. NEWELL. Yes, sir; he had presumably issued them and sent them out at that time.

Mr. VERTREES. Well, that land was open to homestead entry, was it not?

Mr. NEWELL. There is a great deal of land open to homestead entry there, but we are not trying to encourage settlement on it. Mr. VERTREES. You do not consider a pamphlet like this circulated throughout the country as an encouragement?

Mr. NEWELL. I should not have circulated it if I had known of it. Senator FLINT. Have you circulated any literature from the Reclamation Service office to encourage settlement on the TruckeeCarson project?

Mr. NEWELL. Not recently; no, sir. I have told them to shut down on that literature.

Senator FLINT. When did they shut down?

Mr. NEWELL. During the summer and fall. It depends on the appearances. We will have plenty of water next season, but the appearances last fall were somewhat dubious.

Senator FLETCHER. What do you call next season?

and

Mr. NEWELL. That is the irrigation season, which is approaching now. There is a great deal of snow in the mountains this year, there will probably be high water all through 1910.

Senator FLETCHER. What months?

Mr. NEWELL. The critical months are July and August.

Mr. VERTREES. There was a contract with reference to the Lake Tahoe project, was there not?

Mr. NEWELL. Yes, sir; there is a contract, I believe.

Mr. VERTREES. What do you know about that, Mr. Newell?

Mr. NEWELL. I do not know very much about it. We have started a suit for condemnation to the outlet of Lake Tahoe, and also prepared a contract which I have signed, but I do not know what the status of the contract now is.

Mr. VERTREES. Who prepared that contract?

Mr. NEWELL. That contract was prepared largely by the original draft in our office, and then revised, as I understand it, by the district attorney of California, in, I think, May, 1909. It has been gone over quite carefully by a number of men connected with the Department of Justice.

Mr. VERTREES. So that it was practically drawn in your office, but revised by others?

Mr. NEWELL. The engineering features were discussed by us and the legal features by the Attorney-General's office.

Mr. VERTREES. There was a good deal of delay about that contract, was there not?

Mr. NEWELL. It is delayed. It was signed by me last

Mr. VERTREES. What was the cause of that delay?

Mr. NEWELL. It is in the hands of the President.

Mr. VERTREES. That contract, as I understand,, was not drawn by Mr. Ballinger, was it?

Mr. NEWELL. I do not know; it was approved by him prior to my signature. I had his approval of it.

Mr. VERTREES. I am not on the approval now, but on the drafting of it.

Mr. NEWELL. He had a large hand in the drafting of it and consulted very freely with the district attorney in California. He was out there.

Mr. VERTREES. He was consulted and all that, but I asked you who drew it originally?

Mr. NEWELL. The engineering features were drafted by us and the legal features by the Attorney-General's office, with Mr. Ballinger's assistance.

Mr. VERTREES. You sent the original draft of the contract to the Secretary of the Interior yourself, did you not, by letter dated April 22, 1909?

Mr. NEWELL. What date is that?

Mr. VERTREES. April 22, 1909.

Mr. NEWELL. That is very materially modified from the form in which we finally find it. I should have to have both of them together in order to see, but I know there were a great many modifications. Mr. VERTREES. Who signed it, you or Mr. Davis?

Mr. NEWELL. I signed it.

Mr. VERTREES. What I want you to speak to, if you can, is as to the fact of who drew it.

Mr. NEWELL. It is a composite draft; the engineering features were drawn by the Reclamation Service, and the legal features by the legal advisers of the department.

Mr. VERTREES. Well, the Reclamation Service urged that contract as a proper contract, did it not?.

Mr. NEWELL. They have urged a number of them. We have a number of them.

Mr. VERTREES. I mean the one you finally signed.

Mr. NEWELL. Yes, sir; that is probably as good as we could get. Mr. VERTREES. What is the cause of this delay?

Mr. NEWELL. I understand that the President has it under advisement.

Mr. VERTREES. Who objected to it?

Mr. NEWELL. I do not know about the objection.

Mr. VERTREES. Do you not know that the objection came from Mr. Pinchot?

Mr. NEWELL. I do not know that he objected to the first form. Mr. VERTREES. Were you not informed that the objections came from him?

Mr. NEWELL. No, sir.

Mr. VERTREES. Have you any information as to the reasons why it is delayed?

Mr. NEWELL. There was a brief filed of objections which I think I answered, in part at least, by a memorandum, prepared when I was in Billings, Mont.

Mr. VERTREES. Who filed that brief that you answered?

Mr. NEWELL. It was an unsigned brief handed to me by Mr. Ballinger personally.

Mr. VERTREES. Where did you understand it came from?

Mr. NEWELL. He did not say. He simply asked Mr. Davis and myself to prepare a reply to this statement.

Mr. VERTREES. You were requested to prepare that reply by Mr. Ballinger himself, were you not?

Mr. NEWELL. Personally; yes, sir. We prepared it afterwards. Mr. VERTREES. I will ask you if it is not a fact that on June 9, 1909, Mr. Pinchot, in writing, presented a number of objections to that contract over his own signature?

Mr. NEWELL. I have seen a number of objections to the contract, but I think that all those objections that were made were eliminated in the final draft, but I am not positive as to that.

Mr. VERTREES. You are not clear as to that. You were asked by some members of the committee, before noon, Mr. Newell, as to these reclamation projects, and as to what measures would be desirable or advisable or wise with respect to them, particularly as to the issuance of bonds-the proposed issuance of bonds by the Government to finish and complete them.

Mr. PEPPER. I think I asked him that question, and he rather expressed a preference not to give an opinion.

Mr. VERTREES. I know he did, but I am expressing a preference to have him answer it.

Mr. PEPPER. I did not mean to object, but you were suggesting that some member of the committee asked it. I wanted to suggest that I asked it myself.

Mr. VERTREES. Is this not a fact, Mr. Newell, that there have already been something like $50,000,000 invested in twenty-seven projects that the Government has in hand?

Mr. NEWELL. There will be upward of $60,000,000 at the end of this calendar year; yes, sir. I can give you the exact figures if you desire them.

Mr. VERTREES. I am on now not what happened at the end of the year. My question was if there was not something like $50,000,000 already invested.

Mr. NEWELL. Yes, sir; $51,414,000.

Mr. VERTREES. What do you estimate would be the amount required to finish and complete those 27 projects?

Mr. NEWELL. That is a very indeterminate figure, because we have got to define what we mean by completion. That was fully discussed in the hearings before the Ways and Means Committee.

Mr. VERTREES. Not meaning to be exact, do you not estimate at the present that it will probably require something like $70,000,000 to complete them?

Mr. NEWELL. If the plans which have been contemplated are carried out, it will require a very large sum of money.

Mr. VERTREES. Well, a million dollars is a very large sum.

Mr. NEWELL. Yes, sir; it will require a good many millions.
Mr. VERTREES. I am talking about $70,000,000.

Mr. NEWELL. Yes, sir; we can make it $70,000,000.

Mr. VERTREES. That is what I want you to say. Now according to the plans and rules that are now being worked on, it would require considerable time, would it not, to finish those projects?

Mr. NEWELL. Yes, sir; some of those are very nearly completed, and others will require an unlimited time to finish them.