irrigation season use. When this is attained there will result a saving of waste water of which measurement estimates would be intelligible only to engineers, but the outcome of it will be at least a doubling of the present irrigated area and coincident with this. the making available of hydro-electric power in such vast quantities, especially on the great Colorado, as almost to stagger the imagination. To accomplish all of this, there promises to be such a further perfecting of irrigation district legislation and such a coordination of water use for irrigation, power, municipal use, and navigation as shall insure the widest possible spreading of the benefits of the water resources of the State. For several past decades this has been, as it still is, the goal toward which the various agencies of the national and state governments (the United States Geological Survey and its offspring, the United States Reclamation Service; the Irrigation Investigations of the United States Department of Agriculture; the California State Department of Engineering; the California State Water Commission; the California State Railroad Commission; and the College of Agriculture of the University of California) have been or are now working. Recent enactments by the legislature, especially the Water Conservation Act of 1921 and the Santa Clara County Irrigation District Act of the same year, have for their purpose a larger realization of the idea of community control of water through the irrigation district plan. This is to be accomplished by making it legally practical to join together in single effort for larger conservation purposes all of the separate irrigation districts or interests dependent in common on a given water source or related group of sources. Besides these extremely important acts, the legislature of 1921 enlarged the powers and increased the funds of the State Water Commission to permit it the more effectively to correlate and protect, in the interest of the public, the control of waters for the principal uses named above. Furthermore, it made a liberal appropriation to the State Department of Engineering (consolidated with other related State agencies into the State Department of Public Works) to enable it to extend greatly the public study of the water resources of the State and their fullest utilization for the public good. The ultimate attainment, however, seems to require that the great enterprise of the future, for the heartening both of those who plan and achieve it and those whose capital shall furnish it forth, shall be a world concern, certified to all mankind by the public credit of the State, possibly of the nation also. HIGHWAYS The system of highways now installed which gives California distinctive position among the states for the mileage, gradients, and smoothness of her rural roadways, has been realized by a process of evolution. During Spanish and Mexican possession, the population moved in the saddle along bridle paths and cattle trails. The early American pioneers asserted their preference for wheeled vehicles but as they seldom desired to stay long in a place and were even doubtful of their desire to remain long anywhere in the country, they were content to move across the landscape on any streak of mud or dust which would not upset them. As their early activities were chiefly along the foothills and across the mountains and the upsetting of a stage or a packed animal was serious, road-building on the grades became first imperative. California became famous for mountain roads while on her valley highways it was a pardonable exaggeration to say that vehicles could pass unseen because of the depth of mud in the rainy season and the density of the dust in the dry. There were, of course, exceptions where the nature of the soil worked for good roads and where the supervisors of a county were honest, but generally the people were heavily taxed for decades for road purposes and still had no roads worth the name. It was not until 1895 that the legislature resolved to install system and method in road work and created a Bureau of Highways consisting of three commissioners to proceed toward that end. In its report of investigation this Bureau declared that California had during eleven years, 1885 to 1895, expended eighteen million dollars for highway purposes and had nothing but "deplorable roads because the money had been wastefully and injudiciously expended." The Bureau of Highways of 1895 designed a system of State highways, prescribed methods of construction and upkeep and was followed by a Department of Highways with a single Highway Commissioner who continued exhortation toward desirable ends but no funds adequate for the realization of results were available. During the first decade of this century while cemented highways seemed wholly out of reach, much attention was given to promotion of oiling dirt roads and careful specifications were issued, based on wide observation and study, by the State Highway Commissioner. This recourse was a satisfactory makeshift and when the soil was sufficiently firm and the oil adequately and properly applied, the result was so good that oiling has been practiced to the present day, one county using more than 100,000 barrels of road oil at a cost of $229,951 in 1919, although the oil had practically doubled in value since it was first employed. There was also in other counties increasing expenditure for road-grading, wells and waterwagons for systematic sprinkling and excellent results and good repute were achieved by progressive county policy in this direction. It was, however, not until owners of motor vehicles multiplied and insisted on good roads to run them over, that the system of highways which is now one of California's chief agencies of industry and development began to be realized. The foundation for a system of cemented highways in California was laid in 1910 by the passage of a State Highways Act by the legislature which provided for the issuance of bonds to the amount of $18,000,000. The bonds were voted by a bare |