I think it proper also to report to you that the testimony shows that there are no Federal Reclamation projects nor have there ever been any such projects along the Kings and Kern Rivers. The local interests have constructed and maintained through the years reclamation projects without Federal aid. The testimony shows that no public lands are involved and that very little, if any, new land is to be brought under water.

The hearings also disclose that there is a definite flood problem and that the local interests without Federal contribution have constructed local protective works. Recent excessive floods have demonstrated that these works are inadequate.

The local interests, seeking flood protection through the construction of the projects in question, have over many years acquired adequate water rights under California laws and, as stated, have established and operated their own irrigation systems. The citizens and the landowners with one accord object as disclosed by the hearings to being brought under the restrictions of the Reclamation Act.

I beg to assure you that the policies as outlined in your letter of February 7, 1944, will be fully considered by the Committee on Flood Control in the light of the facts developed at the hearings.

Very sincerely,

Mr. Whittington, Chairman of the Flood Control Committee.

Now Mr. Chairman, that is evidence of statements by the President. asking to set the policy; and I will say to you those four streams, namely: Kings River is about 22 to 1 flood control; Kaweah in percentage is about 87 percent flood control. I mean Kaweah is 75 percent and Tule is 87 percent.

Now, get that: Flood control 75 percent on Kaweah; Tule 87 percent flood control; Kern River about 67% percent; and I think there will be other engineers here following me who will testify that the flood control is more proportionally than I have given it to you.

Senator BURTON. What do you figure on Kings River, Congressman?
Representative ELLIOTT. About 21⁄2 to 1.

Senator BURTON. That would be about 66 percent?
Representative ELLIOTT. That is right.

Senator BULTON. What do you mean when you say 66 percent and 75 percent and 87 percent?

Representative ELLIOTT. 75 percent flood control, the benefits would be, flood control over irrigation or power or any other feature; and on the Tule, 87 percent.

Senator BURTON. The benefits from the investment would accrue in that proportion?

Representative ELLIOTT. That is right. And that is proportionally the first consideration-we are talking about the great Central Valley's water project conserving the waters and utilizing if for the greatest of purposes. They are doing their figuring today for the greatest benefit, but the first consideration to keep from destroying the property is to have some dams or reservoirs located at the proper places, as has been outlined on the map there, to hold the water in abeyance, because that water might accumulate within 24 to 48 hours in this. Senator BURTON. Could I ask you a question, Congressman? Representative ELLIOTT. Yes.

Senator BURTON. Where do you get those figures?

Representative ELLIOTT. These figures here, the 75 and 87 and 6212 percent, are the Corps of Engineers' figures, and I am using I think, Mr. May's figures. Not Mr. May's, but the engineer that appeared before the committee in the House.

Mr. J. H. TURNER. Hale?

Representative ELLIOTT. What?
Mr. TURNER. Mr. Hale?

Representative ELLIOTT. Hale yes. I think that was all figured on the Kings, but the other three are from the Corps of Army Engineers. Is that correct, gentlemen? I believe that is the figure I remembered on that.

Senator OVERTON. Well, they will testify in a moment.

Representative ELLIOTT. I want to read a statement, that the Secretary of the Interior recognized a high order of development when he said, in a letter to President Roosevelt back in 1935, referring to the Central Valley water project:

This project is not designed for bringing new lands into cultivation but for the maintenance of existing agricultural developments and existing civilization of high type. The Bureau of Reclamation cannot point to any achievement that compares with the accomplishments made in the Central Valley by California pioneers.

Sidney T. Harding, professor of irrigation at the University of California and long one of the outstanding authorities on western irrigation, directed attention to this when he said in a recent address:

California has made an extensive and a successful irrigation development, more successful in the cost of its development and in their repayment than the projects of the Bureau of Reclamation. In ability to pay, the California irrigation districts have made total payments on their constructed costs one and twothirds times as large as all Bureau projects, although the total costs of the California districts have been only one-half to one-third of the Bureau's total. This indicates a record four to five times better than the record of the Bureau in paying off the development costs of such projects. Furthermore, this excellent record was made substantially without Federal aid. Federal funds have only been spent to protect some of the lands along the Sacramento River and in the delta from floods, and even here the local interests contribute about twothirds of the cost of such protection.

Again I repeat, when you ask why my people are not overwhelmingly insistent that the Corps of Engineers construct these dams and reservoirs, I say they have no connection with the Central Valley's project whatsoever. I go further at this time: that there is a move on in California to introduce legislation in California to take the project completely away from the Department of the Interior and operate it as a State project. We are getting sick and tired of these dillywhackers promising our people and then at the last minute rushing in with legislation wanting to socialize and strangle the interests of the people when we over a period of many years have been succeeding on that.

And to round out the picture I want to cite to you gentlemen just how my people feel. I happened to talk to one day before yesterday over the telephone. Here this type of legislation has been introduced in the Senate. In all this area that is involved at the present time the Secretary proposes in addition to dictate the size of the farm a farmer should have, to tell the boy who comes back from the war, "I think you can make a living on 40 acres, so we'll give you 40 acres, but you can't increase the size of your farm beyond what I think you should have."

At the same time here he sits in the Department of the Interior with great wealth, out here in Maryland in the chicken business; down here in another Government agency, they are telling the people in my district, "We want you to kill your laying hens because we are getting too many eggs. We don't want you to produce any more fryers or broilers." But yet the Secretary of the Interior, with great wealth, is

competing; he has a chicken business competing with the poor little people. And then he wants to go into my area here and further strangle them. That is the kind of bird you are dealing with. You are not dealing with a human being who has any principle. It is just plumb silly to think that our American people have worked around into a position that we have got pretty nearly such dictatorial tactics as are being planned over here by some of our Federal bureaucrats. I am sorry to say that this exists, but it is here, gentlemen. We cannot endure it any longer. And here is a fair sample of it by legislation being introduced keeping the Corps of Army Engineers from constructing these projects year after year. Their report has been ready, but the Department of the Interior said, "We'll have a report out next year. We'll have a report out next year. We'll have a report out next year."

We have been stalled, we have been kidded, until I am just plumb sick and tired of it, Mr. Senator, and I am not going to take it any longer. I am 21 years old, got a few blemishes on me, and I am just not going to stand idly by and see my people ridiculed and kidded and fooled into some silly idea that they hope to enact at a later date. Our farmers have been misled.

But I want you gentlemen to bear in mind that a couple of years ago the Board of Supervisors of Kern County sent representations back here on the Kern River; this year letters and resolutions from those counties, endorsed by those people that are going to pay the bill. They are not going to be paid by the northern part of the project. The bulk of this project will be paid off by power in the northern end, and practically all the irrigation features will be in my congressional district, and all we are asking in God's world is for our people to have an expression. Give to our people what they want. They want the Corps of Engineers to construct this project on those four streams. They don't want the Bureau of Reclamation there. As far as I am concerned the Bureau of Reclamation is a gross blight to the State of California because at the present time they have these dillywhackers running around out there with silly questionnaires trying to find out what church you go to. How many cows did you milk last month? What lodge do you go to? And have you any friends that go to church or to a lodge? That is the kind of thing that they are doing with my people out there.

They are talking about they have not had enough manpower to do these things. Well, if they had cooperated and worked with me we could have had these canals completed before we are ever started. And since, Mr. Chairman, the war has started I have done everything in my power to get started the construction of those canals. I have run up against one obstacle after another. First they told me it was limited. I said, "We don't want it limited. We want the excavation of 160 miles of canal."

Then they said, "Sit still, and we are getting it clarified."

Why, Don Nelson told me just a few weeks ago, "Why, Mr. Congressman, we want to help you. But, Mr. Congressman, do you know there is a war on?"

I said, "I think I do."

"Well," he said, "there isn't enough manpower."

So I asked him to write a letter over to the Manpower Commission, so he wrote a letter over to the Manpower Commission, Mr. McNutt.

And all the time, mind you, Mr. Jones down there, the War Food Administrator, asked that this project get started since he has been in there, and before that the Agricultural people asked that it get started. But no. No, we won't permit it to get started.

But I continued step by step, not giving up, and finally it came back from Mr. McNutt with the clarifications. We agreed to the number of manpower it would take to do the excavation from Friant Dam to the Kern River, and we got that back to the War Production Board. Mr. Nelson said, "Oh, Mr. Congressman," he said, "that looks maybe to you very plain, but," he said, "we have another obstacle to jump now."

I said, "now what's that?"

"Well," he said, "I don't know whether the War Food Administrator wants this project."

So we had to wait then and dillydally around and send a letter immediately over to the War Food Administrator. In the meantime the War Food Administrator had called to the attention of Mr. Nelson that he had sent a letter over 212 months before that asking that the project be started. So I saw Don down there one afternoon on Saturday afternoon about a couple of weeks ago coming up, and he said to me, "Congressman, now we want to help you, but," he said, "now let us sit down and talk."

And I said, "Mr. Nelson, do you want to construct, see this project started, or don't you?"

"Well," he said, "I want to help you."

I said, "All you have to do is answer me that: Do you want to see this project started or don't you? because I am going to turn the sizzling pants off of you donkeys up here on the House floor if you don't break loose and tell me the truth, because I am getting tired of being kidded." He stood back a little and took a gasp and said: "We are going to help get the project started."

So a letter was sent out in the Agricultural Department. It is in the making now. And if Brother Ickes will just keep his hands off of this and leave Harry Bashore alone, we shall probably get started for the construction of the canals from Friant into Kern County.

Now there is a definite move on and was a definite move on to keep the Corps of Army Engineers out of this area. It is very evident and by the recent evidence was to get the reports in these other streams out. As to where they are at, they are down in the Bureau of the Budget. I called up the Bureau of the Budget. "I am sorry, Congressman, we are short-handed. We just can't get them out." "And on the same breath, while my project had been there over a year, another bill was introduced in the House, and that Congressman called up the Bureau of the Budget and said, "I would like to get my project out as quickly as you can." He introduced it one day; we held hearings on it the following day over in the House. So it has resolved itself down to a point here with some interests of these Federal people and our Federal Government, so the project was voted out.

And so I called the President's office. I said, "I want a hearing with the President on these projects."

Well, the secretary of the President said, "Congressman, what do you want to talk about?" So I had to tell some employed guy down there what a Congressman elected by the people wanted to talk about. So I let him in on the secret of what I wanted to talk about.

So the next two days he called me back; he said, "Congressman," he said, "before you talk to the President we want to send a couple of men down from the Bureau of the Budget": to send down a couple of clunks from the Bureau of the Budget, to inform them what my congressional district did out there, how much I had produced, and everything.

And after they sat down and went over a great rigmarole I said, "Gentlemen, you have been taking orders so damn long, you still want me to tell you something: you people are not-what you told me isn't what you have got inside of you to tell me. The report that you have told us why you didn't get that out isn't the truth. Isn't it a matter of fact that you have been told that you couldn't-not to report this out until you were told the word?"

"Well, off the record, that's correct."

Well, that is the whole comeback to me. I said, "I am going to tell you something. You can go back and you can tell it to the President of the United States, when you can find where he is at. This is the truth and nothing but the truth. If you birds don't get this report in in the next 3 days, so help me God, I am going to take it to the House floor and I am going to blast the lid off."

In 3 days they called the Corps of Army Engineers, and the report was here. For 3 years that report, gentlemen, was held up in that department, and no other one man was behind this but the Secretary of the Interior, Mr. Ickes. That is what has been going on here, and you gentlemen want to know what position we are in, where we are at. Why, my people are pleading for a flood project. Here in Tulare Lake a short time ago one hundred and thirty-five or forty thousand of the best land, wheat that high [indicating], since we have been at war, was destroyed, part of it. Last year thousands of acres were destroyed. Here we have some "dillywhackers" down here who have done everything they could do to keep the Corps of Army Engineers from doing any work. At the time the Corps of Army Engineers since last spring have spent a million five hundred thousand dollars in the Tulare Lake to, restore the breaks in those levees to keep from destroying more land. They have put back into cultivation about eighteen to twenty thousand acres up to the present time, which is in growing crops and being harvested in the next few days. That is what the Corps of Army Engineers have done for people.

But what has the Bureau of Reclamation done? All they have done is stalled, refused to cooperate, refused to work. And that is the truth, so help me God, if I ever spoke it, and I can prove every word of it. There is not one of these gentlemen here who can be put back on the stand and say to you gentlemen, "We have done everything we can to construct the canals." When you have a $20,000,000 dam complete and only about one-fifth of the water backed up behind that dam will be caught on the Benare Canal, the rest of that is wasting out to the sea and will continue to waste out to the sea until a canal is built.

As I said a while ago, they haven't had the intestinal fortitude to complete a survey. They didn't intend to do anything, I say to you, Mr. Chairman, until they had my people at their mercy and they were destitute. But I'll tell you further, our people will never consent to have the Department of the Interior move in there and control our water rights. I will say to you this: They won't have to go across the pond to spill their blood. Our people are not going to give up our