Mr. SWING. The same as I stated for Yuma. But there are during other seasons of the year freshets or flashes that come down almost as large from this desert region as those which come down from the summer run-off of the upper region.

Mr. HAYDEN. I can say that, according to information furnished me by the Geological Survey, the largest flood ever known on the Colorado River at Yuma occurred on the 22d of January, 1916, when the total flow was 240,000 second-feet; more than 200,000 second-feet of that came out of the Gila River.

Mr. SWING. Yes; about 35,000 second-feet came out of the Colorado River.

Now, this site at Glen Canyon is too far away to be operated for the purpose of safeguarding against the waters of the Gila. You could not, in the short length of time after you got notice from the Weather Bureau of a storm, by closing your dam 650 miles away affect the flow at Yuma in time to do any particular good.

Mr. LANKFORD. Would it be possible to impound the waters of the Gila in any way?

Mr. SWING. That could be done; and there is a project proposed for it. It is a good thing, and should be done.

Mr. HAYDEN. I will state to the committee that the map which Mr. Swing is using was prepared at my request by the United States Geological Survey and represents the latest information that they have, particularly with respect to the Grand Canyon region, through which a party of engineers passed last season. You will find on that map a most accurate compilation of the available data relating to the lower basin.

Mr. SWING. Some of the members who were not present at the last hearing and did not see this photograph [indicating] of the flood of 1905-1906 in the Imperial Valley will be interested in observing just what took place.

And I would like to call attention again to what I call the process of "side swiping" by the river after it gets above 50,000 second-feet. At the place in this volume where I have this marker [indicating] there are a number of photographs contained in the Marshall report which show the immense danger of this side swiping of the bank when the river gets above 50,000 second-feet.

I would like to say that I have seen the Colorado River at the Needles, flowing out into the woods a quarter of a mile away.

Mr. SWING. I was undertaking to show that there are two menaces to the Imperial Valley, one of which was too much water, and the other was not enough water. The fact that the rainfall on an average at Brawley in Imperial Valley is 24 inches a year and at Calexico only 3 inches shows the necessity of water to keep that community alive; as does the fact that there are no reservoirs sufficient to keep more than three days' water supply in any one of the five incorporated cities; so that in case anything should happen-say that some of the control works in Mexico were blown up so that the water would be cut off, as it could be, 49,000 of the people would have to get out of that valley before three days' because the few wells there would probably not be sufficient to furnish domestic water for more than 1,000 people; there are less than a dozen wells there.

Mr. RAKER. I understand, Mr. Swing, that those people expect to pay for the all-American canal and their share of the upkeep if this thing is constructed?

Mr. SWING. Yes; there is a contract between the Government and the Imperial Valley by which the Imperial Valley will pay its share, acre for acre, with the Government lands in this region [indicating], known as the "East-side Mesa," which contains approximately 200,000 acres, both for the construction of the canal and its subsequent upkeep.

For three years I was chief counsel for the Imperial irrigation district, which is the largest irrigated unit in the United States; and I was up against the problem of trying to keep going a great system which spends between two and three million dollars a year, with half of its irrigation system in a foreign country.

The fact that we have to get the permission of two countries before we can do a single piece of work will give you some idea of the cumbersomeness of this method. We must submit a plan for any proposed construction work to the State engineer at Sacramento for approval. At the same time, we must also submit the plan to the Secretary Fomento at Mexico City. Sometimes there is great delay in the approval. But that is not at all. Secretary Hoover says engineers differ. The engineer at Sacramento considers what the proposed improvement would do for the benefit of of the American farmers on our side of the line: but, of course, the engineer in Mexico City considers what the effect would be upon lands in Mexico.

And this thing has happened: We have had the approval for the construction of the "Tecolote cut," as it is called, which would reduce by about six miles a winding part of this old canal in Mexico and thus shorten the grade and get a better getaway for the water from the intake on down-we have had that held up and changed. For years after the canal was built, and to-day, the silting up process in the first five or six miles of the canal is such that it is necessary to maintain a fleet of dredges operating there to keep the silt out of the canal, to keep it from choking up and stopping the water altogether, as it has been stopped. It was thought that by shortening the canal and cutting down this grade, it would result in taking care of the situation; and at an expense of $100,000 this canal was built. While it was being built, an $80,000 dredge was burned up-accidentally or otherwise-and when the canal was completed the Mexican authorities said they had decided that it was not for the benefit of the Mexican lands, because it would result in the water scouring the canal into the ground, resulting in an inability to get water out on lands adjoining the existing canal: and they demanded that those lands be served and that the water be held sufficiently high in the main canal in order to serve them.

The result was that the Tecolote Canal was never used. But it stands there as an example of the impossibility of doing business under two flags and trying to serve two masters.

Mr. RAKER. What is the division of the water at the intake?
Mr. SWING. What do you mean? I do not understand.

Mr. RAKER. What part of it goes to the Mexicans and what part goes to the Americans?

Mr. SWING. It all goes to the Mexicans, and they have taken up to this time such parts of the water as they desire. We lose the physical control of that water when it flows into Mexico, and they have control over it until it comes back on to the American lands.

Mr. LANKFORD. How many acres of Mexican lands receive water from this system?

Mr. SWING. About 200,000 acres of Mexican lands are receiving water from the system.

Mr. LEATHERWOOD. Are the Mexican lands owned by Americans? Mr. SWING. They are owned by capitalists who live largely in Los Angeles, who are desirous of building up an agricultural empire in that part of Mexico, where they own 800,000 acres.

Mr. LEATHERWOOD. I will make my question somewhat clearer: Are these Mexican lands owned by citizens of the United States?

Mr. SWING. They are. There is a syndicate of American capitalists that own a tract of 800,000 acres in Mexico in this area of the basin here [indicating], which lands are farmed largely by Chinamen and Japanese tenants.

Mr. RAKER. Now, what part of the water do the Mexicans ordinarily take that is, the water taken through the intake?

Mr. SWING. They have been continually increasing the amount they have taken since I first went out there. When I first went out there, there probably was not 30.000 acres of those Mexican lands in cultivation. That amount has crept up from year to year, so that from 30,000 it has grown to, possibly, 200,000 acres; and so far as I know, they are putting in additional lands every year that I go through there.

Mr. RAKER. What I mean is, do they take one-third, or one-half, or two-thirds of the amount of water that is taken out of the river at that intake?

Mr. ROSE. Mr. Chairman, I could answer that question. They have used since 1916 about 37 per cent of the water. But they have used during certain periods of the year 55 per cent.

Mr. RAKER. That is what I wanted to get at.

Mr. HAYDEN. When you testify, will you kindly bring the figures showing the number of acres actually under irrigation in California from the Colorado River during the past 10 years?

Mr. ROSE. I will furnish that information before the hearings close.

Mr. LEATHERWOOD. I want to ask one more question before you leave that Mexican situation: Is it not a fact that these Mexican lands owned by citizens of the United States are cultivated by peon labor?

Mr. SWING. Yes; I call it "coolie labor."

Mr. LEATHERWOOD. Well, peon labor or coolie labor?

Mr. SWING. Yes; the cheapest sort of labor.

Mr. LEATHERWOOD. Do you know where they market their product? Mr. SWING. The product is marketed in the United States, in competition with that of the American farms.

And that is one of the things I want to discuss: That if this dam is built, as of necessity, it must me built, unless you are just going to say that 100,000 people-50,000 in Imperial Valley and 50,000 in these other valleys-are to be abandoned to whatever fate

this uncontrolled river may bring them-if you build the dam at all, then you are in a position of either turning the water loose and letting it flow down to be used in Mexico, to add new lands to the 200,000 acres that are already being cultivated there, and bring the amount up, as it probably would, to somewhere near 800,000 acres, so that if there is any competition between the products of these western projects and those of the farms of the Middle West (of which we can show there is very little or none) it will be more likely to come from this kind of farming in Mexico than from the American farming-and either the water must be turned loose for them to use or it must be used on lands in the United States.

So that we are not confronted with the question of whether there shall be competition from new lands, but the question which we are confronted with is, shall it be such competition as may come from products grown upon American soil, under the American standard of living, and under the American wage scale, or shall it be such competition as will flow from lands where the products are grown by contract coolie labor of the cheapest sort?

Mr. RICHARDS. Would the building of the All-American Canal do away with the present Mexican canal?

Mr. SWING. No; it would not do away with that; it would do away with their having the priority.

For instance, here is what has happened a number of times: Imperial Valley has had numerous water shortages, but I have never in the 16 years of my residence in Imperial Valley, known of a water shortage on the Mexican land.

Mr. LEATHERWOOD. Have they any priority in the use of the water?

Mr. SWING. They have a physical priority.

Mr. LEATHERWOOD. How are you going to destroy that by the building of the all-American canal?

Mr. SWING. Well, it is a physical priority due to the fact that the Mexicans have control of the water after our canal enters Mexico. That is, they get the first chance at the water which comes through their lands. We have had a number of disastrous shortages of water in Imperial Valley, one of which was estimated to have caused a loss of crops of a value of something like $5,000,000.

Mr. RAKER. The all-American canal would take the water from the river at another place, and your people would have no more use for the Mexican intake at all, would they?

Mr. SWING. That is correct.

Mr. RAKER. Now, with no reflection at all upon my friend in regard to what he said about peon labor, will you advise the committee about how many Chinese, Japanese, and Mexicans are employed in the Imperial Valley?

Mr. SWING. In Imperial Valley or in Mexico?

Mr. RAKER. Imperial Valley I am talking about now. I mean on the California side.

Mr. SWING. Well, there are much fewer Japanese; there are no Chinese that I know of on this side; and the Japanese, since the passage of the land laws, have gone out of Imperial Valley to a very considerable extent. I have no idea what number are there now. In Mexicali the population of Chinamen who have gone.

over under contract labor is estimated at 8,000; that is, Chinese laborers.

Mr. LEATHERWOOD. Mr. Chairman, the distinguished gentleman from California must know that I do not represent Imperial Valley, and therefore he is not in any way reflecting upon me.

Mr. RAKER. You did not answer, Mr. Swing, as to approximately how many Mexicans are employed in Imperial Valley? Mr. SWING. Oh, as to Mexicans

Mr. RAKER (continuing). Mexicans employed on the California side?

Mr. SWING. I do not know. They are seasonal labor; they come over and pick cotton.

Mr. RAKER. Are there many of them?

Mr. SWING. Quite a few during cotton season-2,000 to 3,000. We have a great many negroes from the South who come in there in the cotton-picking season.

Mr. RAKER. I was speaking about Mexicans.

Mr. HAYDEN. I would like to read this paragraph from a brief filed with the Federal Power Commission:

Should the Congress of the United States or the State Department, or the War Department, or the Federal Power Commission, enact or approve a law providing substantially as follows:

"There is hereby ceded by the United States of America to the United States of Mexico water enough from the regulated flow of the Colorado River to reclaim and irrigate 2,000,000 acres of land in the delta of the Colorado River in Mexico for the establishment of an Asiatic agricultural colony and seaport city."

There could be but one answer to that question.

Yet that is the absolutely inescapable, unavoidable, and inevitable result that would follow the building of the Boulder Canyon power plant.

Mr. SWING. It would, unless the same act that authorized the dam provided for the use of the water, or such part of it as the lower basin had a right to use, on American soil, by American citizens, under the American law of appropriation.

There is some foundation for that statement if we are to build the dam and turn the water over to the Mexican lands.

And in partial substantiation of that-which is not all theory-I desire to read an extract from a newspaper published in the city of Calexico, close to the border. The Calexico Chronicle, in its issue of December 28, 1922, contained on its front page an article entitled: One hundred thousand acres new land in California Delta to supply Chinese and Japanese mills-Calexico engineer returns from three-month trip to Orient with plans for development of Big Baja California project.

The engineer referred to is Mr. J. C. Allison, who, by the way, has acted many times as agent for the syndicate of American capitalists owning those lands. The article says that he "recently returned from a three-month trip to Tokyo and Shanghai and other Japanese and Chinese manufacturing centers."

He brought over certain Japanese representatives with him; and the article continues

During the past week George Shima, known in northern California as the "potato king," and R. Yawashima, T. Kamiya, and D. Turkukawa, of Tokyo, have gone over the project in detail and there is every indication that they will make a favorable report to their associates in Japan.