posed by the Government's representatives-and I so refused despite the fact that acceptance of such terms would have enabled me to make a million dollars or more out of my then interest in Rio Grande Valley lands.

Of course, my associates were highly indignant, and said I assumed to know more about the case than the company's attorneys; but, as I saw it, the issue was perfectly plain, and as I then held a controlling interest in the stock of the company I was in a position to prevent acceptance of the Government's proposal.

It was never expected that the company would profit much by the low water rent ($1.50 an acre per annum) at which we had contracted to supply water for irrigation; the large profits that the company's Elephant Butte Dam project ensured to its stockholders were to be derived from the sale of the lands we directly and indirectly controlled below Elephant Butte, and from the electrical power the Elephant Butte Dam would enable us to develop. If there had been a million acres, or more even, irrigable in the Rincon, Mesilla, and El Paso Valleys, we could have sold every acre abroad, at from $100 to $300 an acre, in two or three years; and, needless to say, we could have sold these lands just as readily if we had accepted the Government's proposal.

It was an extremely embarrassing position for me. I had induced some of my English friends, and others, to join with me in financing the project. Naturally, their object was to make as large a profit as possible, and, of course, they were not concerned about the Rio Grande water rights of either the people of Colorado or of northern New Mexico. I was between Scylla and Charybdis. Quite apart from my own desire to make a profit out of the company's enterprise, I had put my friends' money (as well as my own) into the business, and consequently it was my duty to protect their rights and interests as far as I could honorably do so. But, on the other hand, as an American it was also my duty to do what I could to protect the far greater rights and interests of my countrymen, present and future, that were, as I believed, and still believe, threatened by the departmental effort, through the Elephant Butte Dam suit, to give the General Government control over unnavigable streams. For, as I then pointed out in a communication addressed to Secretary Hay, and in my arguments before the congressional committees, such Federal control of unnavigable streams would not only annul statutes and customs of long standing, but it would also be subversive of the basic principle upon which the courts had founded all decisions relating to the use of stream waters for irrigation in the arid region. If the General Government could prohibit, restrain, or limit the use of the waters of the Rio Grande in New Mexico on the ground that such waters contribute to navigable waters a thou

sand miles below, and reserve such waters for irrigation in the State of Texas, or in the Republic of Mexico, then it would necessarily follow that the General Government could and would also assume power to control or prohibit the use of the waters of the Arkansaw and South Platte in Colorado, and of the North Platte in Wyoming, or of any other unnavigable stream of the West, no matter how insignificant its flow, that contributes to a river that in its lower reaches is navigable or that is an affluent of a navigable stream.

Such Federal control was so patently preposterous, so plainly inimical to the best interests of the West, and so manifestly inconsistent with the constitutional rights of our Western States, and with their irrigation laws and customs, that, notwithstanding my duty to my associate investors in the Elephant Butte Dam project, I felt that I was morally bound, no matter how great the sacrifice required, to stand firm for the greater and far more important rights and interests involved in the question. And so, having carefully considered both sides of the question, I decided that, despite my duty to my associate investors in the Elephant Butte Dam project and notwithstanding my own large interest therein, I could not in good conscience consent to acceptance of the Government's proffered terms of compromise.

The great principle at stake was too important to permit of my making my own interests and those of my associate stockholders paramount to the vastly greater interests of the people of our Western States. The doctrine of " the greatest good to the greatest number" seemed to me to be the one by which I was morally bound to be guided. But if I could then have foreseen the ruin of my hopes, the long years of poverty for myself and family, and the personal abuse and persecution to which I was to be subjected as a result of my decision so to stand for what was right, if I could then have foreseen the extent to which our Federal departments and courts were to be prostituted in the determination to give to the General Government such complete control over the waters of the Rio Grande in New Mexico and Colorado, I, sometimes, when tempted to despair of the ultimate outcome of the contest between right and wrong in this country, fear I would have accepted the Government's offer.

When the Rio Grande goes dry in these parts a log or two occasionally lodges across the deepest part of the river's channel in such way as to catch and hold back brush and driftwood when the first return of flowing water in the stream happens to be in but small volume; and when the succeeding floods come the current is diverted by this chance obstruction in the channel and the river's course entirely changed, sometimes for many miles and to another side of the valley. Likewise, with men's lives a chance action, seemingly

of no real importance, may alter the whole current of one's earthly

course.

In the spring of 1892 I helped a fellow American who (with his wife and children) was stranded in London. Subsequently he asked me to accept stock in a New Mexican irrigation company, "The American Colonization Co.," in satisfaction of his pecuniary indebtedness to me-which I consented to do. Afterwards he induced me (and some of my friends) to become still further interested in his company, which was said to own more than 40,000 acres of irrigable land in the valley of the Rio Puerco, near Albuquerque. In the autumn of 1893, having heard that his company did not have a good title to the land it claimed to own, I came over from London to investigate the matter. While I was in Albuquerque I was invited by a deputation of citizens from El Paso to visit the Mesilla and El Paso Valleys, and to become interested in a project for damming the Rio Grande. Chiefly in hope of doing something for the English settlers that had purchased land from the American Colonization Co., in the Puerco Valley, I accepted this deputation's invitation; and, on finding the local conditions exceptionally favorable to the carrying out of a great irrigation and colonization project, I was thus led to invest in and to undertake to finance the enterprise that later became famous, or, I should say, infamous, as the Elephant Butte Dam project.

If I had not, by purely fortuitous events, been led to help a fellow countryman who was stranded in London, and thereby to become interested in New Mexico, the probabilities are I would not have heard even of the Elephant Butte Dam project, and therefore would not have had the misfortune to be placed in a position where a proper sense of common decency, to say nothing of conscience, made it necessary for me so to sacrifice my private fortune and my personal ambition to achieve distinction in the medical profession in Europe. Verily, ""Tis a strange world, my masters."

If Anson Mills had not prostituted his office by intriguing, with Mexican officials and with speculators in irrigable lands on the Mexican side of the El Paso Valley, to seduce our Genera! Government into carrying out his international dam scheme, and into reserving the waters of the Rio Grande for irrigation below El Paso, the Elephant Butte suit would not have been instituted. If it had not been for the (first) decision of the Federal Supreme Court in the Elephant Butte Dam case, whereby the Secretary of the Department of War was given jurisdiction over all unnavigable waters that contribute to navigable waters of the United States, the State of Kansas would not have brought suit against the State of Colorado to enjoin the latter from appropriating the headwaters of the Arkansas

River, and the officials of the Department of the Interior would not have dreamed even of prohibiting the impounding of the headwaters of the Rio Grande for irrigation in your State.

If Anson Mills had not instigated that suit, the original Elephant Butte Dam project would have been carried out many years ago, and by now all the irrigable lands of the Rincon, Mesilla, and El Paso Valleys would have been brought under intensive cultivation. Millions of dollars of British capital would have been invested in New Mexico, and Colorado would have reaped a like golden harvest from the development of her Rio Grande lands.

If such fellows can with impunity commit perjury and prostitute their official positions in the interest of graft, and so besmirch our national honor--and grow rich at it-what possible benefit can come from preaching the ethics of good government and of honesty in office? What is there to deter other crooks in office from making the most of their opportunities to enrich themselves at the public's expense? When such villainy prospers and is permitted to lead to high rank and public honors, how can we school our sons to believe that "honesty is the best policy "?

The United States and Mexican Boundary Commission was created by the convention of March 1, 1889. Anson Mills managed (how?) to be appointed commissioner in 1893, but his pay, $6,000 a year, was made to date back four years, i. e., from the creation of the commission, March 1, 1889.

In addition to sundry extra appropriations out of the general fund, he has had an expense fund of $35,000 a year for 24 years, out of which he has paid the secretary and engineer to his commission $4,500 a year each.

During but little more than half of the time that Anson Mills has been engaged in directing the survey of the boundary between this country and Mexico, and incidentally in promoting at the Government's expense his scheme to hold up irrigation in New Mexico and Colorado, the Panama Canal has been surveyed and practically completed.

What possible excuse can there have been for not completing this boundary commission's work 15 or 10 years ago? Why has this commission been permitted to cost the country more than a million dollars? Has this commission been kept in being merely as a means of enabling Anson Mills and his assistants to "suck the public's dugs"?

Surely there should not be a day of unnecessary delay in forcing your "resolution to investigate " to a successful conclusion, and in bringing about a full and searching congressional inquiry to develop all the facts germane to this disgraceful affair, by a committee that will do no whitewashing and grant no immunity baths.

Again congratulating you on your fearless and forceful speech of the 23d and 24th ultimo,

Believe me,

Yours sincerely,

NATHAN BOYD.

The Solicitor for the Department of State to the Secretary of State. 1914.

OFFICE OF THE SOLICITOR, April 17,

In the matter of charges preferred by Dr. Nathan Boyd against Gen. Anson Mills.

These charges were presented to previous administrations, and were dismissed as having no foundation.1

They are renewed to this administration upon the claim of Doctor Boyd that on the account of "official backing" which General Mills had from former administrations the charges were ignored and their merits refused consideration. In this connection it is well to consider the claim made by Doctor Boyd that former Secretaries, Attorneys General, and the Congress were hoodwinked by General Mills and that "Chiefs of departments disgracefully tarnished our national honor by the official backing they gave him and by the official support they gave to his attempt to ruin the English company, etc." The memorial of Doctor Boyd abounds in sweeping charges and overflows with bitter denunciation, evidencing extreme feeling and prejudice, which tend rather to weaken than to strengthen the charges. The charges, in effect, impeach the whole course of the Government in the matter of the erection of dams across the Rio Grande at El Paso and in New Mexico, and attribute the action of the departments and Congress to the corrupt practices and deceit of General Mills. It is hardly to be believed that four administrations could have been so imposed upon by General Mills, especially as the adherence of General Mills to the project of an international dam at El Paso was attacked almost from its inception by those interested in other projects; nor is it to be believed that former administrations wittingly condoned corruption on his part. Charges so sweeping should be supported by facts of strong probative force.

Sifting the charges, they may be grouped as follows: First, that General Mills was guilty of perjury and deliberate falsification respecting the characteristics of the Rio Grande and the flow of its

1 Opinions, Solicitor, State Department, pt. 1, 1910, pp. 209 et seq.; letter of Attorney General to the Secretary of State, Sept. 14, 1900; letter of Attorney General to the President, Aug. 22, 1902; report of Secretary of State to the President, May 11, 1904