The Nevada Water Law of 1913: A Populist Response to Progressivism

• Date: 01 May 2019
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ajes.12278
• Author: Richard A. McFarlane
• Published date: 01 May 2019

The Nevada Water Law of 1913: A Populist

Response to Progressivism

By RichaRd a. McFaRlane*

abstRact. During the latter half of the 19th century, Americans who

settled the arid West needed to compromise with their populist notions

of individualism derived from the Jeffersonian ethic of the early 19th

century and adopt progressive communitarian practices in order to

provide water by means of irrigation. The struggle to deal with water

rights in Nevada, culminating in passage of the Nevada Water Law of

1913, particularly illustrated this conflict between individualism and

communitarianism.

Be progressive. A great democracy has got to be progr essive, or it will

soon cease to be either great or a democrac y.

Theodore Roosevelt (1910: 43)

It is essential that we should know that the real a nd final test of a govern-

ment, as of a religion, is the kind of man, a nd not the amount of money,

it produces.

John Lancaster Spalding (1886: 412)

Introduct ion

In 1803, the United States acquired the Louisiana Purchase, about

828,000 square mi les of territory between the Mississippi River and

the Rocky Mountains. In 1846, the United States annexed the Republic

of Texas and added 389,000 square miles to its territory. In 1848,

the United States added 529,000 square miles from Mexico, and in

1854, the United States, through the Gadsden Purchase, gained about

30,000 square miles from Mexico. These areas, comprising 1,776,000

American Jour nal of Economics and Sociology, Vol. 78, No. 3 (May, 2019).

DOI: 10 .1111/ajes.122 78

© 2019 American Journa l of Economics and Sociology, Inc.

*Publisher and editor-in-chief of Lex Scripta Legal Research Group and the author of

several articles on legal history and legal ethics. J.D. from Southwestern University

School of Law and Ph.D. from the University of California, Riverside. Email: mcfar-

lanelaw@aol.com

622 The American Journal of Economics and Sociology

square miles and about 47 percent of the territory of the United States,

together with the eastern parts of the Oregon Territory acquired in

1846, are so arid that 19th-century maps referred to this great swath

of territory as the “Great American Deser t”—an area to be crossed

as quickly as possible on the way to moister, more fertile regions in

coastal Oregon and California. Nevertheless, or perhaps in spite of the

aridity, Americans felt compelled to settle in this region and transform

it into an agricultural paradise. Only one th ing was lacking: water.

With limited rain and few rivers, irrigation was absolutely essen-

tial for any agricultural enterprise in the arid West. Native Americans,

including those from the Ancestral Pueblo, Pima, and Hohokum

tribes, created thriving communities based on irrigation. In the 1850s,

the Latter Day Saints, also known as Mormons, followed suit in their

settlements around the Great Salt Lake. After the Civil War and the

completion of the Transcontinental Railroad, the federal government

gradually got into the business of providing irrigation to farmers in

these arid states.

While the acquisition of territory was seen as part of America’s

manifest destiny to settle and subdue “virgin land,” bringing water

to that territory through irrigation was essential to the area’s recla-

mation and conservation. “Reclamation” was understood as putting

to productive use those natural resources that were being “wasted,”

including water that was allowed to flow to the sea. “Conservation”

meant that natural resources needed to be used to maximum effi-

ciency. Reclamation and conservation were too important to be left

to just anyone and needed the skilled management of college-trained

professionals. These college-trained professionals were collectively

known as the “progressives,” and their ideology as “progressivism.”

Socialism vs. Progressivism

Socialism, with its European origin s, had very little chance of gaining

a popular foothold in nativist, Gilded Age America. However, the

socialist ideals of cooperation and collective action, and of govern-

ment intervention in the economy, under the less-threatening name

of progressivism, took a firm hold in America and came to domin ate

both major political parties in the late 19th and early 20 th centuries.