the last two years we have had one man who shot his brains out over there; we had another man who was $4,000 or $5,000 short in his accounts; we had another who was sent to the penitentiary for from 1 to 10 years for defaulting. In all of those cases the trouble could be traced right back to the dives south of the line.

Mr. SWING. Mr. Rose is now referring to the report made by Mr. Lucien Wheeler, who is an investigator of the Department of Justice, and who recommended certain recommendations on the boundary line to protect American communities from the baneful influence of resorts of vice across the line. I think the Congressman's reference was to the superintendent of the Anti-Saloon League.

Mr. LEATHERWOOD. The attorney for the Anti-Saloon League. Mr. ROSE. I was referring to the Government official.

Mr. LEATHERWOOD. You stated same good doctrine, anyhow. Mr. ROSE. Here is another suggestion: As I have said to you gentlemen, the water has been taken out of the Colorado River at least four or five times in the last three or four years-all of it.

Now here is a situation that arises. There is a demand for another 1,000 second-feet of water in Mexico. If that water is taken out of the canal and diverted to those lands, and the things happen that happened in 1915, the Imperial Valley would lose her entire fall crop, cotton and all. In other words, the water used in Mexico in the last two years has been greater, in the early part of September, than the amount of water there was in the Colorado River in 1915. The CHAIRMAN. Are your crops continuous down there? Mr. ROSE. Yes, sir; 365 days in the year.

Now, there is another element. For instance, you take the domestic water. All of the domestic water of the farmers of the Imperial Valley-ranches, towns, and everything else has to pass through Mexico. Under our law, of course, nothing is permitted to graze on our ditch banks; live stock are not permitted to go on our banks. You gentlemen know what the result of that is. But they allow them to graze there in Mexico; and there is nothing uncommon for us to have to pull out a dead horse or a dead cow from our head gates up there.

Along in this last part of the summer, at the siphon under the railroad entering the flume to go into the west side, in one week we took out the bodies of three murdered men at that one head gate and all of them had been taken out there and shot, and their pockets turned inside out and dumped into the canal to cover up ther identity. And another time we pulled out a span of horses and a wagon; the horses had been tied on the banks of the canal and they backed into the canal, and they floated down to our checks. And the Mexican people wash their clothes in our canals, and bathe in them. Mr. HUDSPETH. You have some system of filtering that water before you use it for drinking purposes, have you not?

Mr. ROSE. No; we have not. Of course, in some instances it is settled in a tank; but there is no method of filtering it, because the volume is too great.

Mr. SWING. Some of the cities have filtering, but the farms have

not.

Mr. ROSE. The only thing they can do is to pass it through gravel; there is nothing to take out the filth.

Mr. LEATHERWOOD. Is there no subterranean flow?

Mr. ROSE. No. On the east side of the valley there are a few artesian wells, five or six, but they are probably too salty. In the city of Holtville they do mix that with the water, putting 2 or 3 per cent of it in the water

The CHAIRMAN (interposing). Well, your appearance would indicate that the water you drink is very pure.

Mr. ROSE. Well, of course, a man might live next to a sewer and get along.

There is this to be said about the water: That it carries a large quantity of mud and silt and as that settles it does no doubt purify the water.

There is another thing along that line: Under the law of the State of California any obnoxious weeds like Johnson grass, if the ranchman does not clean that off his ranch and clean it out the county officials do that, and it becomes a first lien against his property, ahead of a mortgage. Now, on our side we are spending thousands of dollars to keep out the Johnson grass; and there is always a man looking after that. But on the other side they are raising Johnson grass and using it for hay and for pasturing their stock. That may seem a small matter to you gentlemen; but eventually we will have to fight that Johnson grass, or we will have a burden too great to bear.

Mr. SINNOTT. It is a case of too much Johnson. [Laughter.] Mr. RAKER. In addition to that, you have the whole Mexican outfit coming across the line as they want to, do you not?

Mr. ROSE. Yes. For instance, they went right across the boundary and stole one of our mule teams and took it down into Mexico; and we folowed it down there and found it, and found the man that stole it; and we went to the Mexican authorities, and they said, "Well, you go to the Mexican justice of the peace-whatever they call him-and get a warrant and we will hold him." So we went and got the warrant; but they had turned the man loose, and they would not deliver the mules to us unless we paid for them.

Mr. HUDSPETH. That is, you mean you were to pay to the "judge of the first instance," as they call him down there; the man who rendered the verdict?

Mr. Rose. Yes. They wanted us to actually pay them for that stolen property; and besides, they turned the man loose.

And then another time they came over and stole some property, and one of my neighbors had been deputized to serve along the boundary, and he caught the fellow; and that fellow, with the handcuffs on him, shot the deputy through the jaw; but the deputy did not die; but the Mexicans rewarded that bandit by making him warden of the jail down there.

Mr. ALLGOOD. Did you not know their character before you went into this game?

Mr. ROSE. Well, there was not any town down there at that time. And we did not have anything to do with the Mexicans at that time; there were practically none of them there. And at that time their conduct was very different. Mexico was ruled then by Porfirio Diaz; and he killed off all but the bad ones, and he made them officers. And they always respected him and his government. since then, the country has run wild.

Mr. HUDSPETH. It has been under a dozen different governments? Mr. ROSE. Yes-and some times no government at all: you can not say that it is a government at all.

Mr. LEATHERWOOD. It might be a good plan for the Mexican Claims Commission to levy on property in the California peninsula in satisfaction of their claims?

Mr. ROSE. I would like to see them levy to the Panama Canal. so far as I am concerned. If you are going to levy, you might as well make a good job of it.

Well, there are a great many things of that kind that I might go over. But I think I may as well now go to a discussion of the question of protection work.

Mr. RAKER. Your contention is that what you have told the committee about the troubles and annoyances from operating in a foreign country would be eliminated if the all-American canal was built?

Mr. ROSE. Absolutely; there is no question about that.

Here is another thing: They started to build a road out from Mexicali. There is no road in that section of the country toward Ensenada [indicating on map]. They notified us to build four miles of that road. It is a road that nobody uses. And yet we had to take our taxpayers' money and build that road. Those are the things that you are up against in operating down there: It is the demand that you do certain things that you have not any way of getting away from; you have to be nice about it and to do what they say; if you are not nice about it, you might refuse, and say "I will not do it." And then they will get you somewhere if you do that. There are a number of things that are put up to you that you have to stand; you have no way of getting around them; you have to submit to them. You have this feeling: That you are in no man's land," so far as the Government is concerned; that the law is fixed when they see you coming; and they size up your pocketbook, and take what there is in it.

Recently there was a controversy between the Mexicans and the Americans. In other words, there is a head tax on foreigners who come to our country; that applies to those who go to California and do not become citizens; and of course, that takes in the Mexican; he has to pay a head tax. The Americans attempt to enforce that law, and the Mexicans retaliate by saying that no American can go across the line unless he has $100 in gold in his pocket; and of course, they figure that if he has $100 in his pocket they will get most of it.

Mr. RAKER. Do your workmen have to have that amount in their possession?

Mr. ROSE. They have to put up $100 to get across the line. That has been done only recently; but perhaps it will go on for months. Then take our automobiles for an illustration; we have 80 cars operating all over the system. Frequently they have to make trips down into this section indicating on map]. They make us pay a percentage fee for naturalizing those cars, which in the case of a Ford car amounts to $150.

Mr. HUDSPETH. Is that $150 Mex?

Mr. ROSE. Yes. That is gold Mex, however, which is different from silver Mex. That is the percentage fee. Then in addition to

Of

that, we pay a tax on all of those cars that run down there. course if they are larger cars, like our trucks, the tax is greater, although the whole operation is for their benefit. We have to naturalize those cars and pay the percentage fees, just because we bring them back and forth.

Mr. RAKER. How much do we charge the Mexicans for bringing their cars across?

Mr. ROSE. Nothing. In other words, a Mexican down there can come free over the line whenever he pleases. But we can not do that. We have to go through a port of entry, and if we go otherwise, unless we have a passport, which we can not get for our employees, but the ordinary man

Mr. RAKER (interposing). Well, can the Mexicans come across into this country except through a port of entry?

Mr. ROSE. Yes; they are coming over now.

Mr. RAKER. Now.

Mr. ROSE. Yes.

Mr. RAKER. In any quantity?

Mr. ROSE. Well; there is nobody to limit them; they go back and forth; they do not pass a port of entry. I will venture to say that there are many roads that you can stand on and see 50 or 75 of them coming in.

The CHAIRMAN. What about the immigration laws?

Mr. Rose. Well, there is no enforcement of the immigration laws as against Mexicans, I think.

Mr. SWING. Mr. Rose, before you leave the all-American canal will you touch on the Yuma situation?

Mr. ROSE. Yes; I was going to touch on that in connection with the question of flood control.

Mr. SWING. All right; do it in your own way.

Mr. ROSE. When we turned the water into the Imperial ValleyI was there in 1901, we went up and cut a hole in the bank near the international boundary line and placed a gate there. The river was running up above the surrounding country; and we turned the water in. It ran there for quite a few years. Until the break of 1905, we had really no apprehensions over the flood control.

When the floods came in 1905 and 1906, it tore things up; and of course it resulted in a fight of several years to get the river out. And in 1909 the Government built the Ockerson Levee, which is shown on this map. In 1909, after they had spent $1,000,000they had General Marshall, who was very familiar with levee work on the Mississippi and other rivers go out there, and they spent out of the $1,000,000, $950,000. When the river reached 50,000 secondfeet, it tore that levee off, and went down the Bee River, down into this area here [indicating on map], into an old lake known as Volcan Lake; in some places it was 20 feet deep and in others it was not. It ran in there from 1915 to 1921. But we started at Volcano Lake to build levees, and we have built them up five or six times, until it has reached a height in here [indicating] of 15 or 16 feet on the low side, and it is probably filled as high as 10 feet on the high side with silt. And there is an old crater right there [indicating on map]; and that whole thing is boiling up with hot water

92265-24-PT 2- -3

and mud through that area [indicating] and that water boils up right to that levee. However, we fought it until that depression filled up; and then the river gradually raised its bed. And of course, when it went through Bee River, it cut itself a bed of about 15 feet; and that gradually lowered the stream. But from 1909 to 1918, it filled this basin up and filled the bed until the water commenced to flow through here [indicating]; and in 1919, it overflowed about 30,000 acres and covered a large area in here [indicating].

Of course, the break occurred in 1914; but at that time we got out everybody that we could to work there and fight that thing, and we held it back from going over Volcano Lake Levee. But that depression had taken that long to fill up.

But I want to tell you that there was water against that levee covering 4,00 acres of Mexican lands. And we had our men go over to pile sacks on that levee to hold the water back. And we went over and had lunches prepared for those men, something like a thousand, who had nothing to eat and no place to sleep, and we had to take those provisions over the border; and the Mexican authorities made us set them out, and they counted every solitary thing and made us pay more duty on the lunches than we paid for the lunches. It is certainly a wonderful operation down there when you get into it.

Mr. RAKER. And yet you have Americans on the American side coaxing those Mexicans to come across to the American side, so that they may be shipped to other places?

Mr. ROSE. Yes; and we have Americans on the American side coaxing Chinamen and Japs over here, to work at 50 cents a day on this side.

Mr. LEATHERWOOD. Well, they coax a good many Chinamen and Japanese now, do they not?

Mr. ROSE. Well, the Chinaman is pretty hard to get by; the Japs can get by, because there are so many in California that they can cover them up; but the Chinese are hard to get by now-probably 100 or 200 of them get by.

Mr. RAKER. But plenty of Japanese and Mexicans get across, do they not?

Mr. ROSE. Yes; and I have seen as high as 48 Chinese go up to the immigration authorities and say, "Send me back to China;" and Uncle Sam sent them back.

Mr. HUDSPETH. You mean they come from Mexico?

Mr. ROSE. Yes; they come over the line from Mexico, and walk up to the American officer and deliver themselves over to him, in order to get a free trip to China. [Laughter.]

Well, at any rate, this thing silted itself up, and we have had a fight on that levee ever since; we have raised it and we have strengthened it; we have built tracks on it. We have built a cut; and we have worked constantly on that levee, and have raised it three times as high as it was, and have piled rock on it for many miles. But it would not take much to break that levee; there is danger of that at any time during the flood season.

The river overflowed and the water ran over and reached here [indicating on map] and got in below this place [indicating] and then the river come back, and along in here [indicating] the