I will not take the time to elaborate on that, but that is the statement and it is well substantiated by records that are available to anyone here.

The CHAIRMAN. Did you hear the testimony of Mr. Ballard and of Mr. West the other day?

Doctor WALKER. No; I am sorry.

The CHAIRMAN. In which they attempted to make it appear that there is an overproduction now and that the bringing in of this land would simply aggravate the conditions, regardless of the fact that it probably will not be available for 5 or 10 years.

Doctor WALKER. No; I did not hear it, but I have heard the sentiment expressed before. Some of the New England papers have made that same statement, and as contradicting that statement I am offering this report of Mr. Baker and our Department of Commerce survey on this subject.

The CHAIRMAN. It is quite a relief to know that, because I was afraid you were reflecting their views, that we ought not to bring any more land under cultivation.

Doctor WALKER. No; I am not. By the time this is under cultivation our agricultural demand will be almost up to our agricultural supply. If we watch the curve of our agricultural production and of agricultural demands we will see that they are gradually getting closer together, the only way we feed our growing Nation is by eating up more and more of our exportable surplus, until soon we will have eaten it all up, and unless we produce more we must import food materials.

In California we had quite a controversy relative to power rates for agriculture. At that time-that is two years ago we used more electricity for agriculture than all the rest of the United States put together-necessarily, due to the fact that we use it for pumping and irrigation, and the rate is a very important element to the farmer. I am convinced if we can put in a big demonstration plant in opposition to the already existing plants it will have a beneficial effect in establishing a reasonable rate throughout the whole country.

Mr. RICHARDS. Doctor, do I understand the farm element now uses more power than all other industries together?

Doctor WALKER. No; I say California agriculturally uses more electricity than all the rest of the United States put together uses for agriculture. Agriculturally we use more. No I am perfectly sane on that.

Mr. RICHARDS. I hoped you said it and still were sane.

Dr. WALKER. I wish it might be true. But I will make the prediction that if you will give us this power we will make you a mighty close race for that.

In making an inventory, or analyzing the inventories of the power companies in which they were asking a basis of their valuations upon. which to establish a rate, we had a very difficult time to get engineers and to get people to make that analysis from the standpoint of the agriculturist, because there was only the great corporations dealing in power. They were educating the engineers from whom we must secure or hope to secure the testimony or evidence on valuation cost, Some of the cities were more fortunately situated, and they had a comparison in thir own city. They could draw upon their own

etc.

engineers, while we had to take engineers who were just out of school or had not been identified with these big corporations.

Mr. HAYDEN. Were you successful in inducing the State railway commission to bring into effect rates for power that were satisfactory to the agricultural interests of California?

Doctor WALKER. I would not say that it was satisfactory. We were able to influence the commission that they gave us better rates than we had, and yet I think they are not satisfactory rates at the present time. In fact, the power companies-and Mr. Carr as an attorney was a party to that suit in which we had Mr. Britton, when the valuation that the power companies asked was reduced many millions of dollars, something like one hundred million, by the suit that was instituted jointly between the Farm Bureau and the municipalities, and yet our rates are prohibitive in some lines of agriculture at the present time, and we have no comparisons, and when we make comparisons with far-away regions, for example, such as Ontario, they say it does not apply; it is a foreign country and you can not make it.

I think an operating plant under an entirely different management, which you might call competitive, would be a valuable thing there just to check up one against another and to get one engineer to give data and experience in one company to compare against the data and experience of an engineer in another company.

Mr. HAYDEN. We were told by Mr. Mulholland that the farmers in the San Fernando Valley, near Los Angeles, were paying the city of Los Angeles $6 per acre-foot for water to grow alfalfa. There has been testimony before the committee of the tremendous cost of water even higher than that, where power is used to pump in California. Do you consider water at that price profitable to the ordinary farmer in that State?

Doctor WALKER. $6 an acre-foot?

Mr. HAYDEN. Yes.

Doctor WALKER. That is very high.

Mr. HAYDEN. For 4 acre-feet in a year that would mean $24 per acre per annum?

Doctor WALKER. I know that in some regions it was costing them $25 an acre for irrigation, but that is in orchard crops. But that is practically a prohibitive price for ordinary types of agriculture. I was speaking of that competition of power companies, and I think I have practically closed that.

The mere fact of developing this project that brings to that particular region power at a low cost can develop the resources of the country practically beyond the dream of the most optimistic.

Even from the standpoint of fertilizers-and we are using fertilizing material out there in large amounts-it will be a wonderful help. It is harder to apply fertilizer in a country where we have a great amount of moisture. Cheap and abundant power, making our fixation nitrogen for fertilization a success, would bring a stimulus to that country that is practically undreamed of at the present time.

Mr. HAYDEN. Do you believe there is a possibility of producing fertilizer on the Colorado River under the same process as Henry Ford proposes to use at Muscle Shoals?

Doctor WALKER. I would say on the same process as employed in Germany. I was in Germany, where they are producing 200,000 tons a year and making themselves independent of the Chilean trust, the same as in Norway, the same as in Sweden, the same as in France and Italy, and those are all working, and Henry Ford is merely putting in the same system that is working in other places. And with that tremendous power that can be used in the manufacture of fertilizer we will bring to that region a prosperity that is hardly dreamed of at the present time.

Mr. HAYDEN. At the present time practically no fertilizer is used in the State of Arizona. They feel that the silt carried in the water from the rivers is sufficient. In the production of what particular crops is fertilizer, used in California?

Doctor WALKER. Practically all of the crops. That used to be a great wheat producing country in the Sacramento Valley, but they can not produce the large yields of wheat there now because of the loss of nitrogen in the soil. They are paying $7 or $8 a ton for dry manure shipped in for citrous industry. It is hard to apply fertilizer in that semiarid region: because of the lack of moisture vegetation fails or is slow to decompose. In my country we can not plow under the stubble as all easterners condemn us for not doing, because if we plow that under, we aerate the soil so that it does not hold the moisture and we can not raise a crop unless we retain moisture in the soil.

The CHAIRMAN. Can you plant alfalfa?

I

Doctor WALKER. We can plant alfalfa but we have to irrigate it. And speaking of crop rotation, alfalfa and the legumes are not maintaining nitrogen balance to any soils in the United States. visited many of the agricultural colleges from Maine to California, and under the trial plots there is not one State able to maintain its soil fertility under the present methods without using artificial fertilizer.

Mr. HAYDEN. You then believe there would be a substantial demand for artificial fertilizer produced electrically on the Colorado River?

Doctor WALKER. The demand is increasing tremendously each year: that is one of the great outstanding problems down there, how to get enough fertilizer to keep the orchards going. They are chopping up bean straw and alfalfa hay and the legumes, and it is costing them a tremendous amount of effort to fertilize the soil, which could be accomplished easily if we had cheap power which makes cheap fertilizer available.

Mr. SWING. You know the reclamation projects pretty well. On the question of competition between the products of the western reclamation projects and the Middle West and Northwest, would you agree to this statement that both as to the seasons when the crop comes on and as to the kinds of crops produced there is little or no actual competition?

Doctor WALKER. Well, compared with Iowa, Illinois, and Ohio, for example, we are not competing with them scarcely at all. There is a slight competition, I suppose, but most of the crops are at a different time of the year and of a different kind of crop than raised in these other States.

Mr. SINNOTT. Do you know how much wheat is raised on Government irrigation projects?

Doctor WALKER. No: I do not.

Mr. Swing. Are you through, Doctor?

Doctor WALKER. I think I am practically through with the statement. I think I spoke at first as to the safety of this region here. to the availability of financing to that country in the Imperial Valley, and those reasons handicapping it now are the hesitancy which they have in making permanent improvements, the danger they are running constantly from the flood, and the high cost of the electricity in that region. They are handicaps on this particular territory that make this slow progress in comparison with what it would be if we had a safe irrigation; safe irrigation brings cheap money, for permanent building improvements, stimulated by that hope of permanency, and with the cheap power for manufacturing fertilizer would make that country prosperous and livable much more than it is at the present time.

Mr. HAYDEN. Are you familiar with the compact between the seven States of the Colorado River Basin providing for an equitable apportionment of the waters of the stream?

Doctor WALKER. In just a general way I am. I know that is under way.

Mr. HAYDEN. It is insisted before this committee that no appropriations be made by the Congress which might result in creating a right to the use of water in the lower basin (that is, in Nevada. Arizona, and California) which might be adverse to the States of the upper basin (that is, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming) until an understanding is reached as provided in the Colorado River compact.

Doctor WALKER. Well, I have too much confidence in the wisdom of you of this committee and of Congress to believe you will allow a great multitude to suffer until every other group was technically, exactly, and definitely ready to go. I am certain that you can arrange to protect the rights of those few who are not ready to go, while you are doing good for the great majority of people who would be served by this project.

Mr. HAYDEN. The legal question involved here is very disturbing. There has been much litigation between States with respect to the use of waters rising in one and flowing into another. The last case between Wyoming and Colorado, was in the Supreme Court for 11 years. The thought has been that if it were possible to first clear up the legal difficulties we might proceed with development on the Colorado River. Are you personally familiar with that situation?

Doctor WALKER. Not the particular case, but the same ghost stalks around every big development-wait until everything is cleared up legally. But you wait 11 or 12 years for this in the Imperial Valley and you are doing such an injustice to those people, you are retarding development, you are giving a grip on power development in the West that will be dangerous to the people who are users of power, and it will give us no competition, or adjustment, or comparison of rates by another power company, and waiting that length of time, I think, would be practically the death knell to the industries of that particular region.

Mr. SWING. That is all.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Raker will be here shortly and he wants to be here when Mr. Hamele goes on, so if Mr. Silver will give us the benefit of his views on this proposition.

Mr. LEATHERWOOD. Does your organization take the view that the Congress should immediately appropriate money and that work should be begun upon the so-called Boulder dam irrespective of the ratification of the compact by the Colorado River Basin States?

Doctor WALKER. In discussing the Boulder Canyon project in the resolution committee of the American Farm Bureau Federation we thought it idealistic if it could go through by the ratification of the States. It was discussed here whether that technical legal thing should hold it up. We were in hopes it could go on if it could be ratified without any legal hitch in it at all. That was the attitude here. We hoped it would go through. Therefore, the discussion before the committee was that they wanted this completed at the earliest possible day.

Mr. LEATHERWOOD. Doctor, as I understand it, the conference at which the Colorado River compact was framed was composed of delegates from the various Colorado River Basin States, and they were actuated by the desire to arrive at a treaty that would, as far as possible, adjudicate the rights of the several States in and to the waters of the river fairly and equitably as between the States and avoid possible litigation in the future that might delay the development of the river. Was not that true?

Doctor WALKER. Well, that point was not put up in just that form. We knew that this ratification of the seven States was considered and we knew that the development was urgently and immediately demanded there practically to conserve property and develop this. We had no thought, as has been expressed here, that there should be a delay and everything would be stopped until this was completely ratified by the States. That point was not discussed as a point of delay before the committee.

Mr. LEATHERWOOD. Do you mean before the committee of the Farm Organization?

Doctor WALKER. I mean before the resolutions committee of the American Farm Bureau Federation.

Mr. LEATHERWOOD. Well, assuming now that there are very vital interests inuring to the so-called upper basin States as a matter of law, and as the water is now being handled and distributed by and between the several States, and that the ratification of the compact would tend to simplify and prevent any controversy between States later, would it not then be desirable to have the compact ratified in advance of any development of the river, particularly if the development of the river without the compact might precipitate longdrawn-out litigation as between the States.

Doctor WALKER. Well, you have a picture of an idealist. Of course, if you can get your plans all worked out so there would be no litigation, it would be heaven for us people in the West, but I expect you will have litigation on irrigation questions as long as you have lawyers to litigate. And I think, hypothetically, you are conserving the interests of the very small minority and making a large majority suffer until you get that idealistic plan worked through.