on the suggestion that the big work is opening the mouth of the river, and that it ought to be prosecuted as rapidly as possible, so that ought not to be allowed to slumber.

Mr. CURRY. Those dredges paid for by the Government and the State and are now Government property?

Mr. SHINN. Oh, certainly, the Government has them; but I assume when the Government turns this over to us they will allow us to use the dredges.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Kent, we will now be glad to hear from you. Mr. CURRY. I would like to have Mr. Kent, who introduced the bill two years ago, and Mr. Knowland, address the committee. These gentlemen are here and will only want to take up 5 or 10 minutes of your time. Before Mr. Kent takes the floor, I wish to call attention to the fact that the records of the United States show that the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers in their present condition are fourth in commercial importance in the United States. There are only three other rivers in the United States that carry more freight and passengers than the Sacramento and San Joaquin now do; and if they were in navigable condition, they would carry 8 or 10 times as much.

The CHAIRMAN. The boats on that river are only designed to carry freight?

Mr. CURRY. Yes, sir; I think it is mostly farm products and forestry products.

Mr. KENT. There are only about 400,000 acres now that are used for intensified farming, and there will be over a million acres more under cultivation if the products that will be carried on these rivers in their improved condition are allowed to enter commerce.

STATEMENT OF HON. WILLIAM KENT, MEMBER OF CONGRESS, FIRST DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA.

Mr. KENT. I will not detain you long. I always understood that the object of making river and harbor appropriations was to encourage commerce and to encourage production. I know that country; it is my own country; and I am pretty familiar with all parts of the United States; and I believe this as fruitful a country as ever lay outdoors. I do not believe there is a country with a greater future of productivity or citizenship. These waterways are now and have been sources of cheaper freight rates, even under the inadequate conditions that have existed. With all the setbacks we have had with floods, from the formation of sand bars and fills, they have borne a great part in the commercial distribution of the country and are destined to a very much greater field.

I would not be advocating this action by Congress and the adoption of this sum-total scheme unless I fully and earnestly believed that it was in the line of the general welfare; in the line of increase in production of food products; in the line of decrease of cost of distribution. I do not know of any particular thing in all the country that strikes me as being more worthy of your careful consideration. You have been given a careful description of the situation; you have been told, and undoubtedly know and believe, that the question of flood control is so mixed up with the question of navigation in this connection that the two needs can not be separated.

We have tried to separate them in the only way they can be separated, and that is by forcing the cost of flood control on the beneficiaries of that flood control, and then going further than that and assuming, equally with the Federal Government, what the engineers say is the proper proportion to be assigned to navigation. We come here asking for recognition and asking help along the best traditions of the idea of Federal help in river and harbor work. We do not come here begging for appropriations. We believe we have shown, or at least can show, if we have not shown it already conclusivelyand I believe we have that this plan, which will result in an enormous production of foodstuff and in a decrease in the cost of distribution is worthy of the indorsement of Congress. We are all greatly indebted to the Federal Government for the promulgation of a definite, specific, wise plan covering these various points. Our old condition was absolutely intolerable. We had no plan, and people directed the river off their own land onto that of their neighbors.

We come asking treatment similar to that which is being accorded the people of the Mississippi Valley. The Federal Government stepped in, the engineers went to work and outlined a complete, definite scheme of solving this great problem, that means so much, not only to the welfare of California but to the food supply of the United States.

California definitely and finally adopted this report, and declared by legislative act that any person doing any reclamation work not in conformity with this act was committing a nuisance. California appointed a commission with great powers, to see that this plan propounded by the Government engineers was carried out.

Mr. SMALL. Was that the Débris Commission or the Flood Control Commission?

Mr. KENT. The Flood Control Reclamation Board of California has charge of that matter now. Mr. McClatchy is chairman, and they have large authority, and they are forcing all private owners who are now there to raise their levees, to strengthen their levees, in accordance with these recommendations; and those people who are now doing it on such a large scale with new reclamation projects are forced to comply with the report and recommendations of the Government engineers. The State of California has shown its good faith throughout. We ask a certain definite thing now. We are not prepared to say that we absolutely need all the money called for in these bills. That is a matter for the Government engineers to determine and to recommend to you; but without the definite adoption of this policy, the work will go along haltingly. The State of California will not know exactly where the situation stands, and there will be delay and uncertainty in a project, which I conceive to be of great importance not only to the State but to the Nation.

STATEMENT OF HON. J. R. KNOWLAND, MEMBER OF CONGRESS, SIXTH DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA.

The CHAIRMAN. We shall now gladly hear Mr. Knowland. Mr. KNOWLAND. Mr. Chairman and members, while I do not represent the Sacramento district or any portion of it, nevertheless I desire to voice the sentiment of the people of every district in the State of California in favoring this measure. I represent the district directly across the bay from San Francisco, and, like San Francisco

we are, of course, vitally interested in the prosperity of the great Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys. Most of the products from those valleys find their way into San Francisco Bay for distribution to different sections of the State.

But it is unnecessary for me to reiterate what has been said, because I believe the subject has been fully covered by the able speakers who have preceded me. I just want to direct your attention to one thought, and that is as to the future possibilities for growth in the State of California. We have now only about 15 people to the square mile, and they have in the State of Massachusetts 433 to the square mile. If we had the same density of population we would support over 60,000,000 of people in that State, and there is no portion of the State that is going to grow as rapidly, as Mr. Kent so well stated, as the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys.

In conclusion, it seems to me that the question finally, as far as this committee is concerned, resolves itself down to this paragraph of the report of Col. Rees, of the Corps of Engineers, who says:

This commission knows of no way of maintaining navigability with certainty and permanence except under a plan which is part of a plan for flood and débris control. And that to my mind is the crux of the entire situation.

Mr. SMALL. Just for my information, could you answer this question: I see the act creating the California Débris Commission, known as the California act or Caminetti act of 1893, has a colonel of the Engineer Corps as president. Are all of the members of that commission engineers in the Army Engineer Corps?

Mr. KNOWLAND. I believe they are; my understanding is that they are Federal Engineers.

Mr. SMALL. They are paid by the State of California?

Mr. KNOWLAND. They are paid by Congress under the Caminetti act, because Mr. Caminetti was then a member of this body; he was a Member of Congress at that time.

Mr. SMALL. I was trying to understand how California was creating a commission consisting of United States Army Engineers.

Mr. CURRY. Mr. Church represents that portion of the San Joaquin Valley that I do not represent. I would like to have him speak now. The CHAIRMAN. We shall be pleased to hear him.

STATEMENT OF HON. DENVER S. CHURCH, MEMBER OF CONGRESS, SEVENTH DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA.

Mr. CHURCH. I assure you I will take up but a very few moments of your time. I told Mr. Curry that if I could think of anything that had not already been said-any new point favorable to this flood-control proposition, that I would be glad to say a word in regard to it. Almost everything, I think, has been said, and well said. I do not know that I could throw any light on this subject to the minds of the committee, any more than possibly give you a little better idea of the geography of the situation. I presume you have already had this, but I will venture to press this on your time.

The State of California is a great inland valley starting up here, as you will notice by this light colored space on the map [indicating], and extending down to this point, where these valleys, about 500 miles in length, join, and is of an average width of over 40 miles up

here in the northern end of the Sacramento Valley; down here [indicating] it is something like a hundred miles in the San Joaquin Valley. I represent the lower portion of this great inland valley of California, which is known as the San Joaquin Valley. This great valley has two rivers, one the Sacramento River, which starts away up here in the high Sierra Nevada Mountains and extends down through the valley and empties, of course, into the San Francisco Bay.

The San Joaquin Valley has, also, one large river, which is known as the San Joaquin River. This portion of this great inland valley north of the Sacramento River is known as the Sacramento Valley; south is known as the San Joaquin Valley.

I think there are 3,000,000 acres in the Sacramento Valley. I believe there are 7,000,000 and a little over 500,000 acres in the San Joaquin Valley. This great valley at one time was a desert, on which nothing grew but sagebrush. It is the theory that at one time this was a great inland sea, and I think it is borne out by the fact that sea shells are found around; he borders of this valley, and débris of different kinds, which indicates that at one time the sea or a great ocean of salt water extended out through that area and that it broke out through the Golden Gate and the waters there went into the Pacific Ocean.

I want to simply impress upon the minds of the committee the fact that this valley is the garden spot of the State of California. It is the garden spot of the West, as far as I know, and it is the most promising valley that I have ever seen. I want to impress on you, also, the fact and I believe this possibly has not been impressed upon the minds of the committee fully-that this great valley is yet not subjected to the processes of cultivation. Down here in the San Joaquin Valley-and it bears on the same subject in Fresno County-my county-there is one tract of land 400,000 acres as level as this table, and it is the best land in the West; and I am not a real estate agent, either.

Mr. KENNEDY. Do you ever use commercial fertilizer on it?

Mr. CHURCH. Nothing whatever. Nothing but the sun is necessary and we have plenty of the sun and water and soil. We have soil and we have the sun, and as the years go on they are getting the water onto it; and the only thing that has redeemed this area is the bringing out of the water or diverting the waters of the river of these great valleys onto the plains. These river beds were deep, and especially before the mining débris was dumped into them, and so the water flowed on down to the sea and left this great valley simply a desert. It is not developed yet, and while the gentlemen speak about 400,000 tons of commerce that come down the river, that does not represent what will come down there in the future by any means.

I wish to make a statement, and I think it is correct-and if it is not correct I am sure Mr. McClatchy or some other gentleman will correct me that out here in the Sacramento Valley there are great tracts of land, thousands of acres of land, that are not yet under cultivation, save that it produces wheat when the waterfall is sufficient to produce a crop; but a person traveling through that country in some places at least can not see a house in sight. Am I right about that or is it a little strong?

Mr. MCCLATCHY. It is not quite as much so as it used to be. Those are the conditions, but they have been gradually changed. Your statement is generally correct.

Mr. CHURCH. Are there not hundreds of thousands of acres in the Sacramento Valley that is not cultivated now, other than simply growing crops on it when the rains are sufficient to produce crops and not subjected to irrigation at all?

Mr. MCCLATCHY. Oh, undoubtedly there are a lot of these swamp lands which they can only secure a summer crop upon.

Mr. CHURCH. And the dry lands out in Tehama County and Colusa County, on both sides of the Southern Pacific.

Mr. MCCLATCHY. Some of those are being subdivided and cultivated, but there are a great many of them still.

Mr. CHURCH. My point is, gentlemen, that as time goes on this land is going to be subjected to cultivation more and more, and of course the waters of the river will be more needed and necessary for the purposes that these gentlemen appearing before you and asking for the development of these rivers have referred to.

That is true of all sections, not only of the Sacramento Valley, but also of the San Joaquin Valley. It is going to develop with the years, and if there is necessity now of enlarging the river or controlling the floods of the Sacramento River, certainly that necessity is going to increase every year, because there is coming into this great valley thousands of people every year; and the great tracts of land are giving way to smaller tracts, and they are being subdivided, and so the product of that country is multiplying year after year. Of course the other points have been mentioned.

What benefits this river will bring people in there and will settle up this country and will benefit the State of California, and whatever benefits the State of California will benefit the United States.

Again, this flood control and making this river more navigable will also necessarily bring down the freight rates and will give the farmers a better chance for their lives there, and will also bring down the prices of the products, I should say, which of course is of material interest to everybody in the United States, especially when the Panama Canal is soon to be opened, and the products of this valley will be shipped to every section of the country, particularly along the seaboard of the Atlantic Ocean.

There are many things I might say, but that is all I desire to say, except, in conclusion, I will emphasize that, knowing the whole situation and this being my native State and I knowing this whole country, I am very much in favor of seeing the Sacramento River improved according to the plan set forth.

Mr. BOOHER. Mr. Church, one question. Is there anything in this bill or have we heard anything so far in this hearing that will lead us to believe that any portion of this money sought is to be expended on the San Joaquin Valley, or does it all go to the Sacramento? Does it go that far south?

Mr. CHURCH. But what helps the Sacramento helps the valley in general, is my object in mentioning the San Joaquin Valley.

Mr. MCCLATCHY. Mr. Chairman, I would like to correct an impression that might go too far. This project does cover the San Joaquin as well as the Sacramento River. The fact is that the surveys on the San Joaquin River have not been completed, and consequently there