Phil Swing and Boulder Dam [Reprint 2019 ed.] 9780520320925

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Phil Swing and Boulder Dam

Phil Swing and Boulder Dam By BEVERLEY BOWEN iYlOELLER

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS BERKELEY

LOS ANGELES

1971

LONDON

University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. London, England Copyright © 1971 by T h e Regents of the University of California ISBN: 0-520-09384-4 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 71-633550 Printed in the United States of America

To Roger

Preface

T h e unexpected result of this study is that it casts a strange light on Herbert Hoover and his relationship to the Boulder Canyon project legislation. The study had its beginnings as an American West seminar project under Professor John W . Caughey at the University of California, Los Angeles. Because I wanted a subject that would expand my knowledge of twentieth-century western history and because Phil Swing of the Swing-Johnson bill seemed suitably obscure to provide a challenge, I chose to find out more about the man whose name was on the legislation that authorized Hoover Dam. My original search through the Swing papers in 1965 proved that material contained in the manuscripts would provide an interesting addition to the history of the 1920s. The wild, gay image of the "Roaring Twenties" was nowhere to be found in the voluminous papers of the California congressman. Instead, there was a deadly earnest concern about water as a natural resource, about power as its byproduct, and about the protection of national resources and their development to serve future generations of Americans. The papers contained supporting evidence for the proposition that a number of men in public life during those years linked the Progressivism of the first Roosevelt to the New Deal of the second. On the personal side the papers revealed Republican Swing's animosity toward a former Republican president.

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When the time came to choose a topic for my dissertation I turned once again to the Swing papers. The research began in 1967. Swing's papers were carefully reexamined. Secondary material and the remainder of the Swing papers at the California Colorado River Board in Los Angeles received my scrutiny. The first indication that Swing's attitude toward Herbert Hoover could not be explained away on merely personal terms came to light in the letter Swing sent to W . F. McClure, California's State Engineer, in October 1922. In it Swing referred repeatedly to the "Carpenter proposal," a concept dividing the states of the Colorado River basin into two separate divisions for purposes of water apportionment. Yet in my reading of the Hoover Memoirs, I remembered the former president had written that during the Colorado River Commission conferences at Santa Fe, New Mexico, in November 1922, "One night I awoke with a start repeating in my mind a formula. I scribbled it on a piece of paper and carried it into the conference the next morning. It was a proposal to divide the basin into two parts, the 'upper basin states' and the 'lower basin states'; and to draw up the Compact so as to divide the water forever between these two divisions." Hoover implied that his nocturnal inspiration broke the impasse in which the commissioners found themselves at Santa Fe. Clearly Swing could not have offered McClure detailed means to counter the two-basin proposal of Colorado's Interstate Rivers Commissioner, Delph E. Carpenter, in October if it had been dreamed up by Hoover in November. I reexamined the Memoirs with care. In the few instances where Hoover mentioned his association with the Boulder Canyon project his recollections were faulty. The following paragraph serves to illustrate this: Johnson had introduced a bill authorizing the Federal construction of the dam, but in such socialistic terms that it could not pass the Congress. Finally, when the Compact had been ratified, Dr. W o r k , who had become Secretary of the Interior, and I rewrote the whole of Johnson's bill. W e provided that the power must be sold to the municipalities and utilities upon a fifty-year contract which would pay for the cost of the dam and interest. W e provided that the power be sold as falling water measured at the "bus bar" and retailed at state regulated rates.

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Thus we avoided government operation. With Mr. Coolidge's support we got it through Congress in 1928, for all of which Johnson claimed the credit—which was immaterial. It is author Hoover's prerogative to slap at Johnson and to omit mention of Swing, but his assertion of "socialist terms" is erroneous. Hoover and W o r k did not rewrite the whole of Johnson's bill. T h e repayment plan was contained in each of the bills introduced to the Sixty-seventh through Seventieth Congresses. T h e first three bills contained the phrase "the Secretary of the Interior is empowered to receive applications for the right to use for the generation of electrical power portions of the water discharged from said reservoir." Hoover's claim that the compact made Colorado River development possible is a half-truth. T h e compact was ratified not before, but as part of the Swing-Johnson bill. T h e lack of a careful chronology of the legislative attempts to solve the problem of Colorado River development in the 1920s has led historians to rely on the Hoover-oriented Wilbur and Ely volumes of 1933 and 1948, and on Hoover's Memoirs. T h e studies of the Colorado River, written within a few years of the dam's completion by Frank Waters, Paul Kleinsorge, and David O. Woodbury, contain many factual errors and are almost useless for scholarly purposes. T w o later studies of related issues, Vincent Ostrom's examination of the Metropolitan Water District and Norris Hundley's historical analysis of water treaty negotiations with Mexico, necessarily faltered slightly when thev dealt with the Colorado River legislation under consideration during the '20s. T h e slips were not theirs, but Hoover's. Hoover might be forgiven the above distortions on the grounds that he was an old man at the time the Memoirs were compiled. This does not excuse his saying at the site of Boulder Dam in 1932 that he "had the satisfaction of presenting both as engineer and head of the [Colorado River] Commission to President Coolidge and to the Congress, the great importance of these works. And I had a further part in the drafting of the final legislation which ultimately brought them into being." Although the purpose of my study was to show the role of Phil Swing in securing passage of the Boulder Canyon Project Act and

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to present a reliable chronology of the events that led to its enactment, I found that in order to do so I had to refute widely held assumptions concerning Hoover's relations with the Colorado River development. I consulted Hoover's papers in the Presidential Library at West Branch, Iowa. The papers there confirmed all that I had found in California. Hoover's aversion to Johnson and his preference for power development by private industry led him to attempt to thwart the Swing-Johnson bill throughout its six years before Congress, rather than to present "the great importance of these works" to the President and to the lawmakers. I went to Colorado to interview Judge Donald A. Carpenter, son of Delph Carpenter, the man responsible for the idea of a Colorado River compact and the twobasin concept. In Greeley Judge Carpenter showed me a letter the President had written to his father on 29 June 1929. In it Hoover said, "That Compact was your conception and your creation, and it was due to your tenacity and intelligence that it has succeeded. Sometime I want to be able to say this and say it emphatically to the people of the West." W e discussed the Memoirs and the references in them to the Boulder Canyon project. The judge stopped for a moment, then mused, "I've often wondered why he didn't mention Dad." The answer lies beyond the scope of this book, but in my opinion it would be worthy of a study in itself. Remi Nadeau's The Water Seekers, a well-written book about the Los Angeles quest for water, is the only volume available at the present time which gives Swing's contributions to the Boulder Canyon project more than a limited treatment. Nadeau, writing in 1950, had the advantage of a lengthy personal interview with Swing. However, Swing's recollections of the events of the 1920s had mellowed somewhat and to Nadeau he gave different reasons for certain actions from the contemporary ones I found in his papers. Swing introduced his bill at a time when economy was the administration watchword, and advancing technology had made hydroelectric power production a national concern. Boulder Dam was under discussion in Washington when the Teapot Dome scandal rekindled progressive efforts to define and protect the nation's resources. The leasing of the naval oil reserves was regarded by many as a betrayal of the public interest by private interest. It be-

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came a point in favor of the Boulder Canyon project which Swing championed. Harry Slattery, after lifting the Teapot lid, rallied other conservationists to the aid of the Boulder Canyon project. T h e project was also linked at times to the problem of the disposition of Wilson Dam on the Tennessee River. A contemporary political cartoon, in opposition to both projects, pictured two white elephants labeled Muscle Shoals and Boulder Dam. When the Federal Trade Commission, authorized to investigate the utility corporations, revealed the extent of the lobbying activities to defeat the Boulder Canyon project, Republican legislators feared they could not survive as the party in power if they allowed charges of utility domination to become an election issue in 1928. This study complements the monographs of Noggle and Hubbard, also dealing with the two questions of great moment in the 1920s: the problem of protecting public interest in the nation's resources and the interstate and federal-state ramifications of hydroelectric power production and distribution. T h e Boulder Canyon project signaled the start of litigation between Arizona and California which will probably never be resolved to the satisfaction of either party. T h e estimate of the annual flow of the Colorado River which the legislators accepted proved to be far too generous and has been one of the most unfortunate aspects of the entire discussion. T h e Asian colonv that the alarmists saw in Mexico never materialized. Neither did the control of the river help deny the Mexicans their share of the Colorado as some had hoped it would. T h e advocates of a high dam overcame doubts of those who could not see a market of sufficient size for the power produced at Boulder Dam. Today the power plant at the base of the dam has a rated capacity of 1,334,800 kilowatts. There are ten larger hydroelectric generating plants in operation today and twenty more which will exceed this output when they are brought to their full capacity. T h e participants in the dam controversy could not foresee their country's involvement in a Pacific war which would bring war-related industries to Southern California, their establishment made possible by the availability of Boulder Dam power. T h e y cannot be faulted in failing to recognize the enormous population gains that followed the war and the increased dependence on elec-

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trie power which would far outstrip the hydroelectric capacity of the nation's rivers. T h e list of great dams and great man-made lakes of the world now contain eleven dams higher than Hoover Dam and fourteen dams that impound larger bodies of water, but their construction dates are in the 1950s and 1960s, or they are not yet completed. Hoover Dam, now over thirty years old, stands impressively in the Black Canyon of the Colorado River with Lake Mead extending for 115 miles behind it. No higher dam impounds a greater reservoir of water. The story of how this dam, one of the seven modern engineering wonders of the United States, came to be there is a worthy addition to the national political history of the 1920s. I would like to extend my thanks to the staff of the Special Collections of the Library of the University of California, Los Angeles, and to James Mink, in charge of the Swing collection. T h e unfailing courtesy granted to me by Harold Pellegrin and his staff at the California Colorado River Board in Los Angeles was very helpful. I wish to acknowledge the assistance given to me at the Hoover Presidential Library. Most sincerely I wish to express my appreciation to Professor John Walton Caughey. Without his timely encouragement and judicious guidance this study of the Boulder Canyon project would never have been written.

Contents

I. T h e First Contest

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II. Freshman Congressman III. Second T e r m

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IV. T h e Difficult Election V. California Politics

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VI. T h e T h i r d Swing-Johnson Bill VII. Passage

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55 67

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VIII. Senatorial Aspirations

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123

IX. Former Congressman

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NOTES

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

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INDEX

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CHAPTER

I

The First Contest T h e year was 1920. Philip David Swing of El Centro, Judge of the Superior Court of the State of California for the County of Imperial, aspired to represent the "Seven come Eleven" district in the Congress of the United States. Seven counties made up California's eleventh congressional district. It extended from Mono to Mexico, the politically aware constituents would boast. The Sierra Nevada Mountains, Los Angeles County, and the Pacific were its western boundaries, and a straight line drawn from the ocean to the Colorado River between the thirty-second and thirty-third parallels separated the eleventh district from Baja California, Mexican territory. From north to south the district stretched for five hundred miles along California's eastern border. Although the congressman from the eleventh could make no claim in Washington for representing the largest congressional district when single congressmen represented entire states such as Nevada and Arizona, the district was slightly larger than the state of New York. Its nearly fifty-thousand-square mile area exceeded the size of any of twenty of the forty-eight states. Of the seven counties that comprised the

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The First Contest

district—Inyo, Mono, San Bernardino, Riverside, Orange, San Diego, and Imperial—San Bernardino was about the size of Maryland, Inyo was the size of Connecticut, and Riverside was almost as big as New Jersey. But nowhere in the United States could another district or state challenge the "Seven come Eleven" district for variety. Some of of the earliest sixteenth-century explorers set foot on it—Alarcon in 1540 on the banks of the Colorado River, and Cabrillo in 1542 at San Diego Bay. Some of the last real American pioneers of the soil settled in a forbidding portion of its territory in the twentieth century. The United States' highest peak, Mount Whitney, and the lowest spot, Death Valley, were part of the geographic variety to be found in the eleventh district. Not so well known are the dozen other mountain peaks that exceed the fourteen-thousandfoot mark along the Sierra Nevada chain, or the Colorado Desert where the elevations are described in below sea level terms as in Death Valley. On the Pacific border of the district the gentle climate, attractive to immigrants and conducive to agriculture, contrasts to that of the harsh desert regions and the thin-aired mountain heights. A few score miles from the frequently fog-shrouded beaches, on the east side of the San Jacinto Mountains, the sun shines with such uninterrupted intensity that during a third of the year the daytime temperatures can be expected to exceed one hundred degrees. The variety of agricultural production ranged from the common grains and legumes to specialized fruits and nuts. The nation's only commercially grown dates flourished in the district. In contrast, the five noncoastal counties of the district contained over thirtyfour thousand square miles of nearly empty public land. Few people lived in the mountain and desert areas. Cattle grazing and mining were the principal activities of the few who did. The district also included twelve Indian reservations within its boundaries, a rich new oil field, and California's third largest city, built on the shores of a great natural harbor. The harbor was not only the base for a large albacore tuna fishing fleet, but by 1920 was the focal point for federal spending in the eleventh district when Phil D. Swing sought election to Congress as its representative. The eleventh district had been formed in the reapportionment

The First

Comesi

3

Fig. 1. California congressional districts, 1912-1932. Phil Swing's district was called the "Seven come Eleven" district as it was made up of seven counties and was officially California's eleventh district. It was also known as the "Mono to Mexico" district, stretching more than five hmdred miles from north to south.

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The First

Contest

following the 1910 census which increased the number of California congressmen from eight to eleven. Since its formation William Kettner, a Democrat from San Diego, had held the office. Kettner was elected in 1912. His accomplishments and services to his district, San Diego in particular, made him a popular representative. He had no difficulty when he sought reelection three times during Wilson's presidency even though the eleventh district was a Republican district. Phil Swing had traveled to Washington to confer with Kettner during Kettner's fourth term. Swing was from El Centro, the center of Imperial Valley, the county seat of Imperial County and the center of a most unusual land. Imperial Valley is both part of the Colorado Desert and the Colorado River delta. T h e desert extends from San Gorgonio Pass in Riverside County in a southeasterly direction some two hundred miles through Coachella Valley, Imperial Valley, and the Mexicali Valley of Baja California. T h e delta of the Colorado, the most extensive of any river in the world, does not resemble the triangular letter from which river deltas derive their names, but it can be described as a widespread, overturned Y with its arms pointing to the northwest and to the south, with the great silt-laden river flowing in a southwesterly direction into the base of the Y near Yuma, Arizona. 1 Indio, California, stands at sea level at the head of the northern branch of the Y and the Gulf of California is the head of the other branch. A modest ridge rising fortv-seven feet above sea level in Mexican territory divides the two arms of the delta.2 T h e Colorado River in times past flowed alternately into the northern arm and the Colorado desert, or into the southern arm and the Gulf of California. Since Spanish discovery the main flow had been emptying into the Gulf. T h e long river carried great quantities of silt that its waters eroded from thousands of miles of canyons in the arid lands of Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico. T h e silt settled and became the delta. In some places in Imperial Valley the silt deposit is thousands of feet thick. The fact that the Colorado Desert soil was alluvial in origin and richer than surrounding desert soils was apparent to those who crossed it. That it might be irrigated by a gravity diversion of Colorado River

The First Contest

5

water was an idea put forth by Dr. Oliver W o z e n c r a f t in 1849. He spent the following thirty-eight years of his life in attempts to bring the plan to fruition but failed to get necessary congressional approval. 3 In the final decade of the nineteenth century the idea was revived by Charles R. Rockwood. H e enlisted the aid of famed irrigation expert George Chaffcy, and with others formed the California Development Company. T h e company suffered a number of financial crises, but by December 1900, the first canals were under construction. A diversion f r o m the Colorado River was made on the California side a few hundred feet from the Mexican boundary. T h e water was turned south into a canal which took it to an old overflow channel of the river known as the Alamo River. T h e water flowed westerly through Mexico for fifty-two miles and then was diverted north onto Imperial Valley. T h e Mexican government allowed the international diversion, provided a subsidiary Mexican corporation held the rights-of-way through Mcxico. W a t e r reached the Imperial Valley on 21 June 1901.4 By February 1902, four hundred miles of canals and laterals were built. By October 1903, one hundred thousand acres had been placed under irrigation and the Imperial Valley was the home of 4,000 people, 5,000 cattle, and 6,000 hogs. 5 T h e various mutual water companies in the valley began at that time to charge fifty ccnts an acre-foot (325,850 gallons) for water, but it was supplied free of charge for street trees and for sprinkling the streets. Cottonwood cuttings were shipped in by the carload from Yuma and sold for five cents each. T h e y served as fence posts, then sprouted into hedgerows. T h e settlers continued to come and the demand for water continued to increase. Silt plagued the original headgate on the riverbank. T h e California Development Company officials decided to make a new cut below the Mexican border so that ample water could be diverted to supply the valley's winter crop of 1904-05. T h e Colorado flooded three times in the spring of 1905. It ate its way through the banks at the Mexican cut and flowed through the Alamo River channel and the N e w River channel to the Salton Sea. First to feel the damage of the Colorado's shift to the northern delta area was the N e w Liverpool Salt Company at the edge of the

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The First Contest

Salton Sea, about 280 feet below sea level.6 Its works were inundated. T h e tracks of the Southern Pacific Railroad which followed the shoreline had to be relocated to avoid a similar fate. T h e river was out of control until November 1906. In December the Gila River from Arizona discharged its flood waters into the Colorado, and the newly built levees were breached again. It was not until February 1907, that the river was finally controlled. Attempts to deal with the flooding had virtually bankrupted the California Development Company during 1905. T h e Southern Pacific Railroad, summoned by the company for help, assumed its management. 7 With the Southern Pacific Railroad in charge of the irrigation works and the river directed once again toward the Gulf, the people of Imperial Valley, now 7,500 strong, put their energies into forming a new county. T h e eastern half of San Diego County became Imperial County on 6 August 1907. T h e vote of the residents was overwhelmingly in favor of forming California's fifty-eighth county, but it was sharply divided on the location of the county seat. Imperial, the area's only incorporated city, was edged 563 to 445 in the final count by El Centro, a very recently established community at the junction of the Holton Inter-Urban Railroad and the Southern Pacific. 8 Phil D. Swing came to El Centro in October 1907. He was looking for a place where he could build a career of his own. He was a Stanford graduate, Phi Beta Kappa, a member of the California bar, and not quite twenty-four years old at the time.® In his native San Bernardino he was known as Bob Garner's nephew, or he was recognized as lawyer Ralph Swing's younger brother. Ralph was actively representing the city of San Bernardino in a contest against the city of Riverside, a major case involving underground water rights. 10 In the nearly two years Phil Swing had spent in Ralph's law office since his graduation, he had done research for Ralph, he had served papers for him, he had done a multitude of chores and errands, but Ralph would not let him try court cases, and he had few clients of his own. Challenge and activity came to Phil Swing only as a member of the National Guard when he was called away for a few weeks in the spring of 1906 to help restore order to earthquake-torn and fire-ravaged San Francisco. Ralph and Phil Swing were two of the six children of James

The First Contest

1

Wesley Swing and Mary Frances Garner Swing, who had come west with their respective families shortly after the Civil W a r . T h e y had met and married in San Bernardino. James Swing successively worked as a carpenter and a storekeeper. H e held office as county clerk and served on the Board of Education. In his later years he became wholly absorbed in evangelistic religion and served as minister to a small congregation of a fundamentalistic sect, the Holiness Gospel Church. T h e financial panic of 1892 wiped out his investments in local real estate, and in a necessary retrenchment the Swing family moved to a twenty-four acre dry farm north of town. T h e senior Swing died in 1896. In 1901 Phil Swing graduated from high school, valedictorian of his twenty-six-member class. His uncle, Robert F. Garner, offered to help him financially so that he could attend college, but the money was not to be forthcoming until brother W i l l Swing graduated from Stanford. T h e impatient valedictorian wanted no two-year delay. He and W i l l had worked their way through high school, and he was sure he could work his way through college. H e took a series of summer jobs in the large Santa F e railroad yards in San Bernardino to help pay his way, and at Stanford he waited on tables and delivered laundry to his fellow students during the school year. His course of study at Stanford began in September 1901. He majored in law and found time for extracurricular activities which were nearly all oriented toward the development of forensic skill. He was on the class debating team when he was a sophomore, and for three years he was a member of the Nestorian Debating Society. In his senior year he was president of the Nestorians, a member of the executive committee of the Intersociety Debate League, the Senior Class President, and the Senior Class Orator. 1 1 Phil Swing's life in college had been full of activity and responsibility, and the contrast between the days in Ralph's law office and his student days bore heavily on the innately energetic young man. H e grew very restive in his brother's office. H e began to think of possible alternatives. H e thought of going to the big city, Los A n geles, to start a practice. T h e lack of a cushion of capital precluded his opening an office alone; and to enter as a junior man in an established office, he reasoned, would put him in a situation similar

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The First Contest

to the one from which he wanted to extricate himself. H e then seriously considered going as a government employee to the Philippines. He confided this to his mother in the Spring of 1907. He told her of his dissatisfaction which stemmed from his involuntary idleness. His mother agreed that a change would probably be for the better as far as he was concerned. Within a few days of this conversation, Robert Garner, prompted by his sister, approached Phil Swing and asked him to take a trip to the Imperial Valley for him to look into the leasing of some pasture lands. Swing accepted the commission. When he returned, his uncle questioned him about the growth potential and future of the Imperial region. He specifically asked him if he thought the area might be a good one in which to open a law office. Swing answered affirmatively. Garner then offered him fifty dollars a month until he could earn enough to support himself. This time Phil Swing accepted his uncle's offer of aid. As soon as he arrived in El Centro, he called on John Eshleman, the newly elected District Attorney of Imperial County. Eshleman offered to let him put his desk in the second story of the newly built brick opera house, the temporary county offices. T o justify Swing's occupying space in the rented public building, Eshleman appointed Swing his deputy district attorney. Because the law at that time did not provide for a deputy, Swing served without pay. The following year Swing and Eshleman formed a partnership for the practice of civil law in addition to exercising their duties for the county. The relationship proved to be beneficial for both men. Eshleman had come to the valley a few months before Swing, when county formation was the political issue of the day. He was drafted by local citizens for a place on the El Centro slate of county officers and was elected at the time the county was formed. As he was the only county official with any governmental experience, having served as state assemblyman, the other county officers relied heavily on his guidance. He was not a strong man. Reasons of health had forced him to leave his Alameda home and his legislative duties to come to the desert area. He welcomed the vigorous young Mr. Swing whose intelligence and training made him a particularly apt partner, fully able to work with the multiplicity of legal problems to be met in Imperial County.

The First Contest

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Imperial Valley and Phil Swing were right for each other. The valley, because of its rapid population growth and the newness of its institutions, provided Swing with challenges and opportunities in the course of a few years that might not be met in a lifetime of practice in an established community. The valley of 1907 had one incorporated city. In 1908 it had five, as Brawley, El Centro, Calexico, and Holtville became cities. Swing participated in the El Centro incorporation movement, getting his first political action experience. He was appointed to the city's library board. He served as Brawley's first city attorney. He joined the Elks, the Masons, and the local Republicans, groups which were not mutually exclusive.12 The cities of Imperial Valley, without trees or automobiles, were far from being urban centers despite their corporate status. People lived in tents and conducted businesses in tents. The tents generally were improved with wooden floors and walls, and to mitigate the fierce summer sun, many tent houses had separate raised roofs thatched of desert-grown arrow weed. The surrounding desert also provided ample ironwood and mesquite fuel for burning in the cookstoves of the community. Necessarily, some of the cities' first ordinances were designed to encourage the building of fireproof brick structures. 13 The paramount problem in the Imperial Valley was not fire, but water, the life-giving water supply from the Colorado River. In 1909 the remaining assets of the California Development Company went into two receiverships, one American and one Mexican. Most of the assets and property of the company were in Mexico, and nearly all the water revenue was payable in the United States. Creditors clamored for more revenue north of the border, but resented necessary maintenance outlays south of the border. Political unrest in Mexico threatened the water lifeline; financial pressure on the American side threatened its sound operation. Disagreement was prevalent between the Mexican and American receivers. Swing and Eshleman from the District Attorney's office urged that an irrigation district be formed under the provisions of the California Irrigation District Act. Such a district would empower the people of Imperial Valley, through their elected district officers, to operate their irrigation system, to issue bonds, to levy

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The First Contest

taxes, to enter into contracts, and, as a quasi-municipal corporation, to perform the several acts that are the prerogatives of local government agencies such as cities or counties. By 1911 John Eshleman left Imperial Valley to return to Sacramento and assume the office of Railroad Commissioner in the administration of Governor Hiram Johnson. Johnson had been elected to the highest state office in 1910 with the vowed intent of "kicking the Southern Pacific out of California politics. 14 T o make his pledge good, he resuscitated the state's Railroad Commission as a regulatory agency. Eshleman's was a significant appointment. Phil Swing won election to succeed Eshleman as Imperial County's District Attorney. T w o events occurred during his term of office that determined the course of the rest of his life. T h e first was the formation of the Imperial Irrigation District. Swing handled the proceedings for the organization and actively campaigned for its adoption. T h e newly elected directors found Swing to be of great help during the formative months. T h e legality of the irrigation district was challenged by Imperial Water Company No. 1. Swing successfully defended it before the Supreme Court of California. 13 T h e second event was his marriage on 16 August 1912 to Nellie Cremeens, "the lovely young music teacher at El Centro High School." 1 6 After serving one term Swing lost his bid for reelection in 1914. When he left public office, he was able to give all his professional time to the law partnership of Eshleman and Swing for the first time since its inception. He assumed major community responsibilities as Grand Master of El Centro's Masonic Lodge in 1915, and in the following year be became the Exalted Ruler of the Elks. Concurrent with Swing's period of private practice, the irrigation district displayed public squabbles. T h e district directors were divided on practically all matters of policy. Recall petitions were circulated against two of the directors, but the recall election, held in December, failed. T h e year 1916 began inauspiciously. N e w recall petitions were circulated. Citizens' groups demanded the dixectors' resignations. T h e district's counsel resigned but later was reinstated. 17 New engineers were hired. On 22 June 1916, the strife-torn board of the district was able to purchase from the Southern Pacific Company the water-diverting system begun by

The First Contest

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the California Development Company. The price was $3 million. The district also acquired the levee and canal system of the Compañía de Terrenos y Aguas de la Baja California. T h e district, organized for irrigation purposes, found itself thrust suddenly into the business of levee building and flood control work. 18 On 5 October 1916 the entire board resigned and Imperial County Supervisors named a new board which, in turn, named Phil D. Swing as its chief counsel. T h e local tempests subsided, but the real problems remained: the Colorado River, flowing muddily and menacingly on the rim of the valley, and the Mexican canal. The problems had existed at the outset of the development of the valley, but their interrelationship created a situation that could not continue to be borne by the people of Imperial Valley. The Colorado's floods had to be controlled or the valley would drown, but the location of the protective works had to be in Mexico along the ridge that divided the arms of the Y-shaped delta. T h e federal government recognized its obligation in this matter, and Congress had appropriated a million dollars for flood control works in the Mexican territory in 1910. For this work American military men, army engineers, had to don mufti and ostensibly be in the employ of a Mexican company. The lack of a central Mexican government with which to deal and the lack of a treaty led President Taft to recommend to Congress that the federal government cease to build works in a foreign land, espeically since the activity seemed only to serve to delay the successful execution of the desired treaty. 19 YVhen the federal government withdrew in 1915, the burden of flood control fell on the irrigation district. T h e officials of the district, public officials of the state of California, personally had to hold the capital stock of the Compañía de Terrenos y Aguas de la Baja California. As the Compañía they had to import rock for the levees and build miles of track upon which to transport it. They had to bring in men and mules to do the work. Each time a man or a mule or a rail or a rock went into Mexico, a duty or a head tax was laid upon the importation. The money for the flood protection works, located in Mexico and protecting nearly a million acres of irrigable Mexican land, had to come from landowners of the Imperial Irrigation District. Particularly galling to these land-

12

The First Contest

owners was the fact that the lands in Mexico, benefiting from the flood control works and entitled to one-half the water that flowed through the Alamo canal, were owned by Americans. By far the largest holding was that of the Colorado River Land Company, some 800,000 acres.20 The principal stockholder was Harry Chandler of the Los Angeles Times. The land company had acquired the land from the Mexican government in 1898 for twenty-five cents an acre. The growing number of acres under irrigation were leased to Chinese, Japanese, and Mexican laborers for ten dollars an acre annually. In 1916 the tax rate for the lands within the Imperial Irrigation District jumped from $.70 to $1.75, reflecting the cost of defending the district from the Colorado when it had too much water in it. Too little water proved to be costly too. During the dry months of 1916, September and October, the water had to be prorated to the users on the basis of outstanding water stock. The shortage was related, in part, to the Volcano Lake break of 1909, and some said it was caused by the Reclamation Service's project near Yuma, Laguna Dam, completed in 1909. Beginning that year the river had scoured, deepened, and cut back its own bed. As a consequence the huge headgate, through which all Imperial Valley water had to be diverted, stood above the level of the river in the period of the river's low flow. The solution was to build a weir, a temporary diversion dam, just below the gate in order to raise the level of the river to the gate openings. This dam, Arizonans claimed, posed a threat to the Yuma reclamation project. If a flash flood should come down from the Gila, not an unusual occurrence, the weir would create a sufficient barrier to cause the water to back up and inundate their lands. The Yuma people went to their courts and obtained an injunction against the construction of the weir; but an arrangement, which was not really satisfactory to either party, allowed a temporary weir to be constructed each year. The construction and destruction (with dynamite) of the weir added $100,000 annually to the Imperial Irrigation District's cost of operation.21 The diverted water still had to flow almost sixty miles through Mexico. The Alamo River channel was a poor one. In some places it widened into vegetation-choked sloughs where, it was estimated,

The First

Contest

Coacheikj \ Volley

Sa/fon' Sea

¿Mtvai. E( Centro

California Mexico

Gulf oTi? : Coli forni a

Fig. 2. The Imperial-Mexicali valleys. The shaded area shows the productive agricultural areas during Swing's congressional years. The old beach line approximates sea level. Note the levee system in Mexico. two-fifths of the water was lost. This was the physical problem of the Mexican canal. The political problem was potentially more dangerous to Imperial Valley's water supply. Mexico was torn by

14

The First Contest

revolution. Several skirmishes had taken place in the Mexicali Valley. Swing, as District Attorney in 1914, had sought Governor Hiram Johnson's aid. He asked that the Mexicali and Imperial Valleys be declared neutral zones. There were six hundred Mexican Federal soldiers on one side of the line and six companies of National Guardsmen, sent b y Johnson, on the other. T h e necessity of invading Mexico to protect the water supply did not arise, but the memory of the threat persisted in the minds of the Imperial Valley residents.22 Relative to the magnitude of the dual problems of drowning or drying up, the mere waste and inefficiency of the single entity of the diversion system having to be operated by dual managing companies might seem inconsequential. But the day-to-day delays and annoyances, the necessity of having to submit plans to both Sacramento and Mexico City, were factors in the district directors' decision to seek aid from the federal government to build a canal within the borders of the U.S. T h e idea was not new. Theodore Roosevelt had mentioned it in a message to Congress in 1907. 28 T h e all-American canal had been discussed regularly at the meetings of the Imperial Irrigation District since 1912. T h e feasibility of the project was somewhat doubtful, as was the financing. Mark Rose, a farmer from the Holtville area ten miles east of El Centro, had been one of the most persistent advocates of the plan. Since the canal would make its exit from the Colorado River at a higher level than the one currently in use, water could be brought to the Imperial Valley at a higher elevation. Consequently, several hundred thousand acres of arid land on the Eastside Mesa could be put to productive use. Opposition to the idea came from those who owned the Mexican lands and from people within the valley who believed the financial burden for the canal construction would fall heavily and unfairly on those who already had water and who were supporting the present system through their taxes. On a visit to Washington as a representative of his Laguna Water Company, Rose interested Secretary of the Interior Franklin Lane in the idea of an all-American canal. T h e plan for a canal to deliver water to the Eastside Mesa lands was blocked by the Imperial Irrigation District directors. T h e y refused to grant Rose an easement through the Hanlon Ranch property on the banks of the Colorado for water diversion.

The First Contest

15

T h e attitude of the new board members appointed by the county supervisors in 1916 was not rigid in regard to the canal proposed by Rose. After a year in office the idea of a canal wholly on the American side appeared to them to solve the problem of the Yuma weir—the new intake would be miles upriver—and at the same time many of the Compañía problems could be eliminated. Early in 1918 Phil Swing made his first trip to Washington, sent by the district to negotiate a contract with the Secretary of the Interior to survey the route for an all-American canal. T h e district agreed to pay two-thirds of the cost of the joint survey. Swing was certain that the district had taken a step in the right direction and had begun to move out of the maze of difficulties that surrounded it. The district, Swing decided, could surely spare the services of its chief counsel who had become convinced that his country had greater immediate need of him than his community. As a married man and a father, his draft classification was 4A. He had contributed to the war effort in Imperial Valley by heading several liberty bond drives that oversubscribed their goals. He also led the county's "Four Minute Men," a group of speakers who would volunteer to appear at any gathering to deliver a four-minute long "patriotic appeal" urging listeners to buy bonds and to get out and cheer the drafted boys marching to the railroad depot. Swing had had some infantry experience in the National Guard but was accepted as a private for officers training in the army artillery. He was in training at Camp Taylor, Kentucky, when the armistice was signed and soon returned to El Centro. 24 On 21 January 1919 an election was held to ratify the contract between the United States and the Imperial Irrigation District for the canal survey which Swing had negotiated the previous year. By a vote of 2,535 to 922, the district committed itself to the development of an all-American canal. Chandler interests, the same as the Colorado River Land Company in Baja California, controlled more than 47,000 acres in the north end of the district and around Calexico. T h e vote in the northern town of Calipatria was 41 for and 106 against, Calexico registered 30 for and 130 against, and together Holtville and El Centro tallied 901 votes for the project with only 25 in opposition. 25 W i t h the survey approved, the next logical step was for the dis-

16

The First Contest

trict to finance the canal. It was estimated that the entire undertaking, including two power plants, would cost $30 million. Phil Swing, again in the employ of the I.I.D. as its chief counsel, wrote a bill which Congressman William Kettner introduced on 17 June 1919, "a bill to assist in increasing the productive agricultural area of the Imperial and Coachella Valleys, California, and for other purposes." The plan for increasing the agricultural area was simply a financial arrangement for the federal government to guarantee the $30 million worth of bonds the irrigation district must vote to cover the cost of the canal. Hearings on this bill were conducted in Washington before the House Committee on Irrigation of Arid Lands in July 1919. The Nestorians of Stanford would have been proud of their classmate as he pleaded for the passage of the bill by posing this question: "Is the government to stand idly by and complacently watch foreign lands develop by sapping the life out of an American community when the remedy is easily within reach without cost to the government of a single dollar? W e are here simply asking for a chance to live."26 However, the quieter words of Carl Hayden, the representative from Arizona, touched on a more significant aspect of Colorado River control when he admonished the petitioners by saying, "But you are now coming to Congress asking that an extraordinary thing be done by the passage of this legislation, and Congress must look to the development not only of the Imperial Valley, which is your particular interest, but the Colorado River valley as a whole, and that can only be fully developed by storage." He pointed out that the problem included the financing of storage reservoirs and it touched on states' water rights.27 T o have to build a dam to store water upriver was not to Mark Rose's liking, and he took issue with Hayden at the hearing, using an argument very similar to that used by the opponents of the ailAmerican canal. He believed that those who had already perfected their water rights should not be forced to pay the costs of a reservoir. "Let those who need the water make the necessary provisions to store it, then they can establish new water rights," he told Hayden. "When Wyoming and Colorado and Utah and all the states affected wipe out all water rights and say they are all on an equal

The First Contest

17

basis and claim no priorities, that they will all pay for storage, I believe the Imperial Valley would frankly come in on that basis, but I don't believe the other people who have prior rights on the river would be willing to do that." 2 8 T h e larger picture of the Colorado River problem was also being developed in hearings before the Flood Control Committee of the House. H. T . Cory spoke as consulting engineer to the U.S. Reclamation Service. " T h e Colorado," he said, "involves elements in irrigation, flood control, power development, and additional lands, and it also has an international problem. Hence that one stream stands out, in my opinion, preeminently in the whole country as requiring an intelligent, far-sighted method of handling the problems of this national resource; that is, the water that flows down those streams." So far, he pointed out, the approach had been piecemeal. 29 Before the final hearings on the first Kettner bill were held, Swing was appointed to the bench by California Governor W i l liam D. Stephens. Swing's commission was dated 9 August 1919, and he took his oath of office on 28 August 1919. He was thirtyfive years old at the time, one of the youngest men to become a Superior Court judge in California. T h e first Kettner bill was never reported out of committee. T h e second Kettner bill, H . R . 1 1553, introduced during the second session of the Sixty-sixth Congress, fared no better. It differed from the first bill in its recognition that it might be necessary to build reservoirs upstream in order to assure an adequate supply of water to the lands susceptible of irrigation in the district. T h e bill was doomed, but the cause was not, when Moses Kinkaid of Nebraska, chairman of the House Irrigation Committee, took the position that his group could not pass on the proposed legislation without further information on possible storage sites on the Colorado River. He introduced his own bill which was passed 18 May 1920, known as the Kinkaid Act, authorizing the Secretary of the Interior to make a thorough study of the irrigated lands in the Imperial Valley and of the lands that could be irrigated, and that the "Secretary shall report in detail as to the character and estimated cost of the plan or plans on which he may report, and if the said plan or plans shall include storage, the location, character and cost of said stor-

18

The First Contest

age, and the effect on the irrigation development of other sections or localities of the storage recommended and the use of the stored water in the Imperial Valley and adjacent lands."30 The passage of the act effectively halted progress toward construction of any works that could alleviate Imperial Valley's problems until the study could be completed. Swing, sitting on the bench in El Centro, chafed at the delay. He had become deeply involved in the irrigation district's affairs. He knew federal help had to be forthcoming, and soon. The feeling grew within him that if he were actively engaged in the attempt to get federal action, matters might go a little better and a little faster. In Washington the previous year, Addison Smith, Congressman from Idaho and a member of the Irrigation Committee, told Swing that the kind of project he sought for Imperial Valley was best obtained "from the inside" of the legislative halls. "Why don't you run for Congress?" Smith inquired. 31 In the summer of 1920 Swing received a telephone call from William Kettner. The conversation was brief. Kettner told Swing that he would not seek a fifth term in Congress. Swing informed Kettner that he would announce his own candidacy in the morning papers.32 In well-planned and shrewdly executed moves the candidate from Imperial County quickly won Republican support in Orange, Riverside, and San Bernardino counties. These were the counties which had united three times to challenge San Diego's political dominance of the eleventh congressional district. Swing geared his bid for support in populous San Diego to the fact that he had volunteered for service in the late war. The membership of the Hammer Club, an informal but powerful group of ex-servicemen, became the nucleus for Swing's personal campaign organization in that city. After laying the groundwork with the political leaders of the eleventh district, Swing conducted a grass-roots campaign throughout the district.33 If he met a potential voter in a single encounter, he shook hands. If he found two or more gathered together, he made a speech. T o the Imperial Valley people it was for the all-American canal. T o the veterans the speech stressed his affirmative attitude toward special benefits for them. T o the growers of citrus, walnuts, and olives he pledged his allegiance to the high tariff for their sake.

The First Contest

19

Swing won his party's endorsement handily in the 31 August primary. He was opposed in the November general election by Hugh L. Dickson, a Democrat from San Bernardino, who had been that county's District Attorney. 34 Dickson proved to be a weak candidate. He had no issue with which to capture the voter's imagination as Swing had, he was not a veteran as Swing was, he did not represent the majority party of the district as Swing did. Swing's victory on 2 November 1920 came as no real surprise.35 There was to be a new player in the congressional game for the "Seven come Eleven" district.

CHAPTER II

Freshman Congressman I n February 1921 Congressman-elect Phil Swing prepared to go to Washington. Part of his preparation was to make a ground tour of his district and to listen to his constituents as well as to talk to them. He went to Newport and toured the Orange County harbor. He heard the pleas of the citrus growers in La Habra for a continuing protective tariff. He visited with Legionnaires in Riverside and hospital patients at Arrowhead. He held a special meeting with representatives of the three thousand Indians in his district. He met with citizens in Calexico about their international boundary problems. On the nineteenth of the month he left Imperial Valley by train and traveled to Moab, Utah. There Walker Young of the U.S. Reclamation Service conducted him by automobile to the rim of Boulder Canyon, a deep gorge on the lower Colorado where the river flows between the states of Arizona and Nevada. This was the site at which Director of Reclamation Arthur Powell Davis advocated a storage dam. Davis had explained his views to a conference of southwest water users in San Diego the previous August.

Freshman Congressman

21

T h e conference was one of several he had held in accordance with the terms of the Kinkaid Act. Swing had been at the meeting; in fact, he had been campaigning there. He had spoken to the assembled water users, advocating that preferential entry into newly reclaimed lands be given to honorably discharged veterans.1 T o build a dam on the lower Colorado as a means of controlling floods had not been given serious consideration before Davis championed the idea. A dam to develop power, but not one for water storage, had been planned at the Boulder Canyon site by Southern California Edison Company for several years. Both the Interior Department's branches, the Reclamation Service and the Geological Survey, had favored building a number of storage dams in the upper canyons of the Colorado's tributaries. Their reports favored dams on the Grand and the Green and other northern streams with an aggregate capacity of some 25 million acre-feet of water. 2 T h e upriver reservoirs gained favor because they were to be situated in the region where most of the waters originated and where they were relatively silt-free. One of the biggest drawbacks to downriver storage was that the reservoir would be short-lived because the storage space would fill rapidly with silt. T h e Colorado was a notoriously heavy silt carrier, bringing down 100,000 to 120,000 acre-feet annually, raising the bed of the lower river a foot in height each year. When Arthur Powell Davis first enunciated his plan for a Boulder Canyon dam at the San Diego meeting, it was as a side issue. T h e main issue of the meeting was to discuss the way "to put American water on American land." 3 T h e all-American canal was the primary topic. There were some in attendance who did not agree that water storage was a necessary partner in the canal development. There were others who thought the canal undesirable. Nevertheless, the San Diego meeting was an important one. Over two hundred people from six western states attended. T h e possibility of a dam at Boulder Canyon had been presented to them from an engineering standpoint, but to these western water users the legal ramifications were stunning. A major storage reservoir on the lower Colorado would regulate the flow of the river in such a manner that the water appropriators below the installation could put more water on their lands. Western water laws decree that the

22

Freshman Congressman

first to use a certain amount of water beneficially acquires the right to use that amount in perpetuity. T h e message was clear to the water users of the Colorado basin states, Utah, Colorado, W y o ming, Nevada, New Mexico, and Arizona. It was that the Imperial Valley's struggle with the Colorado River had grown to such proportions that it enveloped and involved the states of the entire Colorado basin—one-fifth of the area of the United States. Phil Swing greeted the idea of a lower basin dam favorably. He had additional opportunity to study the Davis proposal after his November election victory. He received the written preliminary Davis report, called for by the Kinkaid Act, in the closing days of 1920. T h e more he studied the grandiose proposal for the world's highest dam the more he liked it. T h e massive structure would solve flood problems. It would enable the all-American canal to be built; and, as Davis suggested, it could produce electric power which, properly marketed, could pay for the cost of the dam's construction. Phil Swing was an astute lawyer. He saw that Imperial Valley farmers would be faced with a decreasing supply of water as upriver usage increased. He had had enough experience in water litigation to know that court decisions produced no water. Imperial Valley had a prior right to the Colorado's flow and could spend years proving it legally. But equitably the Imperial Valley could lead the way in Colorado River development so that there would be water enough for all. He saw, too, that the dam in Boulder Canyon would face heavy opposition from the states drained by the Colorado. When he weighed the facts available to him at that time, he made the decision to support legislation in Washington which not only would authorize an ail-American canal for his valley but which would harness the Colorado for the entire southwest. He saw Davis's vision of a project to rival the Panama Canal undertaking. He adopted it. He then set about to make others see it. At the proposed dam site Swing and Young of the Reclamation Service made a five-hour descent of the rock walls of Boulder Canyon to the waters of the Colorado. Swing took a number of photographs. 4 He also talked with engineers at the site who were engaged in boring into the granitic cliffs with diamond drills. These men were seeking to determine where shoulders of the dam could

Freshman Congressman

23

best rest to impound the greatest man-made reservoir of water in the world. Swing returned to Moab where he was joined by his wife and seven-year-old daughter, Margaret, and together they traveled to Washington. T h e Senate met in a special session from 4 March to the fifteenth of that month. T h e first session of the Sixty-seventh Congress began on 11 April. T h e address of the newly elected President to the nation's legislators proved to be a disappointment to Swing. Harding spoke of a number of matters of national concern but omitted any reference to the Colorado River basin. Swing had been hoping for a specific presidential recommendation, in view of the general promise Harding had voiced during his campaign to continue federal aid to reclamation and to enlarge it. 5 Congressmen are referred to as representatives or legislators. T h e terms are used almost interchangeably; but, more precisely, when a congressman is serving as a representative he is a private servant to his electors. T h e time he spends legislating does not equal the time he must spend representing. Swing saw the role of legislator as his highest duty. He said congressmen should make laws, not perform as "agents or messengers who run to the departments with the individual business of . . . individual constituents." 8 But before he could legislate, Swing had to become the eleventh district's representative in Congress. He quickly earned a reputation for unfailing industry, vigor, and courtesy. San Diego interests were well served by his appointment to the Naval Affairs Committee. In the course of his representational duties he received from forty to sixty letters a day and from five to ten telegrams; most of the messages began with the words, " W e want." His constituents wanted him to support or oppose certain pieces of legislation. T h e y wanted help with pension or military matters. T h e y wanted redress in special situations involving the government of the United States or a foreign power. 7 T h e manager of the Imperial Irrigation District put Swing to work in Washington in an effort to secure permission to fly an airplane over the Mexican portion of the Colorado delta in order to get a comprehensive view of the river's meanderings. T h i s request took Swing to the State Department's Bureau of Mexican Affairs where a roundabout method of relaying the re-

24

Freshman Congressman

quest had to be worked out because the United States and Mexico had no formal diplomatic relations. 8 At the end of June, after only a few short months in Washington, the freshman congressman heard himself praised and applauded on the floor of the House when a fellow member of the Naval Affairs Committee, Thomas Butler of Pennsylvania, said of Swing, "I want to bear testimony here that in my twenty-five years in this House I have never seen a man take to his work better than he does." 9 It was not as an industrious representative that Phil Swing hoped to make his mark in Congress, but as a legislator. He hoped to draw up a bill which would bring Arthur Powell Davis's plan to the House for its consideration. Davis's second preliminary report was under study in the California communities and districts which had helped bear the costs of the investigation being made by the Reclamation Service. T h e tentative plan for repaying the dam cost embodied in the report alarmed the Coachella Valley people sufficiently to protest to Washington and to demand further hearings before the Davis report was finally and formally presented to Congress. In mid-July the situation concerning the dam was discouraging to Swing. He wrote to a Brawley constituent: The almost impossible thing at the present time is to get the Government to appropriate the money to build a dam on its o w n account. W e are confronted not with the question of what is the ideal thing to do, but what, under all circumstances it is possible to do. I am very much afraid that the Imperial Valley will have to take in some partnereither the city of Los Angeles or the private power companies—to build this dam, as the Government is shutting down on every dollar's worth of expenditure possible. 10

The question of who would build the dam divided those who favored its construction. Los Angeles, eager for additional electric power, vied with Southern California Edison Company for the privilege of building it. T h e arguments were presented to the public in a meeting of the Associated Chambers of Commerce of Imperial Valley on 29 July 1921. William Mulholland, E. F. Scattergood, and W . B. Mathews of the Los Angeles Bureau of Water and Power spoke to the assemblage. A. B. West, head of the South-

Freshman Congressman

25

ern Sierras Power Company, presented the case for private power. J . S. Nickerson, president of the Imperial Irrigation District, summed up the sentiment of the majority of those at the meeting by saving, " T h e power companies tell me they will build a dam and give us protection and water. There is no 'manana' about it. . . . It's all right to talk about fighting corporations, but we need this thing now. W e can't finance this proposition. W e can't wait." T h e listeners were generally skeptical of Los Angeles. That city's record of inimical behavior toward the "back-country" areas was familiar to them. A Riverside man at the parley won a round of applause with this brief remark: "I would rather pay $1.27 per kilowatt hour and get it than have Los Angeles take it all and we get nothing." 11 These were matters discussed by those who presupposed a dam on the Colorado River to be constructed soon. There were others who gave short shrift to talk about damming the Colorado before its waters could be apportioned in a just fashion. These were the people from the states containing the headwaters of the river: Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Nevada. Delph Carpenter of Colorado favored an interstate compact which would divide the waters among the states. Representative Frank Mondell of Wyoming introduced legislation in June which would authorize the seven states of the Colorado basin to enter into such an agreement. T h e authorization passed both houses and became law on 19 August 1921. Swing was suspicious of the legislation. He saw it as a move to delay the construction of Boulder Dam. 12 With delay posing one threat and dissension another, Swing went directly to the Secretary of the Interior, Albert Fall. He hoped to gain Fall's active support for federal participation in the comprehensive development of the Colorado River basin which Wilson's Interior Secretary, Franklin Lane, had favored. Swing pointed out to Fall that a dam on the Colorado such as Davis proposed was not only a means to effect desperately needed flood control, to provide irrigation water, and to develop electric power, but it touched on interstate problems of extreme complexity and international problems of extreme delicacy. Fall was familiar with the Mondell compact authorization, and he was readily acquainted

26

Freshman

Congressman

with western water laws. He was from one of the appropriation states, New Mexico. He proved to be a receptive listener when Swing outlined the danger of storing huge amounts of water without making plans to put the water to beneficial use within the United States. While Mexico might not acquire a legal right to the waters of the Colorado, she would, through increasing her usage, gain a strong moral right to the water. Swing's efforts bore fruit. Late in August it was known in the department that the Secretary was convinced that no dam should be built on the Colorado River by any authority except the United States. Meanwhile the Southern California Edison Company, amending its application for a power project on the river, declared that the company would submit to such modifications and regulations as the Federal Power Commission saw fit to impose because it recognized that the dam must serve the primary purpose of flood control and irrigation. Within two weeks the city of Los Angeles filed its application to construct a dam at Boulder Canyon. By the end of September it was clear that a three-way contest had developed. The triangular tug-of-war, as reported by the San Diego Sun, was between Los Angeles, Southern California Edison, and Phil Swing.13 Swing felt lonely in his corner. He had adopted Davis's idea of a Boulder Canyon dam and he had formulated a concrete plan whereby the idea could be transformed into reality. The government must build the dam, and he had Fall's concurrence in this, but the legislative branch of the federal government held the key. Phil Swing's plan was to influence Congress from the grass roots. He wanted an organization committed to the Boulder Canyon project which would publicize its merits throughout the country. He mistakenly assumed that the Imperial Irrigation District, having most to gain from congressional action in this matter, would be the agency to initiate such an organization. Almost weekly he sent letters to the district urging their active support. T o F. H. Mclver, secretary of the district, he summarized his thoughts on the subject. "It is folly," he telegraphed, "to leave everything for Government officials. Fight must be made by local community most interested."14 His urgings fell on deaf ears. Three of the board mem-

Freshman Congressman

27

bers opposed an all-American canal, and J . S. Nickerson, the president, tended to favor dam construction b y private power interests. Unable to activate the district's officers, Swing launched an alternative plan. H e would get the Secretary of the Interior to state publicly and unequivocally his support for government construction of the dam. Given the proper setting and the proper audience, Fall's statement would, Swing hoped, elicit the devoutly desired favorable congressional reaction. Swing utilized Coachella Valley's request for a further hearing on the Davis report. He arranged for the hearing to take place in San Diego, just two days after the scheduled meeting of the League of the Southwest in Riverside. H e successfully urged Fall to be present at the League meeting on 10 December and the hearing on the twelfth. Swing absented himself from the second session of the Sixty-seventh Congress and came west with Fall. T h e League meeting turned into a fiasco. T h e rival power factions, Los Angeles and the private power companies, vied for ascendancy. Rival water factions, California against the upper states, clashed. T h e Utah, Colorado, W y o m i n g , and N e w Mexico men walked out on the eve of the meeting. T h e following day when Los Angeles failed in its attempt to gain control of the meeting, its representatives moved to adjourn on mid-Saturday afternoon. T w o positive events occurred, however, at the Riverside meeting. Swing announced President Harding's choice of Herbert Hoover to head the Colorado River Commission, and the Secretary of the Interior made his public declaration that the Colorado was too big and too important for any agency but the federal government to build the dam in Boulder Canyon. 1 5 T h e Monday meeting in San Diego was in marked contrast to the Riverside meeting. 1 6 Fall's announcement before the League banished a prominent cause of friction among the delegates. T o be sure, other sources of friction and division remained, but it was with a measure of good fellowship that the hearing was conducted in San Diego. T h e Coachella objections to the financing features of the June preliminary report were withdrawn. T h e meeting provided an excellent forum for Arthur Powell Davis to reiterate Fall's stand that the federal government should build the dam. Davis used the hearing to explain to his listeners w h y a storage

28

Freshman Congressman

dam on the Lower Colorado, a departure from all previous studies, was best for proper total devolpment of the basin. Several reasons were negative ones: upper basin reservoirs would establish wrong water rights; power development would be wasted; water would be stored three weeks away from the area needing it. He touched on the silt problem. Davis granted that the waters of the upper basin were clearer, but that reservoirs themselves were the most economical means of ridding water of its silt burden. "In the northwestern corner of Arizona," he told his audience, "there is a profound and very deep, very narrow canyon, where it would be feasible to build a dam 700 feet high." 17 It would be close to yearround power markets in the semitropical areas where year-round irrigation takes place. It would create a reservoir vast enough to control flooding from above, to regulate the flow below, and to allow silt to settle without destroying the storage capacity. " T h e best use of waters in the lower valley [of the Colorado] requires storage in the lower valley," Davis asserted. 18 He convinced many listeners at San Diego. During the week following the meeting, Phil Swing announced that he would assist Davis in framing a bill designed to provide suitable legislation covering power and irrigation development of the Colorado River. On 14 January 1922 he released information to the press that he had talked to California's senior senator, Hiram Johnson, and that Johnson had agreed to introduce a bill in the Senate at the same time as Swing introduced one in the House. T h e bill would authorize the government to construct "this great work." 1 9 T h e dam that Davis proposed was to be a stupendous engineering undertaking. Swing thought so. He was fond of saying that you could search the whole history of human accomplishment, yet not find a work of comparable magnitude. T h e pyramids, the Great Wall of China, Solomon's temple, and the Panama Canal were examples of great feats of engineering, but they were not as complicated as Boulder Dam, Swing would insist. In comparison to other dams constructed by the Bureau of Reclamation, the proposed dam in Boulder Canyon was a magnificent undertaking. It would be more than twice as high as Idaho's Arrowrock Dam, the tallest in the world. It would impound ten times as much water as the bureau's largest reservoir which lay behind Elephant Butte Dam in New Mexico. 2 0

Freshman Congressman

29

It was true that Davis's plan for the dam was complicated. T h e unruly Colorado had a highly variable annual flow. In some vears the river would discharge 28 million acre-feet of water. In others the quantity did not exceed nine million acre-feet. T h e seasonal variation was even greater. At flood the river had been known to carry 200,000 second-feet of water, and in dry periods, only 2,500. 2 1 Davis believed that the river could be diverted through four tunnels 50 feet in diameter, each capable of carrying 50,000 second-feet, while a massive 700-foot-high gravity arch dim was seven or eight years in the building. Swing's goal now was to introduce the bill and educate his fellow citizens on the worth of the project during the remainder of his first term. In the succeeding Congress he planned to accomplish the adoption of the Boulder Canvon project. T h e largest single barrier on the path to this goal had to be surmounted b y the Colorado River Commission. Swing's confidence in the ability of the commission stemmed from the fact that he had had a part in the selection of Herbert Hoover as the federal government's representative. After the passage of the Mondell bill, each of the Colorado basin states appointed an official commissioner. It was rumored in November that a Denver man was being considered b y President Harding as the federal representative, the eighth member of the commission. Swing went to Interior Secretary Fall to tell him of his misgivings. He felt that the federal representative ought to be "neutral." Perhaps he should be from a state that would not be bound by the decisions of the commission. Fall suggested Herbert Hoover, the Secretary of Commerce. T h e fact that he was a member of the President's cabinet would give weight to the government's position. It would also add prestige to the commission itself. Swing accompanied Fall to see Harding. H o o v e r was in attendance at the meeting. T h e three men urged the Secretary of Commerce to head the Colorado River Commission. H e accepted, but with no show of enthusiasm. Hoover's attitude did not trouble Swing at the time. In fact, he alluded to it in a report to the El Centro Chamber of Commerce on the eve of the December League of the Southwest meeting. Swing, the honored guest, declared the development of the Colorado was too big for one community or for private concerns. Only the United States could undertake a project of such magnitude. "Secretary Franklin Lane saw this and

30

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Congressman

became enthusiastic. Fall was indifferent, now he is enthusiastic. I have great hopes, now that Herbert Hoover is involved."22 Swing's hopes were not enhanced, but neither were they destroyed by January meetings with Hoover. "I had a satisfactory interview with Hoover today," he wrote to Frank Mclver, secretary of the Imperial Irrigation District, "Hoover is in earnest."23 Swing and Hoover agreed on the location of the dam and on the fact that the government should build it. In fact, Hoover told Swing that he thought the Colorado River Commission should supervise the construction of the dam.24 They disagreed about the size of the dam. Hoover favored "a small dam sufficient to give flood protection, but not sufficient to develop any considerable power, and with no provision for putting any of the water to a beneficial use within the United

States."26

Stumbling blocks appeared in the path to speedy accomplishment of Swing's goal. The Secretary of the Interior was away from Washington for a number of weeks. Davis's final report could not be transmitted to Congress without Fall's signature. The directors of the Imperial Irrigation District urged Swing to delay the introduction of his bill until the Davis report had been officially received. Swing would then present his bill to Congress as a plan of federal action to carry out the Fall-Davis report. The bill, he assumed, would gain legislative acceptance as soon as the Colorado River Commission reached a satisfactory apportionment of the river's waters. February, March, and most of April passed. Hoover held executive sessions of the river commission in Washington and a number of public hearings in the Colorado basin states. Nothing tangible came of the meetings. Swing decided to wait no longer. On 25 April 1922 he introduced "a bill to provide for the protection and development of the lower Colorado River Basin."26 The bill was assigned to the Committee on Irrigation of Arid Lands and hearings on it began in June. Much of the testimony at the hearings was similar to that heard in 1919 before the Flood Control Committee, and to that presented to the San Diego conference in December of 1921. Imperial Valley witnesses pleaded for immediate action in the matter because

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of the flood menace. A dozen Southern California communities sent resolutions, identically worded, which said: Whereas it is apparent to all persons acquainted with the facts that the great Imperial Valley in California is annually in imminent danger of being overflowed and flooded by the Colorado River . . . Whereas House of Representatives Bill No. 11449 "To Provide f o r the protection and development of the lower Colorado River Basin," introduced in the House of Representatives by Congressman Phil Swing and in the Senate by Senator Hiram Johnson, is a measure looking to the early accomplishment of these purposes in the best and most practical manner, . . . that House of Representatives Bill No. 11449 . . . be approved and indorsed. . . P

Three communities framed their own resolutions which were included in the records of the hearings. The committee also gave official notice to the Supreme Court decision in Wyoming v. Colorado by having Justice Van Devanter's opinion entered in the record. 28 The testimony took a different tack when the committee began to consider the matter of power production at the dam. W . F. Durand, a Stanford professor and a consulting engineer with the Los Angeles Bureau of Power and Light, forcefully declared, "Boulder Dam would be justified from the standpoint of power alone." 29 The power production potential was presented favorably by conservationists. They claimed that power derived from falling water saved the country's oil. George Hoodenpyl, the city attorney from Long Beach, made a strong plea for power from the dam for his city. He claimed that Long Beach, served by Southern California Edison, was unable to compete with Los Angeles in attracting industry because Los Angeles could sell its municipally owned electricity cheaper than the private corporation. William Bankhead of Alabama asked Hoodenpyl directly, "Do you advocate Government ownership and operation of a utility of that sort [electric power production] in competition with private industry engaged in the same character of business?" Hoodenpyl answered just as directly, "Absolutely." 3 0 The issue of whether the dam should be built b y private or public means had been resolved in 1921. The issue of whether its power potential should be tapped privately or publicly was raised

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in 1922. But the matter was not clear-cut. There were disagreements about the distribution of the power as well as about its production. And Herbert Hoover was not sure that there should be power produced at the dam at all. Hoover's testimony before the committee was no surprise to Swing. He was already somewhat disillusioned about the "Great Engineer." But to other advocates of the Boulder Canyon project, whose number were on the increase, Herbert Hoover's words came almost as a shock. He did not propose. He did not oppose. He hedged. "I do not think there is any feeling that there needs to be any provision as to the distribution of power." 31 "The primary question here should be simply the construction of storage works . . ," 32 The Commerce Secretary was reminded that the cost of the dam, according to the Davis plan, was to be repaid by power. T h e cost was not to be charged against the irrigationists. Did he propose to charge the farmers? "I have not gone into the details of this bill far enough," he testified. He added that the states of the Colorado basin should express their views, and that, "I hesitate to express any views because I am sitting as chairman of their commission." In an avuncular manner he added, "The power question is one of the most contentious parts of the whole business, but it is not vitally necessary we make up our minds now." Chairman Addison Smith snapped, " W e need to know how we are going to be reimbursed." 33 The June hearings were inconclusive. An arrangement for additional testimony to be heard in September was tentatively agreed upon. Swing stayed in Washington all summer, not returning to campaign for the primary election in August. 34 Early in September it was obvious to him that further hearings would have to be delayed again. "Not a quorum of the Irrigation committee is present. . . . Seemingly impossible to get members to consider anything except elections," he wrote to Mclver in El Centro. 33 During his summer in Washington Swing had been given information to the effect that a proposal would be offered to Hoover's commission that would divide the waters of the Colorado on a 50-50 basis, giving rights to half the annual flow of the river

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to Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, and New Mexico, and a similar right to Nevada, Arizona, and California. Just as he had entertained misgivings about Delph Carpenter's advocacy of a Colorado River compact, Phil Swing mistrusted this equal apportionment scheme of Carpenter's. 38 T h e division of the river at Lee Ferry on the northern border of Arizona sounded as if it were a fair enough compromise, especially when four states agreed to content themselves with one half of the water, leaving the other half to three states. Swing took Davis's report and analyzed the Carpenter proposal on the basis of the data it contained. He satisfied himself that the upper states were giving up nothing. He communicated his findings to W . F. McClure, California's State Engineer, and the California member of the Colorado River Commission, so that McClure could present a logical case against the proposed division at the November meeting of the commission at Bishop's Lodge, near Santa Fe, New Mexico. Swing emphasized two major points for McClure to make in the negotiations. One was that the runoff from the Grand and Green rivers after all irrigable land had been brought under cultivation would be half the total discharge of the lower river; thus the upper states were giving up nothing. T h e other was that the needs for water were much greater in the lower basin because a larger area was irrigable, that the lower basin could be irrigated year-round, that provision for Mexican water must come from the lower states, and that provision for evaporation from the great storage reservoir on the lower Colorado must be made. Finally, Swing shared these thoughts with McClure: "It seems to me that it might be well to angle for the endorsement of Boulder Dam in return for our agreement to some modified form of the Carpenter proposal," and, "If the Carpenter proposal is the one to be adopted, I suggest that as far as you can you take the part of Arizona, because if Arizona doesn't get satisfaction at this time out of the Carpenter agreement, she will try to take it out on California when we come to adjust our differences later." 37 McClure was not a negotiator. The seventeen sessions of the commission in New Mexico culminated in the signing of a compact by the representatives of the seven states on 24 November 1922. T h e pact was essentially what Carpenter had suggested. It did not mention Boulder Canyon development, but provided in Article

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VIII that "whatever storage capacity of 5,000,000 acre-feet shall have been provided on the main Colorado River within or for the benefit of the Lower Basin, then claims of such [present perfected water] rights, if any, by appropriators or users of water in the Lower Basin against appropriators or users of water in the Upper Basin shall attach to and be satisfied from water that may be stored . . ." 38 T o Swing this was foolishly giving up a bird in the hand for less than two in the bush. Hoover insisted that the compact did not deprive anyone of any rights and that the holders of perfected water rights were protected under the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. 89 Swing rebutted Hoover's contention by asserting, "If it does not deprive us of any rights it is no compromise on our part and therefore does not win for us any support in the upper states we would not have had without it." 40 Swing became convinced in January that the compact should not be ratified by California without some sort of reservation attached to it. Ralph Swing, who had been elected the previous November to the upper house of the California legislature, wrote to his brother in Washington for his opinion on the pact ratification. Phil Swing replied to Ralph that it would be ideal if California could act after the other six states, then ratify with a proviso that the pact should become effective at a certain date. 41 T h e fact remained that the compact was advantageous to the states of the upper basin. The Boulder Canyon development would be of great advantage to the lower basin states. T h e north refused to permit the two matters to be tied together. T h e result was a compact that brought small comfort to California, Nevada, or Arizona. During the short final session of Congress Herbert Hoover brought pressure to bear on Swing to abandon his advocacy of the high dam at Boulder Canyon. Immediately following the pact signing at Santa Fe, Swing received the following letter from J. S. Nickerson, president of the Imperial Irrigation District: I have just returned from Santa Fe, New Mexico, in company with Secretary Hoover from there to Los Angeles. The Northern States will absolutely not stand for your Bill as it is, asking 80 million for the Boulder Dam and for the All-American Canal.

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They think if we build a storage and power dam we will acquire water right by usage before the pact becomes effective of the division of water. But they do say tbey will get behind and instruct their Congressman to help us in the way of a flood control dam that would cost in the neighborhood of 2$ million. Now, Phil, my best judgement is for you to either amend that bill or draw a new one along the lines which I wrote you. I know your bill is alright [sic] and I am for it from start to finish, but it's going to be impossible to get it. If we can get this work started and get an appropriation to the amount I have just spoken of it would take us four years to spend the money. By that time conditions and the pact will possibly be ratified by the legislatures of each state, and passed on by Congress. W e would then be in shape to finish this dam by appropriation or private capital.42 Hoover saw to it that Swing got a copy of his own letter to Richard Emmet in which he listed objections to the Swing bill. According to Hoover the North would not vote on so large an appropriation without something for their dams. T h e Midwest feared food overproduction would result from increased lands being placed under irrigation. Arizona opposition was to "big storage on foolish ground that it will establish large Asiatic colony over border." 4 3 In the same letter Hoover, who had made the suggestion the previous January that the Colorado River Commission be the agency to supervise the building of Boulder Dam, wrote, "There are as usual a few kickers who think we ought to have got the Boulder Dam in the Compact, being based on mistaken understanding as to purposes and powers of the Commission which will be easily corrected." Hoover telegraphed Swing the following message on 20 December: "I have inquired as to whether there is any prospect of getting through legislation for Boulder Dam and the All-American Canal this session. Unless I hear from you to the contrary I propose to state that it is your view that there is no hope." 44 Swing telegraphed this reply the following day: "You are at liberty to say that it is my opinion that the sacrifice of the power features of the dam would not result in the passage of the bill at this session." 45 There was no hope for the Swing-Johnson bill at the final session of the Sixty-seventh Congress. 46

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Fig. 3. T h e Colorado River basin. Colorado's Insterstate River Commissioner Delph Carpenter proposed both the idea of a seven-state compact to divide the waters of the Colorado and the two-basin concept. Herbert Hoover later claimed to have originated the latter plan.

CHAPTER III

Second Term T h e official business of the Sixty-seventh Congress drew to a close on 4 March 1923. Unofficially the business continued. Phil Swing had prevailed upon the Imperial Irrigation District directors to offer to pay the costs of a trip to Imperial Valley for members of both the Irrigation Committee and the Appropriations Committee.1 The proposed itinerary for the congressmen and their wives was for them to travel west to Salt Lake City, visit the Boulder Canyon damsite, make an Imperial Valley stop, see San Diego, and, finally, disperse in Los Angeles. Not all the members of the two committees could accept Swing's invitation to make the ten-day tour. However, among the acceptances there was a good representation from Appropriations, and most of the members of the Irrigation Committee were able to go. Upper house members, Senators Henry Ashurst of Arizona and George Norris of Nebraska, joined the party. In mid-March the group of forty-four men and twenty-one women entrained in Washington and traveled to the Imperial Valley by way of the solidly frozen headwaters of the Green River, a Wyoming tribu-

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tary of the Colorado. In the valley, four days after leaving the snow-covered Rockies, they saw cottonwood trees in full leaf, alfalfa being cut, and lettuce being shipped to market. 2 T h e contrast between the length of the growing seasons of the upper and lower basin states of the Colorado River could not have been better illustrated at any other time of the year. March was a good time, too, to see the desert in bloom. The congressional party was escorted by Imperial Valley hosts to the eastern edge of the irrigated lands of the valley. They were told to look before them at the two hundred thousand acres of the Eastside Mesa lands, sparsely covered with gray-green plants. The white and yellow and pale rose blossoms on the various desert shrubs were adjudged beautiful by the visitors, and wonderful that they could produce such delicate-looking blooms in such a forbidding atmosphere. But the real miracle of this desert, the tourists were told repeatedly, was its production once water was brought to it. T h e party toured south of the border to see the levees and protective works in Mexico, for which their congressional predecessors had appropriated millions of dollars. They were shown the irrigated acres of Mexican land, owned by Americans and farmed by Orientals. The Imperial Valley men, led by Phil Swing, belabored their visitors with both dreadful and hopeful reasons for prompt congressional action. T h e specter of a flood, similar to that of 1905-1907, was cast before them constantly. An explicit reason advanced to the visitors for their favorable consideration of the all-American canal feature of the Boulder Canyon project was the expanding demand in Mexico for water from the nonexpanding supply. Implicit was the threat of an Asian colony on the nation's southwestern doorstep, since there was no limitation on Asian immigration to Mexico. T h e Eastside Mesa lands were offered as a positive aspect of the multipurpose legislation. Once watered, they could provide farms and home sites for veterans on over 140,000 acres of federally owned Mesa land which had been withdrawn from entry with the Reclamation Act of 1902. In San Diego at the close of the tour the party members played turnabout on their host. Phil Swing was their guest. T h e lawmakers and their wives paid homage to their gracious host at a banquet.

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O n behalf of the group the Honorable William Bankhead, the courtly congressman from Alabama, presented Swing with a large silver pitcher. Swing, a man of passionate feelings and capable of passionate dedication, was overcome with emotion. 3 Following the departure of the congressional group, Swing released a statement which was carried b y the Hearst newspapers that all the committeemen were impressed. H e confidently asserted that the dam bill would be passed during the coming session of Congress, scheduled to begin in December, and that work would start in the next year on the dam and the all-American canal. 4 Having boldly advanced this optimistic forecast, Swing set about creating the climate he thought necessary for the bill's passage. One of his primary concerns was to lift an aura of provincialism from the project. H e had gone through the steps himself. He had seen the all-American canal as the answer to the problems of "his valley." H e now saw the harnessing of the Colorado as a boon to the entire Southwest and hence to the nation. Phil Swing was certain that an effective way to make the project a national one was to educate the people in different parts of the country to its merits. T h e congressional delegation was just one type of endeavor that could be used to publicize the project in a favorable manner. A n other way would be to harness the pro-dam sentiment entertained b y a number of Southern Californians. T h i s could be done b y encouraging them to write letters to friends, relatives, and business associates in other parts of the country. T h e letters would contain information on the benefits that could be derived from the Boulder Canyon project and a suggestion that the letter receiver write his own congressman about the project. An organized letter-writing campaign necessitated an organization. T h e California League of Municipalities, Southern Division, under J o h n L. Bacon, San Diego's mayor, had been well received as a lobby during the hearings on H . R . 11449. T h e League's broad purpose was the betterment of California urban entities. Its position in favor of the Boulder Canyon Project A c t was merely one of several the organization maintained. Swing wrote to Bacon in April and outlined his ideas of an organization devoted exclusively to the furthering of the project. 5 He won Bacon's support. A n invitation went out over Bacon's signature on 1 May 1923 inviting

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representatives from cities, chambers of commerce, irrigation and water districts, and farm organizations to come to the Odd Fellows Hall in Fullerton on 10 May where "a cooperative plan for participation [in realizing the Boulder Canyon project] will be presented by the Honorable Phil D. Swing, M.C." 8 Leslie Saunders, secretary of the Las Vegas, Nevada, Chamber of Commerce and one of those who had received an invitation, wrote to Swing a few days before the meeting to request more information. Swing's reply was, "All I want is to perfect a compact organization with ability to raise and spend money, and also to do all necessary propaganda work to put this project over." 7 T h e 10 May meeting was successful. Those who attended were in agreement about the goal. They heard Swing map the road to its attainment. T h e Boulder Dam Association, established that day in Fullerton, was to furnish speakers for every kind of public-spirited group, provide articles for newspapers and magazines, arrange tours to Boulder Canyon and Imperial Valley, publish its own newsletter for distribution to its member organizations, senators, and representatives, send official advocates to conventions, and provide exhibits for state and county fairs. It was agreed that the association would have an office in Los Angeles and a small paid staff. T h e staff was to check newspapers for publicity, and to check hotel registers for visiting dignitaries. They were to assemble lists for letter writing, and to devise various letter forms. Some letters were to be designed for "home folks." Swing correctly assumed that nearly every Californian, native born or not, had kin, in-laws, and friends in the East. And the "East," to a Californian, began at the Colorado River. 8 No program such as Swing envisioned could have been carried out without adequate financing. T h e Boulder Dam Association, chaired temporarily by John Bacon, received nearly $6,000 during his three month's tenure. T h e bulk of this generous sum was from the Imperial Irrigation District, which contributed $1,500 monthly during May, June, and July. T h e Los Angeles Bureau of Power and Light donated a thousand dollars to the association in June. A regular office headquarters was not established until August, but two men were retained on the payroll during the summer months. One was Phil Swing, and the other was a professional publicist from Imperial Valley, F. W . Greer. 9

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Swing made San Diego his operations base during the long congressional recess. H e rented a house for his wife and small daughters in that coastal city in late March. H e resumed his private law practice, taking a retainer from the Imperial Irrigation District as advisory counsel. At the same time the district hired Charles Childers as its regular attorney. Childers was Swing's law associate in El Centro. Swing's acceptance of advisory counsel employment by the district met with some criticism at the time. T h e Imperial Enterprise editorialized, " W e believe that Swing can do more for the Swing-Johnson Bill as a plain member of Congress than he can with the double interest of Congress and attorney for the district." 10 Swing spent by far the greater part of the summer making appearances throughout Southern California for the Boulder Dam Association. His activities in May, immediately following the formation of the association, included a Kiwanis address in San Bernardino on the eleventh, a rousing talk to the Spanish W a r Veterans' encampment in Riverside on the fourteenth, and appearances at the Orange Show in Anaheim on the nineteenth. He returned to San Diego to greet Secretary of W a r John Weeks and a party of eight senators and thirty congressmen w h o were en route to Alaska. 11 Swing arranged for the members of the group to be presented with Imperial Valley cantaloupes, watermelons, and apricots. T h e fruit was accompanied with copies of Ye Valley Cryer, a newspaper especially composed for the occasion which extolled the benefits to be derived for the Southwest with the passage of the Swing-Johnson bill. 12 Swing bade farewell to the Secretary on 28 May, then sped well over two hundred miles across the mountains and desert to deliver a pro-dam speech to the Palo Verde Chamber of Commerce at Blythe the following day. T h e records of the Boulder Dam Association show that Swing was paid $400 for sixteen days' work in May and that his expenses for meals and transportation totaled $136. T h e dollar figures do not give an adequate indication of Swing's dedication to the cause of the great dam on the Colorado. Swing's own correspondence for May reveals that he sent personal letters to each member of the March congressional party thanking them for coming to his district. H e also mailed each of them souvenir photographs of the excursion. He earned the sincere gratitude of N o r t h Dakota's Rep-

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resentative George Young and his wife by successfully recovering a valuable diamond ring which Mrs. Young had mislaid "somewhere in California." Swing covered the congressional party's trail with an avalanche of letters of inquiry. A hotel employee in Santa Ana was generously rewarded by Swing for returning the ring. 1 3 In matters concerning "his project" no detail was too small, no quest was too large to be denied his touch. In May he was also in contact with Walter F. Brown, President Harding's personal representative. A western tour was being planned for the President, and Brown had come to California to make some of the arrangements. Swing's first request was for the President to visit Boulder Canyon; in the event that that was not possible, perhaps he could include the Imperial Valley on his itinerary. Swing was not able to get a firm commitment, but a tentative agreement was reached that Harding would come to San Diego after his appearance in L o s Angeles on 2 August 1923. Swing strongly urged Brown to use his powers of persuasion on the President to get him to express himself on the Boulder Canyon project when he spoke in San Diego. 1 4 Other May correspondence included an important letter from Arizona Congressman Carl Hayden. After thanking Swing for the photographs of the congressional party, Hayden wrote: Please let me know how the people in Imperial Valley take to the proposal that Arizona shall construct a dam at G l e n Canyon for flood control, power and irrigation. It seems to me that they should be veryhappy to have Arizona finance this great undertaking. 1 5

Six of the seven Colorado basin states signed the Colorado River Compact early in 1923. T h e Arizona legislature had approved the compact, but a change in the state administration which had returned Democrat George W . P. Hunt to the governorship tipped the balance of opinion in Arizona against the compact. Although the compact, as Hoover now insisted, dealt only with water, many Arizonans found it impossible to disregard the consideration of power production in their deliberations about the river. There was no clear-cut division between the Arizona Democrats and Republicans on the matter in the summer of 1923. Carl Hayden, the Democratic congressman, favored the compact's ratification. At-

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titudes toward river development had not been divided along partisan lines in December 1921. R. E. Sloane, representing a Republican governor, gave warning at the water users' conference in San Diego when he stated that Arizona regarded power sites and dam sites on the Colorado within her borders as her natural resources, and that it was Arizona's right to receive taxes from installations built on the river.16 The current view, both in Arizona and in the other Colorado basin states, was that some sort of compromise would be reached soon and that Arizona would sign the compact. Hayden closed his cordial letter to Swing with the hope that Swing could attend the June meeting of the League of the Southwest in Santa Barbara. He added that a fellow Arizonan would be there, George Maxwell, who "proposes to provide even more water for California out of the Colorado River [than the Boulder Canyon project] by irrigating everything along the coast from Ventura to San Diego." 17 Swing did go to the League meeting. It was poorly attended. Discussion centered on the compact, not the Boulder Canyon project. But Irrigationist Maxwell was there, "with his new theory to spread the Colorado River over Southern California like the sunshine," as Swing wrote to Arthur P. Davis.18 A few days after Swing sent his letter to Davis he received the news that Davis had been removed from office by Secretary of the Interior Hubert Work. Work had succeeded Albert Fall in the Interior Department following the latter's resignation in March. The Davis dismissal was made quite suddenly after Work had been in charge for three months. Work abolished the position that Davis had held for fourteen years as Director of Reclamation. The Secretary advanced no reason for the ouster other than his wish to place a businessman at the head of Reclamation. Some members of the Reclamation Department were convinced that private power interests had effected Davis's removal. Others within the department saw Herbert Hoover as the culprit. 19 Colonel Benjamin Franklin Fly of Yuma suspected that the removal could be traced to interdepartmental strife between Davis and E. C. LaRue of the U. S. Geological Survey who favored Glen Canyon rather than Boulder Canyon for the initial Colorado River dam site.20 Whatever the reason, Swing rallied his friends, friends of Boulder Dam.

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He must not let them think that Davis's departure would affect the Boulder Canyon project adversely. He distributed copies among them of Work's telegram to Colonel Fly which stated that "the resignation of one or more employees need not affect the policy." 21 Swing admitted privately to Fly that he believed this reply begged the question, but to friends of the dam he cheerfully called their attention to the splendid chance they all would have to do some "propaganda work when the President and his party get back to Los Angeles and San Diego." 22 Hubert W o r k was to accompany Harding on his trip to Alaska and the western states. Swing alerted Frank Mclver, Imperial Irrigation District secretary, to this fact and Mclver telegraphed W o r k to arrange an August meeting. Mclver's message included these words: "You have opportunity to convert flood control menace into great national asset." 23 The President and his party arrived in Washington state from Alaska on 27 July. When Harding faltered several times in his address to a Seattle audience, it became obvious to the public that he was unwell. Harding insisted on continuing his tour, however. At the next scheduled stop his illness became more pronounced and he was confined to bed in a San Francisco hotel. Herbert Hoover, one of those traveling with the President, called his friend from Stanford, Dr. Ray Lyman Wilbur, to Harding's bedside. Despite the care Wilbur and other medical men were able to give, the President, suffering from a heart attack complicated by pneumonia, died on 2 August 1923, the day Los Angeles had prepared to receive him. All Swing's plans for the first week in August were necessarily canceled. When the U.S.S. Chaumont, carrying members of the House Naval Affairs Committee, called at San Diego on 8 August Swing boarded her. The ship's complement and the congressmen sailed immediately for San Pedro where they participated in impressive memorial services for the late President. 24 T h e 11 August ceremonies coincided with Harding's burial rites in Marion, Ohio. Swing continued aboard the Chaumont to Seattle. It was his first ocean voyage. T o some men the cruise might have been a welcome opportunity to rest. Swing was not the type of person to rest or relax. He used the time to review his work and to revise his plans

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for accomplishing the monumental project which he had come to regard as the most important thing in his life. T h e project had suffered three blows since the closing days of the Sixty-seventh Congress. T h e first was the loss of Albert Fall. 25 T h e former Secretary of the Interior had become associated in the public's mind as a friend of Boulder Dam. In June Davis was removed. N o w Harding, w h o had given several informal indications that he favored the Boulder Canyon project, was gone. 26 Upon reflection Swing realized that there was no actual need for a revision of plans. T h e project would go through. Swing never doubted it. T o abandon it, or to change it in any appreciable way, was unthinkable. Neither the contest (the winning of congressional approval) nor the goal (the Boulder Canyon project) had been altered by the loss of Fall or Davis or Harding. But new players must be initiated into the game. Swing outlined plans to see W o r k and the new President in Washington before the convening of Congress in December. He would present to them the same persuasive arguments that had won others in the administrative branch of the government. Swing left the Chaumont in Seattle, toured through eastern Washington to view reclamation projects there, then returned to San Diego. W o r d was waiting for him that Governor Hunt of Arizona had arranged for a meeting to discuss Colorado River problems before the Federal Power Commission on 24 September. T h e Imperial Irrigation District directors asked their advisory counsel Phil Swing to represent them at the conference. He left for Washington accompanied by George Hartman of El Centro, state chaplain of the American Legion, and Los Angeles city councilman Ralph Criswell. T h e y had hopes that the conference would lead to Arizona's signing of the Colorado River Compact. This would greatly facilitate the passage of the Swing-Johnson bill. T h e Federal Power Commission, formed under the Federal Water Power Act of 1920, was composed of the Secretary of War, the Secretary of the Interior, and the Secretary of Agriculture. Its primary function was to issue licenses for power development on navigable waters or upon public or reserved lands. A secondary function was to hold hearings in connection with is-

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suance of such licenses. When James P. Girand of Arizona learned of Hunt's conference, he requested that he be included in the discussions. Girand had an application on file with the commission for power development at Diamond Creek on the Colorado. He had first obtained a permit in 1915 under a 1901 law which had been superseded by the Federal Water Power Act. His reapplication in 1921 was given wide newspaper publicity at the time as a deathblow to public development of the Colorado. The commissioners, Weeks, Work, and Wallace, heard Girand in 1921 and 1922 and gave recognition to his filing priority. But they declined to license any power development activity on the Colorado until the Colorado River Compact had been put into effect.27 The September conference, or hearing, provided a forum for Governor Hunt to propose the plan which Carl Hayden had alluded to in his May letter to Swing. Hunt wanted the state of Arizona to develop Arizona power. His plan was antagonistic to Girand's private development. Swing went on record at the hearing as objecting to the Girand project, saying that it would rob Boulder Dam of part of its power market, thereby endangering the repayment aspects of the Boulder Canyon project. Ward Bannister of Colorado entered a protest against any development until the compact was signed. Another Arizonan, George Maxwell, spoke in opposition to hydroelectric development at Diamond Creek. It was Maxwell's contention that 40 percent of the water released in the electrical generating process would go to Mexico. He painted a frightening picture of a great Asian colony at the head of the Gulf of California, and he reminded the conferees that there was a population of five hundred million Orientals to draw from. He declared, "an Asiatic wedge would thus be driven into the heart of America and a war with Asia, otherwise avoidable, would become inevitable." 2 8 Other participants of the conference, the Arizona private power interests, Swing and the Californians, and Ward Bannister and the upper state representatives, found that they could concur in one matter. They agreed that Maxwell was preposterous. Hunt used the hearing to make his position clear on the Colorado River Compact, which he termed "wholly unfair" to Arizona. As for California, Hunt declared, "the ruthless manner in which the

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Swing-Johnson bill now pending in the Congress of the United States attempts to dispose of Arizona's rights in the Colorado River reflects the philosophy of California." That philosophy was "the desire for plunder." 29 N o definite steps were taken at the conference. Indeed, Secretary of War Weeks declared to the participants, "This hearing is being held at the request of Governor Hunt. This hearing can be only tentative." 30 The state of California had no official representative at the hearing, but when it was nearly over on the twenty-fifth, Swing was asked to represent his own state as well as the irrigation district. 31 Swing, in the company of Senator William E. Borah of Idaho, called on the new President at the White House. In the course of "educating Harding's successor," he made the fortuitous discovery that Harding had prepared a speech on Colorado River development which he had intended to deliver in San Diego. Swing obtained copies of the speech and when he returned to California he gave the late President's message to the Boulder Dam Association. The association had opened a Los Angeles office. S. C. Evans, the mayor of Riverside, was executive director. 32 The organization showed indications of becoming what Swing had envisioned. It had 150 member organizations. As association members, city councils, county boards of supervisors, chambers of commerce, American Legion posts, women's organizations, and farm organizations were encouraged to support their goal by regular financial contributions. The pattern of membership growth and financial support was gratifying and encouraging to Swing. The Harding speech was included in one of the early newsletters and a brief portion of it became, through repetition by the Boulder Dam Association, Harding's best remembered words during the years immediately following his death. 33 In October Swing resigned his position as the irrigation district's advisory counsel and resumed his duties as congressman. He went to San Francisco to attend a national convention of the American Legion. He submitted a resolution endorsing the SwingJohnson bill to the organization and successfully steered it through various committees to its adoption by the entire body. 34 He returned to San Diego for a few days, but left again for a speaking tour of the eleventh district. In the course of his circuit he told

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confidants that the Work-Reclamation Department squabble was handicapping efforts to secure Colorado River legislation. He criticized the California administration for its lack of help. He cited his own belated appointment as a California representative at the F.P.C. hearings as a case in point. He let others know that he thought Friend Richardson, California's governor, no friend of Boulder Dam. He learned that William Mulholland of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power had also been delivering speeches in his district in an attempt to smooth the way for public acceptance of a Los Angeles request for 1,000 second-feet of water from the Colorado to be used in that city for domestic purposes.35 Swing expressed his opinion to Colonel Fly, saying that although the amount of water "is inconsiderable . . . it is the reopening \sic\ of a new proposition when all of us are striving to the best of our ability to keep attention concentrated upon one single thing, to wit: the proposition set forth in the Fall-Davis Report. The Mulholland propostion is a very weak echo of the Maxwell scheme." 36 Swing returned to Washington in November in order to be on hand for the opening of the Sixty-eighth Congress. A new SwingJohnson bill had to be introduced because the Sixty-seventh Congress had taken no action on the previous bill. He prepared a draft, altered very slightly from the original H.R. 11449. The second bill, known as H.R. 2903, was introduced on 10 December 1923. Two months earlier Swing had heard Governor Hunt describe the Arizona position in regard to the Colorado as between the upper and nether millstones, calling the demands by Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah the upper stone, and California's appropriation potential as the nether. 37 That December the millstones appeared to be grinding on the Swing-Johnson bill. The upper states were becoming adamant. They would not agree to a dam on the river until the Colorado River Compact was signed by all seven basin states. Under Hunt's leadership Arizona would never consent to the terms of the compact. 38 The second Swing-Johnson bill was assigned to committee and hearings were tentatively scheduled to begin in January. In midJanuary Secretary Work announced that he would appoint a board of engineers to make a further study of the Colorado, and

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in a letter to Addison Smith he stated that he did not feel that he was sufficiently informed to give his opinion on the merits of the Swing-Johnson bill.39 Senator Hiram Johnson, who had not heretofore entered the lists, seized the issue. He declared to the newspapers of the nation that Work was playing into the hands of the power companies. He branded as "trivial" the reason W o r k had advanced for delay —the need to collate data derived from the two years of study subsequent to the Fall-Davis Report. 40 Johnson's motive was not to hasten Work, but to embarrass the administration. Johnson had decided to contest Coolidge for the presidency in 1924. The Teapot Dome scandal had erupted from Senate investigations. Johnson believed that the revelations of wrongdoing in the Harding cabinet had seriously weakened Coolidge's chance of nomination. Swing was not pleased with Johnson's outburst, but he saw that Boulder Dam proponents could apply the publicity being given Teapot Dome to affirm their position. Private interests had betrayed the people in the matter of the Navy's oil reserves. This, according to Swing's reasoning, must never be allowed to happen to one of the nation's great resources, the Colorado River. The water and the power at Boulder Dam must be developed by public means for the people as a whole. Hearings on H.R. 2903, delayed an additional day because of Woodrow Wilson's funeral, began on 6 February. Irrigation Committee Chairman Addison Smith announced at the outset that because there were several new members of the committee and new developments, the proceedings would be conducted as if there had been no previous hearings on a similar measure. Phil Swing had the floor to commence the testimony on his bill. He proudly presented resolutions from several national organizations endorsing the Swing-Johnson bill.41 The committee members paid close attention as Swing recounted his experience in scaling the canyon wall at Boulder in 1921 with Walker Young. He was ably assisted in his remarks concerning Imperial Valley's flood control problem by committeeman Carl Hayden. Antagonistic Elmer Leatherwood of Utah tried to pin Swing to an admission that a flood control dam would alleviate the dire conditions which Swing had described to the committee. "Is flood control your primary ob-

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jective?" he asked. N o t pleased with Swing's somewhat evasive reply, Leatherwood continued, "If you get protection from the floods are you satisfied?" Swing faced Leatherwood squarely and stated, "If the government will assume the liability of flood control, I want to make sure that it also gets the asset which is power." 4 2 Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover was again called to give testimony. T h e Colorado River Compact was discussed at length. J u d g e John Raker, veteran California congressman, asked Hoover if he thought the federal government, by building the dam, would establish a prior right to the impounded waters. 4 3 This was a question that perturbed the upper states. Raker could get no satisfactory reply. Swing attempted to get Hoover on record in favor of a high dam at Boulder Canyon. Hoover would commit himself only to an earnest recommendation of government construction of flood control and irrigation works at Boulder Canyon. This brought Carl Hayden back into the discussion. T h e Arizona position was tending to crystallize in opposition to the Boulder Canyon site. " W a s it not true," Hayden asked Hoover, "that a controversy was now raging between power engineers who wanted a higher site on the river and irrigation engineers who wanted the lower site?" Discarding the measured tones and judicial manner which had characterized his previous testimony at the hearings, Hoover burst forth saying, "You are correct there is an engineering controversy here that reaches the same degree of heat that the legal controversies have reached. There are various other controversies about this river. I have never heard of a river in history that developed as much heat as this river is developing." 4 4 But he said it with a smile and laughter rippled through the hearing room. T h e new element, the one Swing had feared would further roil the admittedly dirty and already heated waters of the Colorado, was introduced by William Mulholland on 15 February. "I am here in the interest of a domestic water supply for the City of Los Angeles, and that injects a new phase into this whole matter," he forthrightly and correctly stated. 45 In their testimony both Swing and Mulholland alluded to private interests which opposed aspects of the project. J u d g e Raker ob-

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jected to the indirection. He required that Swing name names. Swing supplied that of his bête noire, Harry Chandler.46 Several officers of Southern California Edison Company and the Southern Sierras Power Company were also mentioned. Raker insisted that testimony from these men be included in the hearings. When the demand was made of Mulholland that he give specifics about the opposition, the Irish-born water man told the committee that it was "a good deal like a mole: You know the mole is there; You see where he has made the hole and the hump in the ground where he has crawled; but if you jab a 'snickersnee' into the hole, he may not be there." 47 The engineering report that Secretary Work had authorized was brought to the committee in March and the nine-volume Weymouth report, confirming and reinforcing the Fall-Davis Report, was assimilated by the group. Judge Raker was placated by the appearance of R. H. Ballard in March. This private power man testified in opposition to a dam at Boulder Canyon on the basis that it was too expensive for flood control and that it would take too long to build.48 The hearings droned on. Then somewhat mysteriously each member of the committee received by mail a copy of the Hamman Report. 49 This was a report concerning the operations of the Imperial Irrigation District by an auditor who had been requested to look into the district's affairs by the Imperial County Grand Jury. It was highly critical of the district, singling out for especial criticism the manner in which the district officers disposed of taxpayers' money to lobby for the Swing-Johnson bill. In small-town El Centro it was no secret that the men in the county clerk's office who were busily making copies of the report were Southern Sierras Power men.60 Swing's simple plan for members of the Irrigation Committee to hear in sequence (1) that a problem existed, (2) that a feasible solution (his bill) was at hand, and (3) that means to recover expenditures were available, was lost in a welter of indirection. A letter from the Federal Power Commission, signed officially by the three cabinet officers, arrived to disturb the committeemen and to distress Swing. It was unfavorable to the project. But at the same time the most favorable turn of events during the entire

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period during which H.R. 2903 was under consideration occurred. Secretary Hubert Work declared for the project. His letter, dated 17 March 1924, included the words Mclver had telegraphed him eight months previously. They had been polished and provided with a fine setting, and as they appeared over Work's signature they became the rallying cry for the project—"to convert a natural menace into a national asset." 81 The paradox of Work's favorable attitude on the one hand and the position of the F.P.C. on the other had to be resolved at the hearings. Swing cross-examined each of the cabinet members of the commission. It became quite clear that the F.P.C. letter had been written by its executive director, O. C. Merrill. Neither Weeks nor Wallace disavowed the letter, but Work adjusted his testimony to show that his present attitude was not in actual conflict with that of the commission's position. The disagreement between the two letters centered around points of emphasis. On the site, the F.P.C. report favored flood control at the foot of the canyon section of the lower Colorado. Work specified Boulder Canyon. The F.P.C. would have agriculture repay the costs. Work disregarded agriculture. He believed that pressing needs existed for power, and that with the ample power market means could be found to repay the dam costs. The F.P.C. disagreed on the extent of the power demand.82 Representative Elmer Leatherwood of Utah began his offensive in March. He was bitterly opposed to any action on the Colorado until the compact was effective. He acted upon the precedent set by Judge Raker. If the Irrigation Committee brought in witnesses to show private power opposition to the legislation, he would insist on a determination of what other agencies were doing to promote the legislation. "I think it is just as wrong for an irrigation company to spend large sums of money unnecessarily as it is for a power concern to spend large sums of money," he said. "And as one member of the committee, if one angle of the question is to be investigated, then I shall demand the right to investigate the other." 83 Swing attempted to separate the issues, but Judge Raker blocked him. "There is a hysteria abroad just now," he said, "and you cannot separate the one from the other." 84

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Swing personally became the focus for a coalition of the opposition. Leatherwood demanded an accounting by the Imperial Irrigation District and admitted that he was inspired by the Hamman report. He asserted that he was motivated by "the fact that there was a disposition on the part of people not members of the committee to take a critical attitude to any person who advances any idea contrary to those advanced by the Boulder Dam Association." 5 5 Hearings were conducted for nine days in April. The parade of witnesses before the Irrigation Committee included Hoover in a repeat performance, a host of engineers who contradictorily described the best dam site to be at Topoc, or at Glen Canyon, or at Boulder Canyon. T h e U.S. Geological Survey engineer, E. C. LaRue, said the flow of the Colorado was insufficient to serve the needs of all the states and all the projects. Reclamation Service representatives were just as insistent that, properly developed, there was enough river water for all. Maxwell again appeared on the Washington scene. His intemperate statements before the committee led Congressman Leatherwood to offer the comment that Maxwell sounded as if he had been chewing peyote. 56 Harry Chandler appeared. His testimony, like that of Ballard, was bland; designed to allay suspicion that there could possibly be a power grab by private interests, or that private interests could possibly provide a stronger motivation for certain actions than public interest. But Teapot Dome had made the country at large as well as the congressmen suspicious of publicly expressed altruism by corporate interests.57 In May the inquiry turned to Swing again. Judge Raker, a loyal friend of Boulder Dam and of Phil Swing himself, had had enough of the cloakroom rumoring. He had received his copy of the Hamman report. He had seen the records of the Boulder Dam Association. Raker knew that this energetic young congressman from El Centro would have to face a public ordeal in order to divest himself of suspicion of wrongdoing that had been thrown about him. It was not enough that those who knew Swing were certain that his motives and actions were impeccable, and that he stood to gain nothing financially by the passage of his bill. Swing was leading a public fight. Through his act of leadership

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he had become a public possession himself. The public must be satisfied that his financial affairs were in order. Raker knew Swing's ability to lead might be impaired by the current talk of his private profit. He knew, better than his younger colleague did, that this kind of talk thinned the ranks of one's followers. Raker began the questioning gently on 17 May. " W h o is the attorney for the Imperial Irrigation District?" The testimony that followed was corroborated during the hearings by Mark Rose, a director of the district. It was Raker's aim to establish the limits of Swing's activities as the Imperial Irrigation District's advisory counsel. Raker repeated, and Leatherwood took up the question of Swing's employment by the Imperial Irrigation District in February 1924. Swing was able to say truthfully that he had resigned as special counsel in October 1923. A small flurry of unfavorable publicity appeared in the Los Angeles Times and Arizona papers.68 They berated the congressman for taking taxpayers' money for doing what he promised to do as their representative. In April Swing had realized that a critical period for reporting the bill out of committee was approaching. If the testimony could not be terminated soon, the bill, if favorably reported, would not have time to go to the Rules Committee where the necessary rules for House debate and a place on the calendar had to be obtained. " T h e adverse report of the power commission is not the most difficult to overcome," Swing wrote to the Imperial Irrigation District board. "It is the sort of friendly and brotherly feeling between members of the committee who have to work together in other matters besides ours. They hesitate to do anything that would injure any one of their members in the next election, hence the appeal of Hayden, Leatherwood of Utah, and Winter of Wyoming not to force the bill out of committee until after election is receiving some favorable consideration." 5 9 Swing was not a member of the brotherly faction. T h e bill remained in committee at the close of Congress on 7 June. There it posed no threat to Hayden or Leatherwood or Winter, but Phil Swing had to go home to California to face the most difficult election of his career.

CHAPTER

IV

The Difficult Election P h i l Swing's eleventh district was a Republican district. In his first bid for election in 1920 Swing was unopposed by any Republican in the August primary. In 1922 his name alone appeared on both the Republican and Democratic tickets in the primary election. As a result, his August victory was tantamount to election, even though the November election was necessary to send him officially to Congress. California election laws had been changed under progressive Governor Hiram Johnson to prevent strong political party organization. The election measures were enacted in reaction to the long-time domination of both the Democratic and Republican party organizations in California by the Southern Pacific Railroad. Californians held a presidential primary election in May every four years. Every even-numbered year a direct primary was held in August to determine the party nominees for the state and national offices which remained partisan. Elected officers of cities and counties as well as judges were nonpartisan in California. Late in 1923 talk of finding a Republican to oppose Swing gained

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enough currency to be reported in a few of the district's newspapers.1 During the first half of 1924 two events occurred which could be used to damage Swing politically and, perhaps, unseat him. The first was a clampdown on the Mexican border which prevented traffic crossing from nine at night to seven in the morning. Swing had had the deplorable border situation put before him early in his congressional career. 2 He conferred at length throughout his first term with customs officials of the Treasury Department to devise a legal method whereby free citizens of the dry United States could be discouraged from imbibing too freely south of the border, gambling there, and buying the dubious favors of the prostitutes who were imported to the Mexican border towns from all parts of the world. T h e means the Treasury officials adopted were explained by Swing in this way: If a person insists on reentering his own country [after closing hours] he is not arrested, but "detained" until the following morning at 7 when Treasury officials with power of appraising property come to work. He is examined, and if he has no dutiable property, sent on his way. "Detention" has a very deterring effect as no person wants to spend a second time in the San Ysidro jail even though he is merely detained for examination the following morning. It is in this way that the regulation is enforced. 8

Swing encountered opposition in his stand. Some Treasury officials claimed that it was not the function of the federal government to act as guardian to adult American citizens. Nevertheless, Tijuana and Mexicali were effectively "shut down" at 9 P.M. on 1 March 1924.4 There were immediate repercussions in San Diego. Certain business interests saw tourism dwindle which had funneled through the city from all Southern California to the vice resorts in Tijuana. T h e y blamed Swing for loss of revenue. Some citizens, accepting the Mexican claim that a "cleanup" was underway, told Phil Swing that he was too narrow in his outlook. Both of these groups resented Swing because his persistent attention to the problem forced the Treasury Department to act. No other Mexican border towns but the ones near Swing's district had as early closing hours.

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The California primary in May also affected the Swing fortunes. The congressman was busy with the Irrigation Committee hearings in Washington when Hiram Johnson vied with Calvin Coolidge for California's votes. But Swing's name, coupled with Johnson's on the Boulder Canyon Project bill, and subsequent efforts to publicize the project linked the two names very effectively. It would take no great effort on the part of anyone intending to best Swing in an election to attach the sins of Johnson to Swing. There was a large group of Californians who held Johnson's name as anathema. Harry Chandler, the editor of the Los Angeles Times, was one of those who felt this way about Johnson. 5 He had come to regard Swing as an annoying thorn during Swing's precongressional years. Swing's early advocacy of an all-American canal was antithetical to Chandler's vast land interests in Mexico. In the main the lands were used to produce cotton and to raise cattle. By 1924 over 185,000 acres of irrigated Chandler land were farmed by lessees on a royalty basis ranging from 16 to 20 percent of the gross income.8 The water for these lands came from the Alamo canal. The Mexican lands were entitled to half the flow of water through the Alamo, according to a 1904 agreement made by the principals of the old California Development Company and the Mexican government. If a canal were to be constructed capable of carrying water to the Imperial Valley on the American side of the border, the burden of obtaining water for their own lands would fall on the proprietors of the Mexican lands. They would have the alternative of buying water from the Imperial Irrigation District or of buying or leasing the works of the Compañía de Terrenos y Aguas in the hope that they could obtain a portion of the flow of the Colorado. The former course, dependent on the district's willingness to sell water to them, would cut deeply into profits. The latter course was dependent upon a Mexican-American water treaty, a matter under discussion for many years with prospects for much further discussion before formal accord. The Mexican landowners reaped great benefits from the terms of the California Development Company agreement which specified "half the flow" of the water in the Alamo canal. But theirs was

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The Difficult Election

admittedly a high-risk investment as long as the amount of flow was never specified. The all-American canal could turn the Alamo channel to dust. The Chandler interests extended into Imperial Valley. Calexico was the administrative center for the Chandler land empire. Some acreage was owned near the border town. In the northern part of the valley Chandler and his business associates owned 47,000 acres, acquired from the Southern Pacific Railroad.7 The Chandler Los Angeles Times occasionally took note of the eleventh district congressman. Swing had the good fortune to be appointed to the House Naval Affairs Committee in his first term. This was the first time a freshman congressman had received an appointment to that committee. He had taken an active part in framing the temporary tariff measure and had plunged into the task of getting a veterans hospital at Arrowhead. These were matters that had been well publicized in his district and well received by his constituents during his first two months in office. In May 1921 the Times somewhat prematurely branded Swing's congressional efforts as "futile." Swing released a statement to the press which said, "This attitude is easily understood by those who know of my efforts in behalf of the farmers of the Imperial Valley to protect them against the Los Angeles Times syndicate, which owns 800,000 acres of land across the border in Mexico, which is claiming superior water rights to that of Imperial Valley. My advocacy of the All-American Canal has brought me the enmity of Harry Chandler and the Los Angeles Times." 8 The following year when Swing was successful in getting appropriations increased for the fruit frost warning services, an action highly appreciated by the many citrus growers in his district, the Times credited Congressman Walter Lineberger of Long Beach with the achievement. This pettiness on the part of the Times was turned by Swing to his advantage in much the same manner as he had handled the previous year's slur on his efforts. He sent documentation, details, and personal letters to the newspapers within his district.9 Through 1923 nearly all the eleventh district papers were lined up behind Swing. The men in the power-producing industry became aware of Phil Swing at a much later date than did Harry Chandler. On 18

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May 1920 the Kinkaid Act, with its directive to report on Colorado River storage sites, was passed by Congress. W i t h no apparent conflict involved with the Kinkaid A c t , the Federal W a t e r Power Act was passed three weeks later. T h e latter act outlined the method whereby the power industry could stake claims to develop hydroelectric energy on the nation's rivers. In September of that same year Southern California Edison announced detailed plans to develop 750,000 hydroelectric horsepower in the coming fifteen years. T h e cost of the development was estimated at $200 million, financed by "$3 of eastern capital for every $1 of western capital." 1 0 T h e Edison Company boasted that it served a million acres of land, irrigated by pumps driven by Edison electricity, and it drove the wheels of the trolley cars over 2,000 miles of tracks in Southern California. T h e era of "white coal" had arrived in 1920. W h e n the details of the preliminary Fall-Davis Report became known to the western power producers in the summer of 1921, they interpreted them to mean that private development would go hand in hand with the federal government in the overall, long-term control and utilization of the Colorado River. Flood control was clearly within the government's area of responsibility, but the Co'orado's vast power potential was to be for private power what the mother lode had been for the miner—an invitation for exploitation. T h e power interests began to take note of Swing in December 1921. Casual inquiries, conducted among the delegates at the League of the Southwest in Riverside and the Fall-Davis conference in San Diego, indicated that Swing was to be watched. T h e y observed his activities through his first term. During his second term they became uncomfortably aware of gathering sentiment in favor of the Boulder Dam development. Los Angeles placed a bond issue on the ballot in the spring of 1923 which would have earmarked $25 million for a city power tie-in with Boulder Dam. It failed to gain the two-thirds necessary for passage, but it won the support of a majority of the voters. 11 T h e power men who attended the League of the Southwest meeting in Santa Barbara in the summer of 1923 could not fail to be impressed by the fact that Swing's hour-long speech was inter-

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Election

rupted thirty-one times for "deafening applause." 12 Swing's subject, of course, was the Boulder Dam. The initial success of the Boulder Dam Association, known to have been conceived and put into motion by Swing, was one more reason to goad the policy makers of the power companies to action. During Swing's second term they decided that their interests would be better served by replacing Swing with another man. The rumors began a year before the election. In August 1923 the Braivley News and the San Diego Labor Leader both acknowledged that there would be opposition to Swing in the coming year's contest.13 October reports were more detailed. The Hemet News carried a story that Republican State Senator Edward P. Sample would vie with Swing in 1924.14 The Santa Ana Register noted the movement to "ditch Swing," and attributed it to the fact that he was a supporter of Senator Johnson, "and that is an unpardonable political sin in the eyes of some people." 15 The reference to Swing's support of Johnson had to do with the congressman's activities in 1922. Johnson, running for his second Senate term, faced Republican Charles C. Moore in the direct primary election. Swing had no contest for his congressional seat in his district, so he lent his name to Johnson's cause. This was not forgotten in 1924 when Johnson attempted to win California's presidential primary in May.16 Ardent Coolidge campaigners in Swing's eleventh district were irked by their congressman's association with Johnson and his Progressive taint. They were susceptible to the siren song to replace Swing with a "Regular" Republican. The nucleus of the informal anti-Swing alliance of late 1923 attracted San Diego malcontents following the border closing in March 1924, and Coolidge activists in May. The addition of the latter group brought with it the press strength of the Spreckels newspapers of San Diego and several Riverside County papers. J. R. Gabbert, the chairman of the Eleventh Congressional District Coolidge Campaign, was the editor of the Riverside Enterprise. The first task of these diverse, but potentially formidable, political cohorts was to find a candidate to challenge Swing. He had to be experienced, well known, and attractive because Swing was. He had to be "dry," he had to favor flood control on the Colorado River, and he had to be for Coolidge because a majority of the Re-

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publicans in the district were. These qualifications in combination were stringent. They narrowed the field to a handful of men in the district. Late in April Sheriff James C. Byers of San Diego agreed to become a candidate. He was immediately and simultaneously endorsed by six Riverside County newspapers. 17 Byers dutifully made a circuit of the district, but the anti-Swing machine gathered no speed on the campaign trail. Byers had no personal animosity toward Swing and no basic disagreement with Swing's record in Congress. He had offered himself as an alternative because "Swing has antagonized the administration." 18 Swing knew full well that he faced an election ordeal. He, too, had heard the rumors that had compelled Judge Raker to question him about his employment by the Imperial Irrigation District. In April Swing wrote to Earl Pound, the president of the district, and told him that he knew that there was some sort of scheme afoot to embarrass him politically. "I expect to have the bitterest sort of political fight," he said, and named as his principal antagonists the Los Angeles Times, Southern California Edison Company, and the "vice resort owners." 19 Within the week he made arrangements to refund to the district the sum he had been paid in his capacity as advisory counsel at the Federal Power Commission hearing in Washington the previous September. He also wrote to his associate, Charles Childers, about the matter. He told Childers that there might be an allegation made during the course of the campaign that he had violated a federal statute in his appearance before the F.P.C., but "I am satisfied that it was not within the federal statute because there was not any proceeding or controversy pending before the Federal Power Commission on which it had authority to act." 20 Before he left Washington Swing also prepared to counter the allegations that he was not in the good graces of the White House and the Republican hierarchy. H e wrote to C. Bascom Slemp, Coolidge's secretary, saying, "I would appreciate it very much if you would write me some expression of interest in the Boulder Dam project. . . ."21 He also solicited letters from Republican House leadership which would testify to his standing with his partySwing started for California on 12 June. One week later he officially announced his candidacy. Friendly newspapers throughout the district published his nine-point platform which listed first his

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Election

support for the Republican ticket. "Continuing the fight for Boulder Dam" was relegated to second place. 22 Swing was fully prepared for the worst. The power and the strength of his foes was hard to assess, but it could not be underestimated by a political candidate who hoped to win. While he was waiting for the contest to begin in earnest, the Rounder, a bright, pink, irreverent tabloid published in Mexicali, entered the fray. Billy Silver, editor and publisher of the Rounder, put an article on the front page saying that Phil Swing had visited the paper's offices on 20 June and had assured the editor that the border would be opened in the near future. 23 Swing did not find it amusing to be needled from Baja when he had expected jarring blows from other quarters. He had to take the trouble to deny that any such interpretation could be placed on his words, and he had to send his denial to the Calexico Chronicle, deep in Chandler territory. Swing's border record was unassailable, and probably because of this the Chronicle bothered to acknowledge Swing's denial, but couched in these terms: "Billy Silver, in his notorious sporting sheet last Saturday published an alleged interview with Swing . . ." 2 4 The Rounder replied: Phil D. Swing is a wise politician, and the Rounder is for him, chiefly for the reason that he is against that monopolistic, graball Kink Chandler gang of high binders and its local organ, the Comical.26

While this sparring was taking place at the Calexico-Mexicali border, Sheriff Byers withdrew from the race. For five desperate days the "Tijuana gang, the Power gang, and the Unholy Coalition" were without a candidate to oppose Swing. Then, on 2 July, State Senator Edward P. Sample, who had been rumored as a candidate, announced that he would run. Sample's credentials were good. He had been a state senator for six years. He was personable, well liked, "100% dry," and president of the San Diego Coolidge for President Club. But he was, without a doubt, a reluctant candidate. Gleefully the San Diego Union, a Spreckels newspaper, published tidings of the event. According to the Union, Sample decided to enter the race when he was told he could count on the

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support of a hundred of the leading business and professional men of the Imperial Valley. 26 Sample promptly performed for them by declaring his opposition to the "Swing-Rose Canal" as an enormous financial burden. And he quoted Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover as another Republican opponent of the canal. 27 More to the point as far as the Union was concerned, "Sample has never played with isms and political cults. He is not a Johnsonite." 28 The primary election date was 26 August. By mid-July the contest had become as torrid as the Imperial Valley summer weather. Governor Friend Richardson endorsed Sample on IS July. 2 9 The anti-Swing newspapers became vociferously pro-Sample. A number of additional newspapers declared for Sample. The Needles Nugget was for him because, it claimed, Swing stood to profit from the Eastside Mesa lands.30 The Anaheim Gazette and the Fallbrook Enterprise deserted Swing. T h e matter of Swing's taking pay from the Imperial Irrigation District was brought up again by the Los Angeles Times, stating that Swing had accepted a fee of $25 a day from the Imperial Valley water users at the same time as he was a member of Congress "pledged to secure as much relief as possible for his constituents." 31 The article contained no reference to possible statute violation. The San Diego Sun, a Scripps publication and the only major San Diepo paper loval to Swing during the campaign, noted the issue but dismissed it with a statement that the facts "dug up bv Leatherwood" had been printed by the Sun the previous summer.32 The San Francisco Bulletin and Post apprised Bay area readers of the situation in the eleventh district by declaring that "the formidable Chandler political machine is out to 'get' Congressman Phil D. Swing of Imperial County—the last of the progressive Republicans in Congress from California. Behind the drive on Swing is the most powerful political industrial group in the whole Southwest." 83 Swing's stand on closing the Mexican border had driven some potential business backing away from his camp in San Diego. But it proved to be one of the sources of strength to his campaign throughout his district. All Southern California was aware that there was rottenness in the border towns and they admired Swing for standing up to the "vice-kings." The anti-Swing forces, in an attempt to diminish this admiration, mounted a two-pronged attack

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in August. A Democratic clubwoman named Violette Campbell was prevailed upon to be interviewed in regard to Mr. Swing. Mrs. Campbell cooperated enthusiastically and at length. She hinted, among other things, that Swing was not so "dry," and that he "consorts with Billy Silver, publisher of the Rounder." She let slip that she also thought the ail-American canal a great blunder.34 Reports and letters bearing the news that the real credit for the border closing did not lie with Swing gained wide currency in the papers supporting Sample. The relationship of these statements to the truth hinged on the technicality that a congressman cannot regulate the border traffic hours, that it is within the jurisdiction of the administrative branch of the government.35 Throughout the eleventh district Coolidge workers received letters signed by their chairman, J. R. Gabbert, urging them to vote for Sample.36 Reports of massive defections from Swing in Imperial Valley were given wide publicity. The Colorado River Control Club, formed in June for the purposes of securing a flood control dam on the Colorado, claimed to have the owners of 100,000 Imperial Valley acres on its rolls, all opposed to Swing and his "ruthless tactics to delay flood protection for the Imperial Valley." 87 Swing had time to refute every charge that was leveled at him, and he did it with consummate skill. A Mrs. Hallie Gibson, property owner in the Imperial Valley and member of the Women's Christian Temperance Union, "saw a piece in the Riverside Enterprise and it made my blood boil." She knew Swing in El Centro, she knew he was a good lawyer, and she knew he was very, very dry. 38 A letter from McKenzie Moss, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, properly crediting Swing with the border closing, found its way into print in the friendly papers, as did the letters Swing had solicited from Slemp, Nicholas Longworth, House Republican leader, and Albert Vestal, Republican whip.39 These prominent Republicans all attested to Swing's Republican high standing. Swing's Imperial Valley friends were not worried about carrying the valley for him in spite of all the sound and fury. But they did become concerned about San Diego and the adverse publicity he was receiving there. Even the little progressive paper, the Herald, deserted Swing—because he did not support LaFollette! 40

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The friends agreed to stage a demonstration to the people of San Diego to prove that Imperial Valley was loyal to Swing. Every valley town but Calexico declared a holiday on 18 August. Carloads of valley residents motored to San Diego and staged a parade through its streets. Photos of the hundreds of banner-bearing automobiles were displayed in the San Diego Sun, but the Union labeled it a "Phantom parade" which failed to materialize, and its account was printed by the Calexico Chronicle, the Indio Date Palm, and other anti-Swing papers in the district. 41 It became apparent to both camps in mid-August that the Sample fight was lost. This was evident to Swing in the size and enthusiasm of the crowds he was attracting. It provoked the "Unholy Coalition" to support sub rosa a write-in campaign for Democrat Bill Kettner, the former congressman from the eleventh district. The final act of the campaign may have been born of desperation on the part of the anti-Swing coalition, or it may have been deliberately planned from the first days of Sample's entry into the race. In either case, the perpetrators maliciously utilized the fact that Sample, when he had been in the state Senate, had voted for a socalled antimasking bill aimed at the Ku Klux Klan. News of the Klan had been on the front pages for many days in June when the organization was at issue in the long drawn out Democratic National Convention. It was generally held in bad odor among thinking citizens of California.42 Swing's opponents linked Swing with a Klan endorsement and at the same time publicized Sample's "record" in opposition to the Klan. Printed handbills and cards endorsing Swing and bearing local Klavern and Kleagle names were distributed in San Bernardino, Riverside, and Orange counties on the Sunday before election. On Monday the Los Angeles Times headlined, "Swing Endorsed by Klan," followed by, "What connection Congressman Swing has with the secret organization has not been made public." 48 And on Tuesday, election day, the San Diego Union declared that "Citrus Belt Voters Turn from Swing, Break comes with realization that radicals and Hooded Order back incumbent." 44 The ordeal drew to an end. The polls closed and the votes were counted. Swing's election day triumph was even greater than had been estimated by his own forces. He gained a 3-1 victory over

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Sample on the Republican ballot. On the Democratic ballot, where the write-in campaign for Kettner had been countered by Swing's own last-minute plea for write-ins, he scored a 5-1 margin. He had not only won the Republican nomination, but the Democratic nomination as well in a most difficult election. Billy Silver, who opened the campaign for Swing, summed it up as it closed, "Swing Swang on them." 45

CHAPTER

V

California Politics A . brief visit to his mother in San Bernardino and a few days in the mountains at Arrowhead were all the respite Swing allowed himself. The election was over, but the main battle, the struggle for Boulder Dam, continued. Swing had every reason to be optimistic about the immediate future of the Swing-Johnson bill. He knew that all but three of the members of the Irrigation Committee of the House planned to report the bill favorably. Dr. Elwood Mead, a firm supporter of the Boulder Canyon project, had been appointed Commissioner of Reclamation in April. 1 Phil Swing resumed his campaign for the dam on 17 September 1924. Some 250 men and women from a number of California communities gathered in the Green Hotel in Pasadena that day to form an association similar to the Boulder Dam Association. They wished to promote the aqueduct to bring Colorado River water to Southern California. Mulholland's original plan for a 1,000 second-foot supplement to Los Angeles's domestic water supply had grown to a request for 1,500 second-feet to supply several Southern Calif or-

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nia cities. The cost of the proposed 268-mile aqueduct was estimated at $220 million, a sum over three times as large as the estimated cost of Boulder Dam.2 Swing was the principal speaker at the meeting which culminated in the organization of the Colorado River Aqueduct Association. The significance of the aqueduct to Swing and the Boulder Dam adherents lay in the fact that the domestic water would have to be pumped up 1,400 feet above the level of the river before it could flow down to the coastal cities. Pumping required electricity. The market for Boulder Dam power was absolutely assured if plans for the aqueduct met with success. The first act of the new group was to elect a chairman, Hiram Wadsworth, who then appointed a committee of five for "outlining a plan of organization to bring about the construction of the Colorado River Aqueduct, and to suggest necessary legislation to make it possible." Two of these appointees were W . B. Mathews and S. C. Evans, stalwarts of the Boulder Dam Association.8 From Pasadena Swing went to the Imperial Valley. There he learned that the Colorado River Control Club, formed in June and used diligently against him in the election campaign, had not withered away as most campaign organizations do. Additional membership had been solicited in August by mailing postcards to all Imperial Valley property owners. The cards had a statement of principles printed on them which set forth the aims of the Colorado River Control Club as favoring immediate congressional action on river control by building a dam on the Colorado, and by making power production a separate issue. If the recipient favored these principles, his signature on the card would constitute endorsement and membership in the club, with no financial obligation on his part.4 The club leaders claimed that a great many postcards had been returned, and they boasted that owners of over one-half the acreage in Imperial Valley were opposed to the all-American canal feature of the Boulder Canyon project. Without hesitation Phil Swing linked the club's activities to "the Harry Chandler program." 8 Swing conferred with Frank Mclver and suggested that the Imperial Irrigation District take steps to counter the Colorado River Control Club efforts. The appeal of the club lay in the fact

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that, on the surface, it asked for less, would cost less, and would get prompter action than the Swing-Johnson bill. A dam in Boulder Canyon which would control floods was an urgent necessity. Whether it was to be a low dam, or a high dam capable of producing electricity was at issue. T h e frontal assault on the allAmerican canal had been dropped. T h e stress was now on flood control. T h e canal feature of the Swing-Johnson bill was being blamed for the delay in obtaining flood control. T h e congressman learned that the list of Colorado River Control Club members would be presented to the Senate Committee on Irrigation and Reclamation. He told Mclver that the I.I.D. should send a letter to water users and property owners explaining that the Colorado River Control Club opposed the Swing-Johnson bill and the ail-American canal. Swing suspected that quite a few of the people signed the card with the mistaken notion that they were lending support to his position. They were led astray, he reasoned, by the very broad statements in the declaration of principles on the card. Along with the letter Swing encouraged Mclver to send a second card, stamped and addressed to the I.I.D. on one side, with a printed revocation of membership in the Colorado River Control Club on the other. 8 After outlining a program for the I.I.D., Swing went to his political supporters in the valley and enlisted their aid. T h e "Swing for Congress" clubs were amalgamated and transformed into the American Conservation Club, open to Democrats and Republicans alike.7 T h e American Conservation Club was totally committed to support the Swing-Johnson bill. Phil Swing gave the members ammunition to fire back at the barrage of talk that the all-American canal proposal was delaying the passage of the bill. He cited hearing testimony to them. B y quoting Ward Bannister of Colorado and Elmer Leatherwood of Utah, he proved to them beyond a question of doubt that the upper states objected to a dam on the Colorado before agreement had been reached on the compact. It did not matter whether the dam was high or low, or where it was built, the upper states feared loss of their water rights would occur if any dam were built on the lower Colorado. Not only were their objections unrelated to the canal, but, Swing reiterated, a flood control dam on the Colorado would face the same upper state op-

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position as the Boulder Canyon project. Under scrutiny the economics of the $70 million high dam versus the $30 million low flood control dam ceased to be simple. The lower-priced structure would cost the Imperial Valley property owners more than the dam proposed by the Swing-Johnson bill. Under the provisions of the Flood Control Act the area to be benefited must first organize a flood control district and that district must bear at least half the cost of all flood control structures.8 Having kindled enough backfires in the valley to contain the potentially inflammatory Colorado River Control Club, Swing returned to San Diego. On his way he stopped by the Imperial Irrigation District offices and picked up a new warrant for $708.82. He believed that the issue of his 1923 employment by the district was dead. He had anticipated that it would be used in the recent election campaign and had taken pains to establish a technical defense if he were charged with the violation of a federal statute in connection with his appearance before the Federal Power Commission. He had refunded the $708.82 to the district the previous April. T o Charles Childers he jokingly confessed, "Frankly I had no idea the bill would run to $700 per diem and expenses, or I might have hesitated because the choice between virtue and poverty is often a difficult one to make, and I might have thought $700 was too high a price even to be considered virtuous by my constituents. However we will let this go as my contribution to the Boulder Dam Association." 9 In May of 1924 he had written to Mabel Walker Willebrandt, Assistant Attorney General, and told her of his concern. The federal statute that worried Swing set forth that a member of Congress cannot appear for another party in any proceeding pending before Congress or any department of the government.10 In the spring of 1924 Senator Burton K. Wheeler was indicted in a Montana court for a violation of this kind. He was acquitted a year later, and in the meantime the statute received wide publicity. T o establish his defense, Swing obtained copies of the notices that were sent out for the F.P.C. hearing and a list of those to whom the notices were sent. Swing requested O. C. Merrill, executive secretary of the F.P.C., to inform him precisely about the section of the law and the regulation under which the hearing had been conducted. 11 He

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communicated with Mrs. Willebrandt again in July. He told her that the charge would be made during the last week of his campaign.12 Swing solicited other opinions. Reassuring word came from Los Angeles attorney Walter Bordwell as the campaign drew to a close. In his examination of the evidence Swing had mustered from Merrill, Bordwell was quite sure that no violation of the federal statute had occurred. 13 The charge did not, however, become a campaign issue. In his present optimism about the bill's passage Swing reckoned without Herbert Hoover. T h e Secretary of Commerce came to California in October, and met with various Los Angeles interests to sound out opinion for a new method of handling the legal and physical problems connected with the Colorado River legislation. Hoover told his Los Angeles listeners that the formation of a "Conservancy Board," made up of appointed representatives from the Seven Colorado basin states, was one possible method of handling the development of the river. 14 He alternately offered a multi-state corporation as the agency which could lease the power potential of the Colorado to private interests. T h e ideas for immediate congressional action, which Hoover explained to W . B. Mathews at a private conference, concerned legislation which could theoretically win quick approval in the coming short session. "After recounting various difficulties," Mathews wrote Swing, Hoover "expressed [his] opinion that there was no chance to obtain appropriation beyond twenty-five to thirty millions for flood control only. . . . the Secretary's plan seemed substantially the same as heretofore at times urged by him." 15 Swing received reports of the Hoover machinations. In his opinion, the new elements injected by the multistate proposals would cause at least a four-year delay in the commencement of works on the Colorado if either one were taken seriously. He could see no merit in them whatsoever. T o justify his doubts he had merely to refer to the status of the Colorado River Commission itself and the compact, aground on Arizona shoals. " T o o many cooks spoil the broth," he wrote to Childers, "the failure of the compact is sufficient proof in the ability of seven states to act when only one item is under consideration." 16 Congressman John D. Fredericks of Los Angeles did not share

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Swing's view. He was sympathetic to Hoover and the Los Angeles Times was sympathetic to him. Shortly after the Hoover visit he let it be known that he intended to introduce a bill in December which would provide $30 million for a flood control dam on the Colorado. The second session of the Sixty-eighth Congress began on 1 December. The Imperial Valley delegation and other supporters of Boulder Dam who had attended the House hearings during the first months of 1924 were ready to close the same year by giving similar testimony for S. 727. Johnson had asked Swing to plan the order and arrangement of the favorable witnesses for the Senate committee hearings. Swing also had the responsibility for the preparation of a summary of the favorable testimony contained in the 1,974 pages of the hearings on H.R. 2903.17 Swing asked Charles Childers to aid him in this task, advising him to approach it "just as a lawyer marshalls evidence for a jury, citing statements by our witnesses, admissions by the opposition" and to group the evidence into categories such as "flood menace, Boulder proper site, government proper agency, safeguarding upper states, menace Mexican lands."18 Other Californians appeared on the Washington scene. William Fawcett and R. D. McPherrin of the Imperial Valley, representing the Colorado River Control Club, were there, "conferring continuously with Fredericks and Leatherwood." 19 True to his promise, Fredericks introduced a flood control bill on 13 December. He tried and failed to get a member of the upper house to act as sponsor to a companion bill in the Senate. The bill provided for a dam to be built with a foundation "upon which there can be erected hereafter by the United States Government a superstructure for the purpose of irrigation and power development." 20 "Hoover's child," as the bill was called, was referred to the House Committee on Flood Control, and from there it went to the Secretary of Commerce for a report. 21 The bright prospects which Swing had seen in the fall for the passage of his own bill dimmed in the short December days. The Fredericks bill was one reason. "It is difficult to secure consideration of contested legislation," Swing wrote, by way of explanation, to a Coachella constituent. 22 The Senate Irrigation and Recla-

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mation committee was a second cause. In their December hearings the senators awakened to the complexity and magnitude of the proposed Colorado River legislation. In January they voted to conduct field investigations on the Swing-Johnson bill. T h e calendar of the short session, due to terminate in March, was filled with appropriation matters needing immediate attention. With no prospect of action from the Senate committee, the House Irrigation Committee felt no sense of urgency about reporting H.R. 2903. Naturally, Swing was disappointed. He wired Earl Pound, I.I.D. president, to send a protest to Hoover. "Tell Hoover Fredericks bill being called his child and ask for unequivocal statement his position." 2 3 A week later W . C. Blanchard of Holtville received a long telegram from Hoover in which he declared that no one was more anxious than he to resolve the Colorado River problem, but that both the Fredericks and the Swing-Johnson bills would fail. Their failure would be due to lack of a compact, and the fact that the Swing-Johnson proposal was too costly. "I do not believe it [the Swing-Johnson proposal] will ever be accepted by other sections of the United States," the Secretary of Commerce averred. 24 T h e Sixty-eighth Congress adjourned on 4 March. T h e Sixtyninth Congress was not scheduled to convene until December. Phil Swing returned to California with a new plan to further the Boulder Dam legislation. It was irrefutable that the upper states would continue to oppose the construction of any works on the Colorado as long as they feared that the lower states would thereby gain rights to additional river water. T h e compact, Herbert Hoover believed, would solve this problem for all the interested states and for all time. Swing differed, objecting to the compact as a quitclaim deed to the upper states. He had no reasonable alternative to offer the California state legislature in 1923 when the compact had been under consideration. He had written to his brother Ralph that he thought some sort of reservation should be a part of the California ratification but before he had worked out a provision which would offer more protection for California's water rights, the legislature had given its approval. W h e n Arizona failed to ratify the compact Delph Carpenter's suggestion of a sixstate compact gained acceptance as a possible solution to the impasse reached by the seven-state proposal.

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In order to waive the seven-state provision, the legislatures of the signatory states had to reconsider the compact. Before the second session of the Sixty-eighth Congress adjourned, W y o m i n g and Colorado had already given their official approval to the six-state compact. 2 5 T h e matter was under consideration in Sacramento as Swing came home to California. Swing did not like the wording of Article 8 of the compact which called for lower basin water users to satisfy their water rights from storage as soon as 5 million acre-feet of storage had been provided on the river. He had questioned it in 1923 on the basis that it deprived lower basin users of their rights. He would question it in 1925 from the storage standpoint. T h e low water flow of the Colorado had been completely appropriated. Imperial Valley users had filed on 10,000 second-feet before the turn of the century and were, b y 1924, putting 6,500 second-feet, or 4,680,000 acre-feet, of water on their lands each year. Severe shortages occurred in dry years, and at normal low water time there was only 3,500 second-feet flowing past Yuma. 2 6 If a dam were built with a capacity of only 5 million acre-feet, as called for bv the compact, its reservoir would have to be nearly empty every spring to provide control of waters from the snow pack in the Rockies and the flash floods from the tributaries. A dry year with no spring flood would spell death to Imperial Valley crops because, b y the terms of the compact, the valley's water needs were to be satisfied from stored water and the rights t o the natural flow were to be forfeited. Swing mulled the problem in Washington. In 1923 he had entertained the notion of attaching a time element reservation, allowing a reasonable amount of time for the passage of the Swing-Johnson bill because the high dam called for b y the bill was capable of storing two years' flow of the turbulent river. H e rejected this approach, but the problem continued to concern him. H e brought the matter up during the hearings on H . R . 2903. H e called the attention of the Irrigation Committee members to an apparent flaw in Article 8 of the compact. It was not that the article divested the lower basin water users of their right to the natural flow of the river that Swing questioned this time, but that the compact did not specify w h o was to build he dam. Technically, the compact could not prohibit Imperial Valley

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water rights f r o m falling into control of private hands if private interests were to build a dam capable of impounding 5 million acrefeet of water on the river. 27 A properly drawn reservation b y California to remedy the shortcomings of Article 8 might be utilized to promote the passage of the Swing-Johnson bill. Swing contacted his brother Ralph, A. C. Finney, the assemblyman from Brawley, and Charles Childers, his El Centro law associate. Together they worked out a plan for compact implementation in Sacramento. Ralph Swing in the Senate and Finney in the Assembly would offer an additional proviso to California's sixstate compact ratification. 28 Finney introduced it on 5 March 1925. Within the week the men who had lobbied in Washington for and against the Swing-Johnson bill gathered in Sacramento and supported or decried the Finnev resolution. Colorado River Control Club representatives and former senator Ed Sample spoke for an unqualified ratification of the six-state compact. Childers, Mark Rose, W . J. Carr, and W . B. Mathews pressed for the reservation. Herbert Hoover, more open in his opposition to the Finney resolution than to the Swing-Johnson bill, sent his personal representative, Mark Requa, to Sacramento to speak against the requirement for 20 million acre-feet of storage. He also sent a telegram to Governor Friend Richardson favoring an unqualified approval of the six-state compact. T h e message quickly became public. T h e Sacramento Bee lost no time in pinning a carpetbag label on the action, saying, "Hoover, the power interests, and American capitalists in Mexico have been attempting to dictate the form in which California should ratify the compact." 2 9 Swing and his friends were successful. On 8 April 1925 the Finney resolution was included in California's formal ratification of the six-state compact. T h e reservation, attached to the waiver of the seven-state provision originally approved in 1923, said that the compact should not bind California "until the President of the United States shall certify and declare (a) that the congress of the United States has duly authorized and directed the construction b y the United States of a dam in the main stream of the Colorado river, at or below Boulder Canyon, adequate to create a storage reservoir of a capacity of not less than twenty million acre-feet of water." 3 0

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A week after this success a local Swing-Johnson bill passed the state Senate. In it the state authorized the formation of metropolitan water districts. T h e legislation also would permit joint financing and control of large water districts. T h e bill was a product of the committee of five of the Colorado River Aqueduct Association, introduced by Senators Ralph Swing and A. B. Johnson. Despite Senate passage the bill went down to defeat in the Assembly by a vote of 43 to 32 on 21 April. 3 1 Meanwhile, in the southern part of the state, the Imperial County grand jury began to move against the Imperial Irrigation District. T h e 1923 grand jury had taken a long look at the accounts of the district. T h e investigation had been continued by the 1924 grand jury. This group sent Swing a request to meet with them on 21 April. At the same time they wanted to question Swing they were preparing serious charges of willful malfeasance in office against Earl Pound, Ira Aten, Mark Rose, and C. W . Brockman, directors of the district. T h e charges, made public on 28 April, dealt with expenditures by the district to secure passage of the Swing-Johnson bill. Director Brockman stated, "I voted several months ago to send Mark Rose to Washington to work in behalf of the SwingJohnson bill, and I'll admit hanging is an appropriate punishment for such a crime." 3 2 Swing entered the fray, publicly defending Rose, Aten, and Pound. He asserted that Brockman's involvement was a front and that charges against him would be dropped. T h e unfriendly Calexico Chronicle reported his words, then editorialized, "Garrulous Phil is on the warpath!" T h e y added that strange transactions had taken place at the I.I.D. offices involving the congressman himself. " I t appears that on a certain date in October, 1923, Phil Swing was paid $708.82 by the district directors whom he is now so staunchly defending. Later in April of 1924, just about the time that Phil was testifying in Washington that he had received no compensation [«c] from the district, $708.82 was returned." T h e y noted that the same sum had been paid again in September 1924 to Swing. 8 3 Copies of these warrants were in the hands of the Imperial County grand jury, hence their request to Swing to meet with them. I f any wrong had occurred in connection with the warrants as far as Swing was concerned, it was within the jurisdiction of the federal

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grand jury. If this body were to indict him for violation of the federal statute for taking pay for appearing before the Federal Power Commission, he would have to stand trial. Conviction would mean loss of office, possible imprisonment for two years, a possible $10,000 fine, and a disqualification from public office in the future. 34 Swing took action to clear up the matter once and for all. He wrote to the U.S. District Attorney, S. W . McNabb, and demanded to be heard by the federal grand jury. Arrangements were made for him to appear on 29 May. In the meantime he returned to San Diego where he had offices with his former Stanford classmate, Edgar Luce. From San Diego he kept up a barrage of correspondence to his El Centro office where Charles Childers and A. C. Finney were preparing the defenses of Rose, Aten, and Pound. Swing handled the strategy to extricate his supporters from the vindictive legal morass in which they found themselves. He wrote to fellow members of the bar in California and other states seeking information on similar cases. He requested copies of jury instructions on the cases that had been brought to trial. When he found out which judge would hear the pleas, he sent off another round of letters to his confreres inquiring about the judge's predilections (how did he stand on public power?) , 35 In the course of his voluminous May correspondence he found, to his disappointment, that, unlike some other states, California had no statute upon which he could rely to initiate disqualification proceedings against the district attorney. He found that Judge Charles Burnell from Los Angeles who was to hear the case was considered fair, but lukewarm on the question of public ownership. 86 Swing compiled his data, wrote out a motion to set aside the accusation, and mailed it to Finney for retyping. H e wrote Finney at the time, "I feel pretty strong on m y demurrer and believe they will sustain on all counts."®7 He referred to the general and specific demurrers he had prepared for the accused, Rose, Aten, and Pound. He was correct. Judge Burnell sustained them on 21 May. T h e directors had successfully surmounted two legal hurdles that month. They had heard Judge Frank Jameson declare on 6 May that they had not exceeded their authority in removing the I.I.D. shops from Calexico to Imperial. W i t h the 21 May dismissal it

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appeared as if the Imperial Valley could attempt to mend its fences and present a united front to the Senate Irrigation and Reclamation subcommittee which was due for a visit to the valley in the fall. On 29 May Phil Swing appeared before the federal grand jury in Los Angeles. He proved by the record of the Federal Power Commission hearings of 24 and 25 September 1923 that no matter requiring action was pending before the commission at the time. The hearing was more properly termed a conference, called at Governor Hunt's request. If no matter were pending, no action was contemplated, and in that event his appearance before the F.P.C. was in no way in violation of the federal statute. The matter was not acted upon by the federal jurors until 13 June, after directors Rose, Pound, and Brockman and I.I.D. secretary Frank Mclver had appeared in Swing's behalf. The Examiner hailed the outcome, "No Bill on Phil." 38 At the time this was announced Swing had already left the turmoil behind and was on his way to Honolulu with the Naval Affairs Committee. Swing did not return until 22 July. Upon his arrival, he found that Imperial Valley affairs were boiling again. N e w and detailed charges were being prepared against the directors. While he was gone the American Conservation Club, the former Swing for Congress group, circulated recall petitions against Superior Court Judge M. W . Conkling and District Attorney Ernest Utley. The Colorado River Control Club had spawned an antirecall committee. The basis for the Conservation Club's recall movement was the well-founded suspicion that Conkling and Utley had stacked the grand jury and had manipulated the jurors to achieve a certain end. The end was to destroy the all-American canal idea. The means were to discredit those who supported it. Judge Conkling was known to be cool toward the canal. Swing estimated that a quarter of the people in Imperial Valley shared Conkling's view. But when the 19-member county grand jury, empaneled from a list submitted by the judge, included 15 people who opposed the canal, suspicions were aroused. The actions of the District Attorney in turning over the grand jury affairs to a special deputy did nothing to allay the suspicions. The fact that he was an unauthorized, unpaid deputy was no proof of wrongdoing. Neither was the fact that he was the judge's son-in-law. Taken all together it became too much for some citizens to bear.89 By 7 August the recall petitions were ready to be

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filed with the county clerk. That same week new charges, 90 pages of specifics, were filed against Rose, Aten, and Pound. Trial was set for 26 August. On the twenty-fifth B. D. Irvine, leader of the recall movement, was in jail, and the trial was put off till September. Two days later the recall petitions were filed against Utley, and Conkling was disqualified to hear accusations against the I.I.D. 40 Swing's reaction to the imbroglio was one of displeasure. " W e are muddying our own waters, let the recall slide," he wrote to Childers. He disagreed with the methods of the recall activists, but he agreed with their contentions, because "Harry Chandler is Conkling's political manager." 41 The trial of Rose, Aten, and Pound was put off until September, then postponed again. Ralph Swing advised his brother not to involve himself. Hiram Johnson gave him contrary advice. The aspect that Johnson deplored was the recall action against the judge. He feared the local political situation would lead the Senate Irrigation subcommittee members to believe that they were dealing with irresponsible people. Their visit to El Centro was set for the end of October. "These are your people," he wrote to Swing, "fighting for their lives in the greatest crisis of their careers, and it is not only natural but it is appropriate and just that you should be there with them in their time of trial, fighting for them." 42 By the time the senators arrived on 30 October, Imperial Valley was outwardly calm. T h e directors' day in court had not yet occurred, and the petitions against Conkling and Utley were found to be insufficient. The American Conservation Club, taking Swing's advice, did not press the recall matter further, but vowed to defeat both men in a regular election. The club also had to assume the serious responsibility of raising funds to further the SwingJohnson bill. The Imperial Irrigation District itself had been sued for spending money lobbying for the legislation in Washington, even though this had been accepted practice since the district was founded.43 The court decided for the plaintiff and the I.I.D. could no longer expend money in support of legislation affecting the district.44 The burden to supply funds to the Boulder Dam Association and to pay the expenses of various delegates to Washington shifted to the American Conservation Club. Meanwhile, a conference took place in Arizona which Phil Swing

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viewed with hope. He had been responsible, in part, for the makeup of the delegation which would speak for California interests at the tri-state meeting in Phoenix on 18 August. His concern for the Arizona negotiations took shape during the efforts to secure the passage of the Finney resolution the previous April. Section A of the resolution set forth the requirement of 20 million acre-feet of storage capacity on the river for California approval. Added to this was a Section B which said, "that the congress of the United States has exercised the power and the jurisdiction of the United States to make the terms of said Colorado River Compact binding and effective as to the waters of said Colorado River." 45 Swing did not like Section B which he called "vague and indefinite."46 He was certain that it would be "a jolt to Arizona [and] we need their support. California must make a gesture of good will to Arizona, perhaps a resolution—but a step further—provide a commission . . . If done we must safeguard the appointment of the commission. Do this by drawing a bill to prvide commission with three assemblymen, three senators from counties most directly interested. This would put Finney, Murray and possibly Jones from the Assembly, and Cline, Swing, and at the worst Chamberlain or Johnson of Los Angeles on from the Senate. This would give us control of the Commission."47 Phil Swing's suggestions, with modifications, were adopted. Two members were to be appointed from each legislative house. Finney wrote to Swing in June that he and Walter J. Little had been appointed to the Lower Basin Legislative Commission and that Ralph Swing and L. L. Dennett were members from the Senate.48 Ward Bannister got the news of the Phoenix meeting in July. When Swing returned from Hawaii a letter from Bannister was waiting for him. In it Bannister made the suggestion that Colorado attend the Arizona meeting. Swing replied that the conference was the concern of the lower basin states, but at the same time reported to Ralph that he thought "it would be best to have just as few cooks in the kitchen as possible while we are trying to reach an agreement with Arizona. I am hoping and praying that you will be successful in reaching a reasonable agreement with Arizona."49 Despite the hopes and prayers of Phil Swing the August meeting was a failure. Governor Hunt greeted the delegations from Nevada

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What California Wants

Fig. 4. The Arizona Gazette helped mold public opinion with cartoons such as this one which appeared 5 September 1925.

and California with an address that precluded any sort of agreement on lower basin water allocation. Hunt antagonized the visitors immediately by saying, "You gentlemen didn't come here looking for charity. If we have something you want and can utilize, economic justice dictates that it be paid for." He added that if

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Arizona did not get what she wanted she would go to the Supreme Court.50 Quick-tempered Ralph Swing, chairman of the California delegation, responded to Hunt's ultimatum by saying, " W e came over here with the purpose of attempting to arrive at something. W e came here and we were confronted by the very first thing with the statement of your governor, which makes it impossible for us to ever arrive at any place where we can agree on anything, and I think that it is a waste of time to attempt to negotiate any further." 51 Antagonism filled the air when Thomas Maddock reinforced the Arizona position by telling the Californians, " W e are not willing to let the sheep of flood protection cover up the wolf of power and water greed. W e will not allow you to get away with our resources simply because you need protection." 62 The failure of the Arizona meeting provoked more correspondence from Ward Bannister. Swing had informed the Colorado man in June that he planned to include ratification of the Colorado River Compact in his next Boulder Canyon bill. "This would give both the upper States and the lower States the things that they are most vitally interested in." 53 Bannister did not care for the Finney resolution and suggested that it represented a breach of faith.54 Swing took the offensive in his reply. "How much can California afford to pay Arizona to get her to ratify the compact?" Swing asked Bannister. "In connection with that it would be very interesting to know what the upper states are willing to do for us provided we pay the price to get Arizona to ratify your compact."56 Swing left no doubt that the support of the upper states in Congress was the price they would have to pay to get California to make large concessions in Arizona. In October the Senate subcommittee began its field investigations in California. On the twenty-sixth the senators heard testimony in Los Angeles, on the twenty-eighth in San Diego, and on the thirtieth in El Centro. Senator Johnson, who had recently taken the place of Senator H. O. Bursum of New Mexico on the committee, began to play his part in the fight for the Boulder Canyon project. Johnson had previously been accorded the title of coauthor, but he had relied almost exclusively on Swing to bear the burden of the legislative efforts.56

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The hearing in El Centro began with the calling of Charles E. Scott, a member of the executive committee of the Colorado River Control Club. Johnson, well briefed by Swing, subjected Scott to close questioning. He wanted to know about the membership and how it was obtained. Scott's somewhat evasive answers elicited sharper questions from Johnson. Was it not true, he asked, that one became a member simply by signing a card? Could Scott produce a card? Had members withdrawn from the club?57 Senator Ashurst had a number of questions to ask. The Arizonan was not favorably disposed toward the Boulder Canyon dam, but he shared the concern of the majority of the Imperial Valley residents about the water demands of the Mexican lands. Ashurst wanted Scott to tell him about the division of opinion in regard to the all-American canal in Imperial Valley. Scott affirmed that there was a division of opinion. "Is there a division of opinion on the Mexican side of the line?" Ashurst queried. "I don't feel qualified to answer," Scott replied. Sharply Ashurst asserted that there was no division of opinion, but that there was unanimous opposition to the canal. "Is that not true?" he demanded of Scott. Scott said he could not answer. Ashurst then said that he would supply the answer, "in the nomenclature of the poker table; No man with four aces ever clamored for a new deal." "That is correct," said Scott. 68 Johnson could have played cards of his own at this time. He had access to over two hundred cards revoking membership in the Colorado River Control Club. They had been reposing in Swing's San Diego office throughout the summer because the I.I.D. offices were not considered safe for them during the turmoil. Johnson chose not to introduce them, but he did return the inquiry to the matter of the club. He requested a list of the members and he obtained from Scott an admission that there had been seven withdrawals.69 It was nearly six in the evening when the relatively calm, somewhat repetitious, and slightly tedious hearing drew to a close that Friday in El Centro. At the last minute Harry Chandler walked in. He was asked if he cared to make a statement. He replied that he had no statement, but that he would be glad to answer the

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senators' questions. No one said a word. The meeting was adjourned. 60 The senators continued their investigations in Yuma, Phoenix, and Las Vegas. They heard from engineers Frank Weymouth and Arthur Powell Davis after they had visited Boulder Canyon. T h e hearings were continued in Washington after the Sixty-ninth Congress convened. Definite action resulted from the testimony of O. C. Merrill. On 9 December he explained to the Irrigation Committee the difficulties in which the Federal Power Commission found itself. In anticipation of a compact the commission had suspended action repeatedly on applications for power development on the Colorado River. He called for a temporary government policy which would clarify the status of twenty-five applications, including the Girand filing, which technically should be granted. 61 In consequence Congress adopted a resolution offered by Senator Key Pittman suspending the authority of the Federal Power Commission to issue licenses on the Colorado and its tributaries until 1 February 1928.92 Phil Swing was in attendance at each of the nine December Senate hearings. With a great deal of satisfaction Swing heard Senator Johnson exert verbal leverage on the Secretary of Commerce to ease him into a new position vis-a-vis Boulder Dam. Under questioning by committee chairman Charles McNary, Hoover had said, I believe the largest group of those who have dealt with the problem, both engineers and business folk, have come to the conclusion that there should be a high dam erected somewhere in the vicinity of Black Canyon. That is usually known as the Boulder Canyon site, but nevertheless it is actually Black Canyon. 8 3

He did not state that he shared this majority opinion, however. Later, in response to a question by Senator Ashurst, Hoover said that he agreed to the dam advocated by California and Nevada. 64 Johnson's first question to Hoover put the Secretary on record as favoring the "least delay." 65 Subsequent carefully worded questions elicited Hoover's favorable answers (from Johnson's point of view) on flood control, storage, and power production. T h e final question occurred when Johnson continued, almost conversation-

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ally, "And that a dam of sufficient height, what we term a high dam, should be built at that particular point in order that the three purposes you have suggested, namely flood control, storage, and power, should be adequately served?" Hoover's reply: " T h a t is it." 6 6 Johnson now took the opportunity to put the cards on the table in regard to the Colorado River Control Club just before Christmas. " W e assert the membership cards [of the Colorado River Control Club] . . . are deceptive in character," he charged on 22 December. 87 In evidence he introduced 329 cards and a number of letters indicating withdrawal from the Control Club. Following the El Centro hearing Swing and Johnson had prevailed on the American Conservation Club to send out a letter to the Imperial Valley landowners. T h e letter, sent 3 December 1925, had yielded another hundred withdrawals beyond those in hand in October. Typical of the replies was this one from A. H. McDonald of Calipatria, sent 5 December 1925: Your letter at hand a few days ago stating that my name was in Washington as against the All-American Canal. It is, but it happened by mistake, and what can I do to have it removed? I didn't understand what the Colorado River Control meant, thinking it was for the AllAmerican Canal and the Boulder Dam. I will do my best for the SwingJohnson bill. 68

By the date McDonald's simple pledge was entered into the Irrigation Committee testimony, his allegiance was necessarily to a new Swing-Johnson bill. T h e third one was introduced to the Sixty-ninth Congress on 21 December 1925.

CHAPTER VI

The Third Swing-Johnson Bill W h e n Phil Swing returned to Washington in late 1925 he learned that John Raker, a fellow Californian and a firm supporter of his bill, was mortally ill.1 T h e news of his friend's illness saddened Swing, but it also meant that there would be changes in the Irrigation Committee membership. Swing went to Addison Smith and asked for a place on the committee. He obtained the appointment in December. He also became a member of the allied committees having jurisdiction over the Colorado River: Public Lands and Flood Control. In order to serve on all these committees, Swing had to give up his place on the Naval Affairs Committee, much to the displeasure of some of his San Diego constituents. 2 T h e third Swing-Johnson bill was introduced on 21 December, having been submitted to the Irrigation Committee, which in turn submitted it to the Secretary of the Interior for a report. T h e new member of the Irrigation Committee received a pleasant surprise on 14 January 1927, when Secretary Work's report on H.R. 6251 came back to the committee. W o r k recommended that the govern-

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ment build a unified power plant along with the high dam in Boulder Canyon. His recommendation was made on the basis that it would be more efficient and cheaper, and it would obviate controversies among applicants.3 The suggestion was quite sound from a practical standpoint, but Swing and Johnson had avoided it from a political standpoint. The previous Swing-Johnson bills had given recognition that power was to be produced at the dam and stated that the "Secretary of the Interior is empowered to receive applications for the right to use for the generation of electrical power portions of the water discharged from said reservoir."4 They had avoided naming the agency to build the power plant for fear that they might antagonize the administration. Work's recommendation was welcomed by Swing and Johnson. Swing prepared a draft containing Work's amendment and went to see Hoover at the Department of Commerce. Hoover took the draft and turned directly to Section 6, the new section which dealt with the government power plant leases. He read this portion carefully and then wrote an interlineation after the following language, "That the Secretary may, at his discretion, enter into contracts of lease of a unit or units of said plant, with right to generate electrical energy": or, alternately, to enter into contracts of lease for the use of water for the generation of electrical energy.

Hoover's additional words were almost the same as those contained in the first two Swing-Johnson bills and in the first of the bills presented to the Sixty-ninth Congress.5 He said that with the inclusion of these words he could support the bill. They had the effect of keeping the decision to build the power plant in the hands of the executive department. It would be up to the Secretary of the Interior to decide whether he would lease the plant after having built it or lease the water and let other agencies build the plant. Without the phrase, the revised third Swing-Johnson bill, if passed, would have lacked the optional provision for a government-built power plant. Swing and Johnson rewrote and resubmitted the third bill, introducing it on 27 February 1926. In addition to Hoover's phrase it contained authorization for the Secretary of the Interior "to

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construct and maintain a dam adequate to create a storage reservoir of not less than 26 million acre-feet," and "a main canal entirely within the United States." It "authorized and directed" the Secretary of the Interior "to construct and equip, operate and maintain at or near said dam a complete plant and incidental structures suitable for the fullest economic development of electrical energy from the water discharged from said reservoir."6 The third bill contained an additional phrase which Swing hoped would remove the weight of the upper millstone from the Boulder Canyon project and the compact was the means to resolve the shall observe and be subject to and controlled by the Colorado River Compact as signed at Santa Fe, New Mexico, on November 24, 1922."7 Swing believed that the combination of the Boulder Canyon project and the compact was the means to resolve the problems of Colorado River development. He had advocated this in 1922, well before the compact agreement. This was the way to compromise with the upper states. The upper states devoutly desired the water rights they would gain through the compact, rights which would be lost if developments were allowed in the lower basin without it. The compact meant that the faster-developing lower states would have a limitation placed on their right to appropriate water. The water law of the West, "first in time, first in right," was abrogated by the compact. The upper states feared that their future growth, dependent upon water supply, would be forever stunted unless they restrained the ability of the lower states to use more water. A dam on the Colorado such as the SwingJohnson bill called for could store the entire annual flow and regulate its release. The normal flow of the river in late summer months was less than 3,500 second-feet. Spring flood waters, stored behind the dam could be used to augment this flow, bringing it up to 10,000 second-feet. Fast-growing California was ready to put this water to beneficial use, thereby gaining a legal right to it. The upper states could not permit a dam without a compact which would assure them of their share of the river at some future date when they could utilize it. They could not simply block development until such time occurred. There were already upper basin projects awaiting lower basin storage to satisfy lower basin demands because the low water flow had been completely encumbered. Hundreds of appropriations in the upper states were junior

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to the lower states' appropriations. Legally the Imperial Valley could command the gates to be shut on irrigation projects in Utah, Wyoming, and Colorado during the summer months when irrigation water was most needed, because the California valley legally possessed rights to more water than the Colorado carried during those months. The bill Swing submitted to the Sixty-ninth Congress in December also embodied a provision similar to the Finney resolution of earlier in the year—that a dam capable of storing 20 million acrefeet of water would be built. Dr. Work had increased the figure to 26 million acre-feet. This was the figure contained in H.R. 9826, the bill considered by the Irrigation Committee during its hearings in the spring of 1926. Behind the scenes Swing and Johnson met with the upper states men. These men echoed the sentiments Ward Bannister of Colorado had expressed in his letter to Swing in which he commented on the Finney resolution. The upper states men believed California's insistence on the 20 million acre-foot reservoir was an affront to them. Swing logically and irrefutably insisted that there was no protection for California's established water rights without it. The men from the upper states had seen the accomplishment of the compact nearly in their grasp in 1925. The waiver of the seven-state provision was signed by the six cooperating states, but the Finney resolution, making California ratification effective only when the storage reservoir was built by the government at or near Boulder Canyon, shattered their hopes of a settlement that year. The upper states men had been outmaneuvered and they resented it. Face-toface with Swing they insisted that if California protection were written into the bill, so should additional protection be included which would further safeguard upper basin water rights. A series of amendments were agreed upon in Johnson's office.8 The upper states men took the suggested amendments west to Cheyenne, Denver, and Salt Lake City. By mid-April they returned. With minor revisions every one of the upper states amendments was included in H.R. 9826.® The bill then gained the vocal support of Senator Kendrick of Wyoming. In the House hearings Ward Bannister and S. G. Hopkins, the Wyoming Water Commissioner, urged adoption of the bill. In addition to the W o r k proposal of the unified power plant and

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the upper states amendments, the Secretary of the Treasury suggested an alternative financing plan which was adopted. Instead of a direct appropriation of $70 million from the Treasury, $125 million worth of bonds were to be issued from a "Colorado River Dam Fund." The Secretary of the Interior also insisted on making the authorization for the ail-American canal dependent upon the impossibility of securing a satisfactory Mexican concession regarding the water flowing through the Alamo Canal. He also eliminated a clause that had been carried in the previous bills which specifically gave preference to municipalities in the matter of power production. Swing did not like these suggestions of the Secretary's any more than the upper states men had liked the Finney resolution, but they could be accommodated because Work's support was essential to the bill's passage, and they did not materially alter the project. Late in April Secretary Work made an inspection and speaking tour of the West. In Las Vegas he said, "This year my department is asking for $129,999,000 less than the appropriation of my first year of administration. I feel that I have saved that money and I want $125,000,000 of it to spend on the Boulder Dam project." 1 0 At the City Club in Los Angeles he declared to an audience of 850 that Arizona was pursuing a dog in the manger policy toward the Boulder Canyon project and warned, "if there are those among you who for personal, partisan, or political advantage are embarrassing this project, they should be excluded from our councils." 11 The Senate Committee on Irrigation and Reclamation favorably reported the Swing-Johnson bill in May by a vote of 12 to 3. T h e way was clear for the House committee members to do likewise. On 22 May Carl Hayden moved to postpone further consideration of the measure. He advanced four reasons for his action. T h e House, he said, has a crowded calendar and it will be unable to consider the measure. If the bill remained in committee, it would aid the water negotiations between Nevada, Arizona, and California, and the State Department could come to an agreement with Mexico. Hayden said that the passage of the Boulder Dam legislation in advance of the interstate or international agreement would handicap those who were striving to bring the interested parties together. He added that the tri-state negotiations had been making

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good progress until the Secretary of the Interior had made his speech in Los Angeles which gave the negotiators the impression that the administration was pushing the Swing-Johnson bill.12 Chairman Smith tried to rule Hayden out of order, giving as his reason that the committee had met that day to discuss only the power amendments to the bill offered by Congressman Leatherwood. Leatherwood denied that he had actually offered the amendments, clearing the way for a vote on Hayden's motion. It carried, 9 to 6. Every one of the Democrats on the committee voted with Hayden. A situation similar to that of the close of the first session of Congress in 1924 prevailed. The summer months to follow were electioneering months. Hayden was making his bid to unseat Ralph Cameron, Arizona's Republican Senator. His fellow partisans in the House Irrigation Committee from Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Texas, although favoring the bill, preferred to delay the report until December for Hayden's and the party's sake.13 Swing was angry and disappointed at the outcome of the hearings. More actual progress had been made this session than ever before. The upper states were in line. The bill had been reported favorably to the Senate. Now there would be waiting and delay until December for committee action. Swing knew that a favorable report would be forthcoming. He also knew that a special rule for House consideration would have to be obtained from the powerful Rules Committee. Action by both the Irrigation and the Rules committees would take time and the Sixty-ninth Congress had only seventy-seven days to do its second session work before adjournment on 4 March. The press criticized Swing for the bill's lack of progress on the House side of Congress. Johnson rose to the defense of his younger colleague. He sent the following telegram to the editors of the

Los Angeles Examiner and the San Francisco Examiner:

Today's New York American and Washington Times do Congressman Swing grave injustice . . . I personally know how hard Swing has worked, how he has subordinated everything to the Boulder Dam measure and how he above all others has aided in work. Indeed he is the original author of the bill and to him more than any one man is due the credit for the conception of this great project. To deride his efforts is unjust, to question his motives is cruel. We are all co-workers in this

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monumental task and none has done more than Swing. I do hope if this editorial has gone to California you will set him right with his people.14

California was getting ready for a gubernatorial election. Governor Friend Richardson was opposed by his lieutenant governor, C. C. Young. The Boulder Canyon project was the major issue. On 27 May the powerful Los Angeles Republican Central Committee held a special meeting on how to get the Swing-Johnson bill passed. Accoring to the Los Angeles Examiner all factions of the party attended the conclave: "Coolidge regulars, Johnson men, antiJohnson men, extreme reactionaries, and the radical element."15 Swing was completely unopposed in his bid for a fourth term. As in 1922 he aided the campaigns of those who declared for "his dam." He vigorously supported Young and castigated Richardson. Richardson earned Swing's wrath for not seeing the senators from the Irrigation Committee when they were in California the previous October, and for not putting the case for Boulder Dam to the National Editorial Association in San Diego. There, Swing charged, "Richardson contented himself with asking them to 'study' the general problem of the Colorado River development. Of course it was impossible for Friend Richardson to go any further than he did without alienating the support of Harry Chandler, the Los Angeles Times, and the power companies."16 This was the message he delivered night after night to his people. He spoke to them in their parks and their plazas in Imperial, and Orange, and Riverside counties. His audiences were estimated in the thousands. They came to hear and cheer their "fighting congressman."17 The primary election, held 31 August, gave the Republican nomination to Young. The California Republican platform, adopted 21 September 1926 at the state Republican convention in Sacramento, included the following statement: We favor unequivocally the Swing-Johnson bill with its provisions for a high dam at Boulder Canyon, an Ail-American Canal, the development and distribution of water and power from the Colorado River, and the protection of the Imperial Valley from floods. We pledge the state administration to urge upon Congress the interest of California in the speedy enactment of this vitally important legislation.18

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Swing was named State Chairman of the convention. In a rousing speech, remarkable for its lack of reference to Boulder Dam, he warned against weakening the California direct primary system, and cautioned against returning to the old convention system. "For twenty years," he reminded his fellow Republicans, "the state was under the control of a great corporation and it was a Republican governor, that great and militant leader, Hiram W. Johnson, who broke the bonds, freed the state, and returned the government to the people."19 Richardson, the lame duck governor, sent out a surprise call for a special session of the legislature twenty days after the "harmony" convention.20 His was a last ditch effort to thwart the SwingJohnson supporters. The call was issued to the lawmakers for their unconditional ratification of the Colorado River Compact. The senators and assemblymen calmly convened at 10 A.M. on 22 October in compliance with the call. The Senate immediately adopted a substitute motion prepared by Ralph Swing which reaffirmed the 1925 position, and the Assembly adopted a substitute motion prepared by A. C. Finney. Almost like clockwork the respective houses of the legislature heard Charles Childers and W . B. Mathews speak for the substitute motions. By two in the afternoon it was all over. The forty-man Senate voted to uphold the Finney resolution by 34 to 3. The Assembly vote was 67 to 8 to uphold. Richardson absolved himself following the action by issuing this statement: The Johnson wing of the state legislature would refuse to ratify the ten commandments should a request be made by anyone but the Pharisaical senator himself.21 A sympathetic California administration with proven strength in the California legislature was an unfamiliar but comforting feeling for Swing. With all California rather than Imperial Valley or his district as a base he could turn his attention to the strengthening of support for his bill. He had heard disquieting rumors of a Utah defection. He contacted Mathews. Mathews wired back, "Following your suggestion somebody check up on Salt Lake situation. Criswell will go on this mission."22 Action like this was

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possible because of the funds solicited and made available by the Boulder Dam Association. Swing determined that the time was ripe to move for a National Boulder Dam Association. Old conservationist Gifford Pinchot had volunteered his help to Swing in 1925 when he was governor of Pennsylvania. In 1926 Swing found the man to pull an impressive group of supporters together to promote nationwide attention. He was Harry Slattery, Pinchot's former secretary and a man long associated with the cause of conservation. Slattery's first task was to assemble a group of well-known names which would have wide appeal on a National Boulder Dam Association letterhead. 23 Slattery then began to operate in Washington in a manner similar to Evans's operations in California. He circulated letters, supplied speakers, and above all kept up a steady stream of publicity for the newspapers of the nation. Congress reconvened in December. T h e Swing-Johnson bill was reported out of the House Irrigation Committee for the first time on 22 December 1926. T h e favorable vote to report was the same as the Senate's committee vote, 12 to 3. Hay den, Whittington, and Leatherwood, filed a minority report. T h e next hurdle was to obtain a rule under which the bill could be debated on the floor of the House. 24 Rules were granted by the Rules Committee upon hearing testimony on the import of the proposed legislation. T h e committee heard the proponents and the opponents of the SwingJohnson bill for three days in January 1927. T h e case was put to the rule makers as it had been put so many times to the Irrigation committeemen. They heard the history of the bill as it stood before them in 1927. From simple legislation providing funds for a canal from Laguna Dam on the Colorado River to the Imperial Valley, the bill had grown to authorization of a canal, a dam, a power plant, and an interstate compact. It had become the means to settle disputes among Colorado basin states and the way to make new development within those states possible. It had also become a part of the long drawn-out negotiations with Mexico concerning a water treaty. 25 On the same day the Rules Committee concluded its hearing, 21 January, Utah withdrew from the six-state agreement of the Colorado River Compact. 26 A rule had been expected in days. A week went by and no rule

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was forthcoming. Swing, sorely tried and impatient, took his case to the floor of the House. He told the members of the lower body what Representative Davenport had said in the Rules Committee hearings: It all seems to suddenly center around the question of who is to control the power. This particular item must be highly important, because already from many different parts of the country long technical telegrams are coming from plain folks, away back in the hills in the State of Wyoming and in the State of Utah, and from all parts of that great country, protesting against the American people being caught with this power station on their hands—from dear folks, noble as they are, who would hardly know a penstock from a turbine if they saw them rolling down Pennsylvania Avenue. 27

Swing recounted the history of the bills, with especial reference to the power provisions of the first Swing-Johnson bills. He quoted Secretary Work's Los Angeles speech of April 1926, in which the Secretary himself declared that he was opposed to government ownership or operation of public activity that could be done privately, "but conflicting, diversified, and far-flung interests are involved in the Colorado River development that compel a closely knit organization to correlate them." 28 T h e high dam versus the low dam controversy was detailed for the House members. Swing didactically explained the flood control aspects of the two types of dams and the irrigation potential either type could supply; he then touched on the international element which entered into the high dam-low dam quarrel: It is by the construction of a large dam and the all-American canal that the Government of the United States is given complete manual control over the river, so it could if necessary or desirable limit the water for Mexico . . . and thus prevent Mexico from increasing her present cultivated area, and gaining thereby some adverse water rights against lands in our country. 2 9

Swing was somewhat taken aback when the Honorable George R. Stobbs interrupted him with a request that he "kindly explain to those of us who are not familiar with the whole situation the necessity for any dam; in other words the elementary part of this proposition, which is not clear to me?" 3 0

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Swing was saving a dramatic word picture of the plight of the Imperial Valley citizens for the emotional climax of his speech. But before he described the impending catastrophe to Stobbs and his fellow representatives he wanted to "sound a most respectful warning to the Rules Committee. If they continue to delay action on the rule asked for this bill, they will have served the purpose of the private power corporations just as thoroughly and just as completely as if at their behest they had killed the bill."81 On 8 February Swing wrote to John Francis Neylan: We are pounding away with all sizes of guns on the Rules Committee and on Congress hoping to break the Hindenburg line, but as day after day goes by it looks as if there would be a deadlock at this session on account of the short time remaining. . . . if we could get the bill to a vote we could get it through the House, but with the Rules Committee delaying action in the House and the threat of a filibuster in the Senate there is litde hope of getting the bill through this session.82

Both the Utah withdrawal action and the power companies' pressure served to delay the rule. Swing tried another tactic. He made an appointment to see House Speaker Nicholas Longworth. Seven other California congressmen accompanied him.88 They presented the speaker several compelling reasons for him to exert his influence to secure a rule for the Swing-Johnson bill in order that it could be considered before the 4 March adjournment date. Swing also sent pleas to friends of the measure in California. Send letters and telegrams to the Rules members, he wired, asking for a report on H.R. 9826. On 23 February the Rules Committee reported the bill after a three-week delay for which no committeeman would volunteer an explanation. The Swing-Johnson bill went to the floor of the House almost five years after its introduction. In the meantime the project had reached the Senate chambers. Johnson knew he could not get the measure passed but he felt that a Senate discussion of the bill would serve an educational purpose. On 23 February Senator Ashurst tried to sidetrack the Boulder Dam measure by substituting a veterans' bonus matter. The substitution was defeated by a 30-43 vote, an encouraging test of strength for the Swing-Johnson bill. The proponents had feared

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that it might be displaced by another measure in just this sort of parliamentary maneuver. Ashurst did not admit defeat, but moved again to replace the Boulder Dam bill. When this did not succeed he began his filibuster. There are two ways to break a filibuster. One is to keep the Senate in continuous session and exhaust the participants, and the other is to invoke cloture. Johnson tried both methods. For more than thirty consecutive hours Johnson kept the Senate in session. Spectators lined the galleries. Johnson's senatorial friends stayed with him during the night, not because they were enthusiastic about the Boulder Dam bill, but out of personal loyalty to him.34 Just as Swing had discovered on the floor of the House that there were few members beyond the Irrigation Committee who were familiar with the purposes of the bill, Johnson now found this to be true. Swing seized the filibuster as an opportunity to do remedial educational work with the representatives. In the evening hours while the Senators talked on, he showed maps and pictures of the Colorado, the Imperial Valley, and the Mexican levee system to congressmen in the House caucus room. 88 The continuous session failed to halt the speeches. Johnson petitioned for cloture, which required a two-thirds vote.36 This also failed and the session came to a close without further consideration being given to the Swing-Johnson bill. Both Swing and Johnson reassured the bill's supporters that the publicity attending the episode was very valuable to the ultimate disposition of the cause. Swing wrote to Governor C. C. Young about the outcome of the furore. "Our fight . . . was not lost motion because we were successful in getting merits of the bill before both Congress and the country, so success seems assured next session."37 In a similar vein he communicated with D. F. McGarry, head of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, and in answer to a suggestion made by McGarry and others that the time had come to compromise differences, Swing stated his position: It is impossible to make a serious proposal of the magnitude of the Boulder Dam Project and not have irreconcilable differences of opinion, in and out of Congress, regarding various features. Our friends in California who have occupied the position of interested onlookers, I suppose can only see the opposition of the power corporations, the State

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of Arizona, and the State of Utah. T o them it doubtless appears an easy matter, and the proper thing to do, to compromise with our present opposition, with the vain hope and expectation that having gotten rid of this opposition by the changing of our bill we thereafter will have no opposition at all. They fail to realize that any substantial or material change in the bill will result in merely trading off one form of opposition for another.88 Swing gave an example of the probable results if the power provisions were removed from the bill. This might win the approval of the power companies, but it would lose 50 votes in the House and 12 to 15 in the Senate. " I am having difficulty keeping these people in line with the bill as it is, which merely gives the Government the option to build and operate the power plant." 39 Swing and his family planned to stay in Washington at least until school was out in June. In late April devastating floods occurred in the Mississippi Valley. Some 38 people died and 75,000 were temporarily homeless. Swing traveled with the Flood Control Committee to the flood-stricken area to make an on-the-spot inspection. He was not familiar with the Midwest or the South. His travels had been limited to cross-country train trips to the District of Columbia, a few California vacations, and visits to the Northwest and the Hawaiian Islands. On the trip Swing talked to businessmen and farmers. He was particularly interested in the farm problems. He had been raised on a farm near San Bernardino, and Imperial Valley farming was farming of the most intensive sort. He found, talking to the men in agriculture, that those familiar with the Boulder Canyon project were opposed to it. In the cottongrowing area farmers would tell Swing that they could not support legislation that would put a million more acres into the production of cotton. In the corn country the fanners said they opposed the bill because it would put a million more acres of corn on the market to compete with theirs. Further north in the wheat-growing lands the story was the same. The dam legislation would put a million acres into wheat. The same kind of opposition, the same acreage figure with crop altered to fit the geographic area spelled the organized effort of the power companies to Swing. He had thought that the battleground was Washington where the repre-

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sentatives of the citizens were to be reasonably convinced of the merits of the Boulder Canyon project. Now he found that the campaign of the power companies had been quietly, yet effectively winning the citizens themselves by raising the fear of competitive agricultural lands.40 On his return to Washington Swing took stock of the progress of his bill. It had assumed the burden of the compact, and in doing so it assumed the compact's enemies. Utah had withdrawn its sixstate ratification. Arizona interests talked loudly in opposition to the compact as unfair in its water allocation, but pressured for royalties from hydroelectric power. The power companies were united in a cooperative effort to oppose the bill, spurred by Work's proposal in early 1926. Their efforts had been wide-ranging. They encouraged Utah's defection, Arizona's demands, and engaged in such diversionary actions as the promotion of a low dam at Topoc. "The only virtue of the Topoc site," Swing remarked, "is that little if any power can be generated there." 41 "Personally, I have never felt more pessimistic," Swing wrote to Lyman King. "I am wondering whether I ought to disclose to the public, on my return, the full strength of the opposition I have found brewing in different parts of the country, and which makes the future success of the bill very uncertain."42 In June Governor C. C. Young appointed John Bacon, Earl Pound, and W . B. Mathews to the newly formed Colorado River Commission of the state of California. Swing wrote to them that "the situation truly looks discouraging and calls for early and vigorous action on your part." 43 He referred to their participation in a seven-state conference to be held at Denver in August. Swing warned the men not to forget that the upper basin pressure to get California and Arizona together was for upper basin benefit. "Don't agree to pay Arizona," he admonished.4* Swing saw clearly that the upper states were not concerned whether the Arizona demands were fair or not. They wanted a compact put into effect. They would take a six-state agreement, or even a five-state one coupled with the Swing-Johnson bill, "because there is nothing else for them to do." 46 He offered this counsel to the negotiators:

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Should it finally become necessary to yield something on royalties, the suggestion should by all means originate in the upper States and should receive no encouragement from you unless and until it is stated by them in an amount so small as to justify a sacrifice of principle for expediency's sake.49

While Swing was planning to return to California by way of the Northwest, he received an urgent call for help from Charles Childers, speaking for the new California Water Commissioners. They asked Swing to stop in Colorado and Wyoming on his way west to sound out key people on their views of the Arizona demands and of Utah's position. Swing complied. He saw Colorado's Senator Charles W . Waterman at Denver, and Governor Frank Emerson of Wyoming at Rock Springs. Somewhat testily he reported his activities. I never know whether my letters do any good or not; I don't even know whether they are read or not.. . . I have no desire to meddle in the activities of the state com. and would have much preferred to have taken the regular route to Spokane and gone on about my business to jumping on and off trains at all hours of the day and night in order to see the gentlemen mentioned. However, if this is any value to you, I will feel satisfied.47

The "gentlemen mentioned" had been hearing from Arizona people that California was holding up the division of water, and that as soon as an equitable division of water was agreed upon they should sign the compact. Swing showed them documents that proved Arizona's demands included power royalties. As far as Utah was concerned, Swing pointed out to both Emerson and Waterman that the passage of the Swing-Johnson bill, supported by a fivestate compact, would compel Utah to come back into the compact. The compact was to be effective only between states signing it. Utah would have no protection against adverse water rights initiated by California or the other lower basin states until she became a signatory. This line of reasoning "seemed a new thought to both Emerson and Waterman." 48 The whistle-stop tour convinced Swing that the success or failure of the proposed August conference was dependent upon Arizona. The men of the upper states "won't take Childers' word, or

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your word, that Arizona is playing them double. Arizona has made the same charges to them against us." 4 9 T h e Denver conference met in August, failed to come to grips with the issues, and adjourned to a September date. At the September meeting Emerson of Wyoming threatened to bolt the conference and to oppose the Swing-Johnson bill in the future unless California and Arizona showed an inclination to arbitrate their differences. 50 Childers read the California position, which at that time was to accept 4.6 million acre-feet a year from the Colorado. Arizona offered to give California 4.2 million acre-feet while reserving 3 million from the Colorado and an additional million from the tributaries. T h e state was set for compromise after Childers made his statement. Arizona promised to answer, but reversed its position and refused to present additional statements to the conferees. 61 At the same time as the second Denver meeting was in session Swing was playing host to Senator Royal Copeland and Representative John Q. Tilson. These men had been summoned by Coolidge to make a trip to the Colorado basin as his special representatives.62 Copeland favored the Swing-Johnson legislation, but Tilson had recently gone on record as inclining toward a low flood control dam at the Topoc site, downriver some hundred miles from Boulder Canyon. This was the site which had been thoroughly discredited by A. P. Davis in the 1924 hearings, but which was persistently advocated by foes of the Swing-Johnson legislation. They hailed it as a feasible and far less expensive alternative. A dam could be built at the T o p o c site near Needles for $15 million, it was agreed. 53 Proponents of the T o p o c site failed to add that the cost of moving the city of Needles and the Santa Fe Railroad tracks which would be inundated by impounded water would bring the cost nearer to $28 million. In addition it would destroy 34,000 acres of fertile government-owned land. Tilson became a complete convert to the Swing-Johnson bill on the tour. He declared that his report would be favorable to the legislation and that he liked the idea of cities using power generated at Boulder Dam. 64 Tilson's support offered the only bright spot on Swing's horizon during the dim days of 1927. Bad news

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came from Swing's good friend John McDuffie, congressman from Alabama. He sent copies of printed material circulating in the South about the cotton competition from the irrigated lands below the Boulder Dam.55 Swing passed the word along to Mclver and urged him to take counteraction, adding, "Allgood told Lankford the Boulder Dam proposition was full of dynamite to any Congressman from the South who might vote for it." 66 "One of the greatest lobbies in American history organized to fight Boulder dam," the Los Angeles Examiner declared on 12 October 1927. The headline referred to a report of a Chicago gathering of power company executives from five midwestern states. The meeting was arranged by the National Utility Association. This association had been formed in August in Atlantic City at the same time and the same place as the National Electric Light Association held its convention.57 The power companies began to play the same game as the Boulder Dam Association and the National Boulder Dam Association were playing. They had a bigger team and they had more money. A variety of pamphlets, some similar to the one McDuffie sent Swing, some copies of official documents, appeared throughout the country.68 The propaganda was so effective as far as the news media were concerned that the U.S. Daily, a Washington paper, was moved to assert on 28 October 1927, "Boulder Dam Project is declared dead."59 On 5 November Swing called on Herbert Hoover in Washington. He wanted to ask Hoover's advice on the position he should take in regard to the Mississippi flood control problem which was to be discussed in the Flood Control Committee hearings. There had been some talk of tying the Colorado River to the Mississippi in the matter. Hoover did not care for linking the two, and Swing agreed with him. The talk shifted to the problem of the Colorado River legislation and Hoover offered, as if it were a new concept, the following thought: I have been turning over in my mind whether or not we might have to ask the government to appropriate for the Boulder Dam alone, separate and distinct from everything else. Arizona has recently stated that she was not opposed to giving California flood control relief, but that if power plants were to be built she must be assured revenue. I would like to have you think over the proposition that provided I could get the

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entire administration back of the building of a dam with a foundation deep enough and broad enough that it could afterward be built higher, calling for say an appropriation of 35 million which would be a gift out of the Public Treasury with no obligation to repay as the Government's contribution to the solution of the flood problem of the river whether or not California ought to accept it. 6 0 Swing contained his disappointment and disgust in Hoover's presence, but reminded the Secretary that such a program had been offered b y Fredericks in the last Congress and had not met with success. Hoover complacently replied that since the Mississippi flood there had been a big change in public opinion. 6 1 O n 12 November 1927, the Whatley-Eaton Service, a private Washington newsletter, sent its clients the information that " H i g h Administration officials have hinted to proponents of the Boulder Dam project that they 'ought to be satisfied with $30,000,000 f o r a low dam, for flood control only, and let the power feature ride.' " 6 2 Swing called on Hoover again and asked him bluntly if the proposal were his. Hoover disclaimed responsibility for it, but warned Swing that the strong opposition being mustered b y the power companies might mean a delay of another five years in getting the legislation through. Swing explained his reasons to Hoover for introducing the bill in the same form as it had been debated in the last Congress. It would mean the briefest of hearings. It would mean that the bill could be got quickly on the floor of the legislative houses. T h i s was the only place possible, he fervently believed, where the issues of the Boulder Canyon legislation could be settled on their merits. Hoover's response was to remind Swing that the bill might be held up in the same way it was held up in the last Congress—by the Rules Committee. 0 3 Phil Swing, the quarterback, the captain, and sometimes the whole team fighting for the project, was down. During the waning months of 1927 he had become angry with Mclver and the Imperial Irrigation District for their handling of the cotton publicity. H e had imagined a slight b y the new Colorado River Commission. 6 4 He had just written an angry letter to Sam Evans. Evans in all honesty had circulated the proposed 1928 budget of the Boulder

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Dam Association. Swing told Evans that he did not want their association accused of doing what the power companies do, and added, "It's all right to play straight football, but there is no reason why we should hand the other team our list of signals."65 Faithful Evans had detected the discouragement in Swing's 25 November letter. While Swing's critical letter was crossing the continent to reach him, Evans penned these words to Phil: Buck up and talk back—don't let any of them talk you down—they don't deserve that victory and you are just as big as they are. As to Hoover, you know the status—he either means what he says and testified to or he does not—he either will or will not be helpful—put it up to him straight to go to bat and help affirmatively, not just by keeping still.66 As the Seventieth Congress convened on 5 December 1927 there was little else for Phil Swing to do but to "buck up and talk back."

CHAPTER

VII

Passage i \ | either Swing nor Johnson were optimistic about passage when they introduced companion bills to the House and Senate on the opening days of the Seventieth Congress. Johnson tended to blame the Coolidge administration for the legislative stalemate. Swing was ever inclined to attribute the opposition to private power interests. According to Swing the Utah Power and Light Corporation was behind Utah's withdrawal of her compact ratification. Senator Reed Smoot could be chained to the power thrust by a series of links which began with his Provo power company and ended with the Electric Bond and Share Corporation. Representative Elmer Leatherwood was "the power companies' chief spokesman in the House."1 Avaricious Arizona could talk rights, Swing would say, but her demands were those of the private power interests. Johnson, by contrast, was inclined to blame the administration when things went wrong. His antiadministration attitude was well known and of several years' standing. His 1924 campaign speeches

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against Coolidge and his cabinet left him no friends in the executive branch of the national government. T o him Leatherwood was a "mere echo of the administration." 2 During Johnson's attempt to break the filibuster the preceding March, the chief executive, an endorser of the project, offered no support. "I owe nothing and the Bill owes nothing to the Administration," Johnson asserted, "or to Hoover . . . who pretended to be for it." 3 Swing and Johnson differed also in their attitude toward Herbert Hoover. Johnson did not like the man.4 He had a personal aversion toward him and his equivocal ways dating from 1920. Hoover was a League of Nations man. Johnson was not, and on that issue Hoover challenged Johnson in the California primary in 1920. Johnson won the California delegation, but Hoover obtained enough votes to detract from Johnson's strength at the national convention. It was unthinkable to Johnson that a man espousing the League as Hoover did in 1920 should willingly serve in an administration which would not recognize the League. T o Johnson this was rank hypocrisy. Johnson was a self-righteous kind of man who would march up hill and down dale in a straight path toward a certain goal. Hoover was a pragmatist who would judiciously travel a winding valley road seeking a smooth route. In 1927 Johnson's goal was the enactment of the Boulder Canyon project. In late 1927 Hoover's goal clearly was the presidency. Swing may not have liked Hoover but he realized that he needed a semblance of Hoover's support if he were to retain any hope of passing his bill in the House. During the 1925 Senate hearings Hoover had gone on record as favoring a high dam, though privately he persisted in advocating a government-built flood control dam.5 Hoover could not now publicly disavow the high dam without losing valuable political support. Conversely, he would alienate a substantial portion of his "regular Republican" business support if he became too vocal in his endorsement of the project. While Hiram Johnson was telling his friends that Vice-President Charles Dawes was the only Republican candidate strong enough to challenge Hoover in his presidential bid, Swing and four other California congressmen went to the Secretary of Commerce and pledged their support to him in the coming election on the con-

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dition that the Hoover people would not oppose Johnson, running for his third term in California. 8 January 1928 was a mixed month as far as the Swing-Johnson bill was concerned. Abbreviated hearings were held. The House Irrigation Committee gave a good part of its time to testimony by representatives of Colorado basin states' administrations. The sixstate agreement was no longer satisfactory to the vocal Colorado representative, Ward Bannister. He was again demanding a sevenstate ratification of the Colorado River Compact. 7 Representative Frederick Davenport of New York, although a friend of Boulder Dam, introduced his own Boulder Canyon bill designed to remedy features he considered objectionable in the Swing-Johnson bill.8 Representative Elmer Leatherwood of Utah performed in the manner expected of him. He pointed out to committee members that the government was losing money producing power at Muscle Shoals where a market for jpower existed. He asked if it were not a ludicrous proposal to build a power plant six times as large as Muscle Shoals in inaccessible desert, three hundred miles from any market whatsoever. 9 National publicity for the project was both good and bad. The Levering report, a diatribe against the project, appeared in January. J. H. Levering was a civil and hydraulic engineer. He asserted that dam costs, concealed by the Bureau of Reclamation, would exceed $500 million. He said the project was tainted with fraud, and that "large power corporations and Americans owning large tracts of Mexican lands would receive the greatest ultimate benefits from the completion of the Boulder Canyon Dam under the provisions of the Swing-Johnson bill." 10 Reuel Olson examined the legal problems connected with Colorado River development in an article for the January 1928 issue of The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. In his considered opinion, "the actual construction of Boulder Dam is more uncertain now than at any time in the past five years." 11 Former Pennsylvania governor Gifford Pinchot boosted the proposal in the pages of Nation.12 The Ohio State Chamber of Commerce took a flat-footed position in opposition. Developing Leatherwood's theme, the Ohio body said that the value of the

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dam for the production of hydroelectric power was debatable in such sparsely settled land. The Ohio Chamber compared the area to be benefited by the project, the lower counties of California and six western states, paying 1 percent of the nation's federal taxes in 1927, to the seven eastern states of Ohio, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York, which paid 69 percent of the nation's tax bill. 13 While the comparison proved no logical point, it gave Sam Evans and the Boulder Dam Association an opportunity to answer: The West is proud of the industrial East and realizes that their large taxes were created through intense development on which the Government of the United States has spent millions of Appropriations with no return, perfecting river transportation, harbors and canals. The West is now developing its resources and will increase its taxes, and will repay the money advanced plus four percent interest.14 Rumors cropped up in Los Angeles that salt deposits in Nevada would contaminate the reservoir water, rendering it unfit for domestic use. Several sources deplored the fact that steam-generated electric power was proving to be cheaper than hydro power, and that the power contracts upon which the dam repayment depended would go a begging. "Old timers" were quoted in various newspapers as having witnessed cascades of rocks tumbling down the walls of Black Canyon when earth tremors occurred. Johnson reported to his friend, C. K. McClatchy, "Our Boulder Dam bill is in a precarious situation as I wrote you in my last letter. I can't see my way out. Like McCawber [nc] I am hoping something will turn up." 15 In mid-February Senator Thomas Walsh of Montana suggested that the Senate Committee on Interstate Commerce investigate the electric power industry. Walsh's earlier efforts had uncovered the scandals linked to the oil leases at Teapot Dome and Elk Hills. The Senate had established a good foundation for such an investigation during the Sixty-eighth Congress by asking the Federal Trade Commission to report on the subject. 16 There was a strange resistance to a Senate investigation. Instead, the Federal Trade Commission was directed to continue its studies of the electric power industry. The House Irrigation Committee reported H.R. 5773 on 7 Feb-

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ruary with an agreement that the report would not be filed until 15 March. T h e reason for the delay was given as providing an opportunity for several of the basin states to settle their differences. T h e vote was 13 to 4. When the bill was reported during the previous session there had been only three members in opposition. "It could have been 10-7," Swing wrote to Frank Mclver, "there is much uncertainty." 17 At the end of February a two-page letter went out to every congressman. Written by Swing, it was on the letterhead of Charles F. Curry, the dean of California's eleven-man delegation. Signed by every California representative, it was a seven-point statement of the case for the Boulder Dam project. It stressed the flood menace to the Imperial Valley and the fact that the entire cost of the project would be repaid in a fifty-year period from the sale of hydroelectric power. T h e all-American canal was described as a necessity to protect American water rights in all Colorado basin states against the initiation of new rights by Mexico. T h e magnitude of the project, the fact that the Colorado is an international as well as interstate navigable stream, the urgent necessity for flood control works beyond the means of the local communities to build, the necessity for an impartial agency to make an equitable distribution of the benefits of the project to meet the legitimate demands of the interested states for water and power, all make the Federal Government the logical agency to construct this project. 1 8

T h e letter closed with the phrase that "the foregoing was a fair statement of facts regarding the project," which it was, from the California point of view. Arizona interpreted the facts differently. Governor Hunt denied that Arizona objected to a flood control dam, as did the upper basin states, but Arizona, he said, took the position that private enterprise could harness the power potential of the river. Arizona wanted revenues equivalent to those she would receive if the power plant were built privately. "Arizona will ratify a seven state compact for water distribution among the lower basin states . . . with the understanding that no power plants will be constructed in the lower Colorado until a further compact is made with reference to power revenue." 19 Utah did not speak with a single voice. Governor Dern insisted

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that the federal government, which owned 74 percent of the state, had recognized a state's right to benefits derived from natural resources within her borders. Grazing fees and power royalties were returned, in part, to the states. It followed from Dern's point of view that revenues should accrue to the state from its waters if put to use even beyond the state's borders. He objected to the SwingJohnson bill because it represented a "revolutionary national policy."20 When he was in Washington, Utah's Leatherwood objected loudly and often to the idea of the government going into the power business at Boulder Dam. From a Utah podium he was more likely to tell his audience that if no power were produced on the Colorado River, California would be forced to buy Utah coal to feed her steam-powered generating plants.21 The perennial substitute solution to the Colorado problem, a low flood control dam at the Topoc site, had no particular regional home, but it found acceptance in the well-watered lands of the eastern half of the United States where suspicions had been aroused by Arizona and Utah claims that the Boulder Canyon project was an attempt by California to gain special privilege at their expense. The flood control dam could be built at less than half the cost of Boulder Dam. Why build a dam as high as the Washington monument to impound more water than needed, then build a canal to keep Mexico from getting the surplus water? What excuse can be found for a power plant in the desert but to pay for the dam and the canal? These questions pointed the way to the reasonable conclusion that if the parts of the Boulder Canyon project could not stand alone, their sum was seriously wanting.22 Johnson faced a difficult time in March with the Senate Irrigation Committee. Four of the members were hostile to the bill; others did not attend regularly. "The upshot will probably be a compromise measure recognizing the right to tribute of Arizona and Nevada." 23 The bill was reported out of the Senate committee on 17 March. Johnson's prognostications about Arizona and Nevada profits were correct. A committee vote of 7 to 6 approved royalties to the states in which the dam was to be built.24 By accepting the revenue compromise Johnson won the support of all the senators but Ashurst. The favorable report was by a vote of 13 to 1.

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Tragedy struck on the eve of congressional debate on Boulder Dam. T h e St. Francis Dam, located in San Francisquito Canyon north of Los Angeles, gave way at midnight 12 March 1928. A massive wave of water gushed over fragments of the broken dam and rolled its way to the sea through Ventura County's Santa Clara Valley. Thirty-eight thousand acre-feet of Owens River water, destined for Los Angeles domestic use, had been stored behind the dam. On its fifty-mile path of destruction the water killed some four hundred people, ten times as many as the fearful Mississippi flood of the preceding year. T h e death toll equaled that of the spectacular San Francisco fire and earthquake of 1906. 25 Swing immediately contacted Sam Evans and arranged for the Boulder Dam Association to issue a report to counteract the impressions that high dams were, in themselves, dangerous dams. He instructed Evans to write "without tying too close to Boulder Dam project." 2 6 T h e Wall Street Journal linked the former dam and the proposed dam in an unexpected manner when it urged readers to regard the St. Francis disaster as a warning to proceed slowly with Boulder Dam since "the St. Francis dam break is an indictment of municipal ownership." 27 T h e Los Angeles Examiner commented editorially on the Journal article, saying, "it is hard to remember a more ghoulish and contemptible use of public calamity to serve private interests." 28 T h e first reports of the Federal Trade Commission power trust investigation were made public in April. T h e y were given prominent places in the Hearst and Scripps-Howard newspapers. On 20 April the commission was said to have discovered that the National Electric Light Association spent a million dollars each year to influence opinion favorably toward private ownership of public utilities. T h e following revelation that college professors had been encouraged to offer subsidized opinions appeared in the Hearst papers: The commission is said to have an official copy of an address by H. M. Aylesworth, managing director of NELA in which he urged public utility corporations to subsidize college professors. "Once in a while it will pay you to take such men who get $500 or $600 or $1,000 a year and give them a retainer of $100 or $200 a year for the privilege of letting you study and consult with them." 2 9

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On 25 April the F.T.C. hearings revealed how $400,000, over and above the annual million dollar NELA figure, were raised specifically to fight Boulder Dam. Former Senator Irvine Lenroot had received $20,000 for two weeks' work in February 1928. He had successfully lobbied in Washington against the adoption of the Walsh resolution calling for a Senate investigation of the electric power industry.30 Richard Washburn Child, the former ambassador to Italy, got $7,500 from the National Utility Association for preparing a pamphlet in opposition to Boulder Dam. Josiah Newcombe's salary for directing the anti-Boulder Dam campaign was $10,000 a month. Stephen B. Davis, who had been Herbert Hoover's solicitor in the Commerce Department, was on the utilities' payroll, having received $28,735 since 1 June 1927. The lobbying activities were not confined to Washington. The law firm of Mechem and Velasco of Santa Fe, New Mexico, received a substantial fee for "watching and reporting" the conferences of the western governors at Denver from July 1927 to January 1928.81 Merritt C. Mechem was a former governor of New Mexico. On 26 April the name of the former governor of Nevada, James Scrugham, was added to the list of those who had been in the pay of either the NELA'or the NUA. 32 The Hearst newspapers treated the subject amply. Photographic reproductions of incriminating letters and canceled checks were printed for public consumption and relish. Hearst articles about the Federal Trade Commission discoveries were read into the Congressional Record. Hiram Johnson took the floor of the U.S. Senate on 26 April and before crowded galleries urged his fellow senators to "defy the power lobby." 33 Meanwhile H.R. 5773 was being held in the Rules Committee. Swing feared another attempt to bottle up the measure so that the "talkative body" in the other wing of the Capitol would have insufficient time to act on it before the tentative adjournment date in late May. The first week of May passed without a House rule. The House leadership declared that they were waiting to see what the Senate would do. The Senate, after hearing a fiery speech by Johnson, a lengthy one by Smoot, and a surprising one by Phipps favoring Boulder Dam, turned to deal with other matters.84 When asked

T h e widely distributed campaign photograph of Congressman Phil D. Swing showing him during "the best years" of his life, as he was wont to claim.

President Calvin Coolidge signed the Boulder Canyon Project hill into law at a White House ceremony 21 Deceinher 1928. From left to right are Commissioner Klwood Mead, Suing, Coolidge, Senator Hiram Johnson. House Irrigation Committee Chairman Addison Smith, and Los Angeles Department of Water and Power representative W . B. Mathews.

O n [i March 1931 Secretary of the Interior Ray Lyman Wilbur signed the largest single contract ever let by the federal government up to that time. T h e contract for the sum of $48,890,990.00 was awarded to the Six Companies for construction of a dam and a powerhouse on the Colorado River. Wilbur, center, is flanked by Swing and Elwood Mead.

Boulder Dam in 1935 as the last concretc was poured. Construction took f o u r years anil employed 5000 men. From bedrock to the top of the dam is 726.4 feet high, the highest in the western hemisphere. N o higher dam in the world impounds more water.

Charles N. I'azton

A 1935 view of the intake towers. A t this time the waters of Boulder lake had begun to be impounded. T h e lake was later renamed f o r Reclamation Commissioner Khvood Mead.

Charles

A n u n u s u a l v i e w of tlic d a m f a c c d u r i n g c o n s t r u c t i o n s h o w i n g rlic A r i z o n a a n d N e v a d a w i n g s of t h e p o w e r h o u s e .

iV

Vaxton

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about their plans for the Swing-Johnson bill, most senators declined to commit themselves because they were convinced that Rules Chairman Bertrand Snell would not give the bill a chance in the House. 35 T h e Boulder Dam Association offered to send more supporters of the legislation to Washington. Swing replied: " W e are engaged in a hand to hand struggle with the enemy and it is too late to bring up long-distance artillery." 3 6 On 8 May Swing, accompanied by a large group of congressmen, staged another mass demonstration before House Speaker Nicholas Longworth. Longworth, Tilson, and Snell, the powerful House leaders, were subjected to all the pressure Swing could muster. But while Swing was insisting "speed" the power companies countered with "delay." T h e Hearst papers commented that if the trio granted a special rule to the Swing-Johnson bill "the power trust will be enraged at them. If they continue to hold up, the power trust will smile, but A1 Smith will let the entire country know how the power trust controls the Republican organization of the House." 3 7 Exposures of power company propaganda methods continued to enliven the nation's news columns. Georgia school children were being indoctrinated to anti-Boulder Dam views through their classroom news bulletins. 38 T h e day following this news the National Education Association submitted that it proposed to stamp out the "appalling propaganda" by the electric power industry in the schools. 39 On 15 May the Rules Committee allowed the fourth SwingJohnson bill to go to the House. Debate was limited to eight hours, according to House Resolution 208, a privileged resolution from the Committee on Rules, which provided for the House to resolve itself into a "Committee of the Whole House on the state of the Union for the consideration of the Bill H.R. 5773." A week later the Capitol experienced a rare event: a single issue, the Boulder Canyon project, was under discussion at the same time in both houses of the legislature. Before the representatives could deal with the Swing-Johnson bill it was necessary to debate the rule itself for an hour. John J . O'Connor, a N e w York Democrat and a member of the Rules Committee, effectively set the stage with these remarks:

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Gentlemen, when you get through hearing the arguments of the opponents of the measure you will realize . . . that you are again confronted with the question of Government ownership . . . that bugaboo is always with us, hanging over us, phantom-like—an "evil spirit" . . . Our government has for the last time placed in private hands any of the great resources of the country. Of all our resources no great natural power development in this country will ever again go into private hands.40 When the Boulder Canyon project was the actual matter under discussion, Lewis W . Douglas of Arizona and Leatherwood of Utah led the opposition. Douglas threatened the United States government with a lawsuit by Arizona "the minute this bill becomes law." 4 1 The proposal before the House was unsound economically and inadequately engineered, he insisted. "All Imperial Valley is interested in is to increase the land value of private owners," Douglas declared. "That is true of every reclamation project," Congressman Fiorello LaGuardia of New York reminded Douglas. Defensively clinging to the same point, Douglas said, " T h e ailAmerican canal delivers water only to privately owned lands." "Is not all land under cultivation in this country privately owned?" LaGuardia asked. When Douglas replied in the negative, LaGuardia added, "the purpose [of reclamation] is to turn it over to private ownership." 42 Leatherwood attacked the bill in a vicious manner. "Rotten to the core," "absurd," and "scandalous scheme" were a few of the descriptive phrases he attached to it. " T h e issue," Leatherwood declared, "is whether a political gang in Southern California in alliance with William Randolph Hearst can lobby, propagandize, and bluff a rotten measure through this Congress because we do not have the courage, the patriotism, the loyalty to our oaths to stand up and be counted against them." 4 8 Phil Swing's part in the debate was not nearly as prominent as the opposition leaders'. He deferred to Addison Smith, chairman of the Irrigation Committee, to present arguments in favor of the project. With an eye to sectional appeal Swing enlisted, among others, William Bankhead of Alabama and Fiorello LaGuardia of New York. 4 4 Swing's leadership, however, was ever present. He

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gave the signal to accept several amendments, the most significant of which was the authorization of a board of engineers and geologists to report on the plans for the dam, power plant, and canal embodied in the bill. Late in the afternoon, Friday, 25 May, Lewis Douglas moved to recommit the bill to the Irrigation and Reclamation Committee. T h e motion lost on a roll call vote, 139 voting in favor of recommitting, 219 against. T h i s was followed b y a voice vote in favor of H . R . 5773. " A l l gave up but Leatherwood who demanded a roll call on passage but got little support and was overruled." 4 5 T h e Swing-Johnson bill had passed the House. T h e passage was greeted with wild enthusiasm in the Imperial Valley towns. Clanging fire bells, wailing sirens, and impromptu parades filled the night-long celebration. 4 8 On the Washington scene the House passage was nearly overshadowed b y the activity in the Senate. As that bodv had resumed its consideration of the S w i n g Johnson bill, Senator Hiram Johnson challenged busy Senator Smoot's ability to prepare the 40,000-word speech he had delivered against Boulder Dam on 30 April and 1 May. "Smoot's arguments were power company arguments," Johnson charged. 4 7 On T h u r s day, 24 May, Johnson threatened to keep the Senate in continuous session again, and announced he would bring the matter to a vote on Saturday. But on Saturday, 26 May, he pleaded with his colleagues to alter their plans for adjournment on the coming Tuesday. T o no one's surprise, the Arizona senators, Ashurst and Hayden, began a filibuster on Monday to prevent the consideration o f the Boulder Canyon project. Johnson was able to force a vote to require the Senate to stay in session all night. T h e vote on the motion was 4 0 - 4 0 . 4 8 As Vice-President Dawes cast the deciding vote the galleries echoed with cheers. T h e Arizona senators droned on. Ashurst spoke for twelve hours and Hayden for nine and a half. After so much Arizona oratory the other senators would not support an extension of the session. Johnson moved for a 5 J u n e adjournment and his motion lost 39-41. H e then moved to extend the session to Saturday, 2 June. T h i s also was narrowly defeated. 4 9 At 5 : 3 0 P.M. on 29 M a y the Senate adjourned in wild disorder. T h e r e were threats of fist fights on the Senate floor, while on-

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lookers shouted and hooted in the gallery. An executive session was called for the final hour, depriving the spectators of the scene of the "wildest, most emotional Senate since war days." 5 0 Johnson was quite confident that the bill would pass in December. It would be the first item of business to be taken up at the second session of the Seventieth Congress. Both Swing and Johnson acknowledged the effect of the Federal Trade Commission investigation on their bill. It had put every opponent on the defensive. Smoot, Leatherwood, Ashurst, and Douglas included denials in their speeches that they were connected with the power trust. " T h e biggest benefit was exposition by Federal Trade Commission on power company propaganda," Swing wrote to Evans. 51 Johnson sent a similar message. " T h e biggest thing since I have been in public life," he wrote to Harold Ickes, "is the investigation by the Federal Trade Commission of the power trust. It won a victory from me this session, but we did make a real advance, and I think victory will be ours in the next." 5 2 In June Swing had serious thoughts about retiring from Congress. He had given eight years of his life to the fight for Boulder Dam. He would celebrate his forty-fifth birthday in November. He knew that it would be necessary to commence his law practice anew, and the thought of beginning again at his age gave him pause. He hesitated to announce his decision only because he was not sure of the effect his retirement would have on the ultimate disposition of the Swing-Johnson bill in December. 5 3 Within a few days of the time Swing confided these thoughts to Sam Evans, his friends and backers of Boulder Dam persuaded Swing to run again. Governor C. C. Young was one of those who requested that he undertake a fifth term. He reminded Swing that the battle did not end with the passage of the bill, that his help would be needed to secure appropriations for the project. Swing declared his candidacy on 29 June 1928. He had no opposition and he conducted what he called "a campaign of golden silence." 5 4 He received a record vote, the largest given to any candidate in his district. Although Swing and Johnson were reasonably certain of Senate passage in December, Swing continued to work for the project. It was somewhat of a disappointment that, despite efforts, neither major political party had included an endorsement of the project

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in its platform. 33 True to his promise, Swing gave active support to Herbert Hoover's candidacy. He did not doubt that Hoover was going to be the next president, and to antagonize the future president would be the height of folly. Swing calmed the fears of those who doubted that Hoover was a sincere advocate of Boulder Dam. In all probability, many of the doubts stemmed from earlier statements made by Swing and those close to the dam legislation. However, for the sake of the dam Swing had to change his tune. "Throughout the last session," Swing said in a July interview, "Secretary Hoover worked quietly and without publicity, his great influence was constantly used to promote the bill and to prevent antagonistic action whenever he could." 5 8 Swing's usefulness to Hoover's candidacy was, of course, among the backers of the dam. Swing made a major pro-dam and pro-Hoover address to an Ambassador Hotel gathering in Los Angeles. Flyers were distributed to the members of the audience on which were printed select quotations from Hoover's testimony before the House Irrigation Committee in 1922, '24, and '25. T h e statement from the Senate Irrigation Committee hearing in December 1925 was quoted as evidence of his support for the project. 57 When Herbert Hoover, candidate for the presidency, made his formal speech of acceptance on a nationwide radio broadcast emanating from Palo Alto he mentioned the development of the Colorado, but did so in his characteristic manner, leaving his own attitude subject to various interpretations. T h e San Francisco Bulletin lauded his approach to the solution of the Colorado River problem, saying the speech amply justified the paper's positions for Hoover, and against Boulder Dam. S8 "It's a hell of a Californian who could say no more for this great California project than Hoover said!" was Johnson's response to the speech. 59 In his letter to Swing, Johnson also included the news that Hoover did not mention the dam at all during his prespeech press conference. He added that Josiah Newcombe, "the high priced head of the power trust lobby, [is] expressing unbounded enthusiasm for Hoover, and saying that after his election a 'sane and safe' course would be pursued concerning the Colorado." 6 0 A group of prominent western men were invited by the Union Pacific Railroad to travel to the Grand Canyon during late summer

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to inaugurate a new hotel on the canyon's north rim. Swing was a member of the party. He took the occasion to mend some fences with Utah citizens. In October he made a trip to Salt Lake City to strengthen ties with potential Utah supporters of Boulder Dam legislation. The editor of the Salt Lake Tribune escorted Swing about the city, and he was feted at a friendly, social dinner party. He was amused to be serenaded with a parody of a popular song which concluded with these words: Mister Swing you're looking hearty Glad to have you at this party Give our regard to Herbert Hoover The west is sure for him.81 Swing happily reported to Johnson about the one solid benefit of the Utah trip, "the Mormon church has promised to work on the other Senator." 62 Major General William L. Sibert, Charles P. Berkey, Daniel W . Mead, Warren J. Mead, and Robert Ridgeway made up the new Colorado River Board. This body of engineers and geologists had been authorized to study the Boulder Dam project as agreed in the final days of the first session of the Seventieth Congress.63 When the board came to the Imperial Valley in October Swing was kept apprised of their activities and attitudes. The feasibility of the ail-American canal through the drifting sand hills east of El Centro had been repeatedly questioned in the past. General Sibert indicated that he thought the sand would not be a serious factor in the canal construction. In November F. W . Greer, the peripatetic publicity man, submitted a confidential report to the Imperial Irrigation District.64 He had secured access to the board's plans. The board was prepared to approve the Black Canyon dam site, recommend that half the power plant be placed in Arizona, and, as Childers had previously informed Swing, discount the danger of drifting sand to the canal, although "it was too bad he [Ridgeway] was on the sand dunes one day when it was blowing hard." 66 The Seventieth Congress began its second session on 5 December 1928. President Calvin Coolidge included these words concerning the Colorado River in his message to Congress:

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For several years the Congress has considered the erection of a dam on the Colorado River for flood-control, irrigation, and domestic water purposes, all of which may be properly considered as Government functions. There would be an incidental creation of water power which could be used for generating electricity. As private enterprise can very well fill this field, there is no need for the Government to go into it. 66 Sick at heart at the apparent lack of administration support for the Boulder Canyon project, Swing hurriedly released a paragraph to the news media which linked the President to the project. It read: I am very much gratified to have the President again endorse the Boulder Dam Project and to urge action by Congress. The President's suggestion that there is no need for the Government to go into the business of generating electricity is not in conflict with the provisions of my bill, which leaves it within the discretion of the Secretary of the Interior to lease the power plant to operating agencies under provisions that will protect the public.67 From California Swing received letters from worried friends. T h e y were afraid Johnson would not wage a vigorous campaign for the bill in the Senate, that he would let the bill get sidetracked. 08 Fears may have been based on a letter Johnson had written Charles Childers and W . B. Mathews on the day after Congress convened. He asked for data on water usage b y California and Arizona. Somewhat querulously he added, " I have been left very greatly in the dark upon this water proposition." 6 9 His attitude toward the legislation was in marked contrast to Swing's. F o r years Swing had voraciously demanded, devoured, and digested every bit of information about the Colorado River he could find. H e had made himself familiar with every legal and engineering question concerning the river. W h e n the bill was passed in the House, Swing's persuasive generalship made the triumph appear to be the result of superb teamwork. N o w , on the eve of crucial Senate consideration of the bill that bore his name, Johnson complained of having been left in the dark. H e had also convinced himself that he was waging a single-handed fight for the bill. 7 0 T h e r e was nothing that Swing could do to improve the situation in Washington, but he wired back reassuringly albeit equiv-

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ocally: "Johnson is determined to make the fight of his life." 7 1 Johnson's efforts were successful. T h e Senate version of the Swing-Johnson bill passed by a vote of 64 to 11 on 14 December 1928. Ordinarily a bill which has passed both houses in differing versions is sent to a conference in which members of both houses participate in producing an acceptable compromise bill. This process is frequently a lengthy one. If any changes were made in the Senate Swing-Johnson bill in conference, it would have to be returned to the Senate for further debate and another vote. With only two and one-half months remaining in the session and a number of important appropriation bills to be considered, bills which would have the right of way over the Boulder Dam bill, it was conceivable that the Arizona senators might again delay the passage of the bill. Swing evolved a plan in which the necessity for a conference could be avoided. He asked the cooperation of Irrigation Committee Chairman Addison Smith. Smith agreed not to call the bill from the table for a few days. Swing then took the Senate version of the bill to Dr. Elwood Mead. He asked Mead if the Reclamation Bureau could construct the project under the bill as it was now written. Mead said that it could. 72 As soon as this determination had been made, Swing gave the signal to Addison Smith to call the bill up for consideration again. On 18 December Smith took the floor of the House to explain to the representatives that the Senate had struck out all the material after the enacting clause and had inserted their bill. T h e bill before the House was now the Senate bill. Swing then explained the changes to the House. Most of them had to do with bringing the bill into conformity with the Sibert report. Major changes were that the cost and repayment of the all-American canal were separated from the dam and power plant, and that instead of $125 million, $165 million was to be authorized for the cost and interest charges on the project. A limitation on California's share of Colorado River water had been written into the bill, and Arizona and Nevada were each to get 18% percent of the surplus profits, the remainder going to repay the $25 million flood control costs. It was also written into the bill that a sevenstate compact was required, but if it could not be obtained within six months, the work could proceed on a six-state basis.73

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Fig. 5. T h e Christmas present on the W h i t e House steps. T h i s cartoon appeared in the Washington Evening Star, 19 December 1928.

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Mr. Leatherwood and Mr. Douglas entered their final arguments against the project. Leatherwood characterized it as "a source of administrative worry, congressional debate, and international conflict for the next twenty years." 74 Douglas declared, "it will forever stunt the growth of the Southwest." 75 On the motion of the gentleman from Idaho, Addison Smith, the House agreed to the Senate amendments. T h e Swing-Johnson "bill "for the purpose of controlling the floods, improving navigation and regulating the flow of the Colorado," awaited the signature of the President to become law. 76 At a White House ceremony on a sunny December morning, four days before Christmas, Calvin Coolidge affixed his signature to the bill. Phil Swing, Hiram Johnson, Dr. Elwood Mead, Addison Smith, and W . B. Mathews were in attendance. In January Swing again talked of retirement. He thought of resigning from Congress, then opening an office in Los Angeles. There, he hoped, he could be retained by some of the cities desiring Boulder Dam power, or by the Metropolitan Water District, groups interested in securing the benefits of the Boulder Canyon project legislation. It seemed strange and anticlimactic to Swing that the original project which took him to Washington, the ailAmerican canal, might never be built. T h e Sibert report recommendations altered and increased the costs of the structure. This dampened enthusiasm considerably in Imperial Valley for the canal. Also, there was optimism in certain quarters that the federal government could soon negotiate a satisfactory treaty with Mexico which would permit the free transportation of water through Mexico and back to the United States. 77 T h e legislation for which Phil Swing had given the best years r

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of his party's lack of direct action to alleviate the economic distress of the nation. F r o m the practical standpoint he said frankly, it became evident that without strong newspaper support in the big cities, a sizeable campaign fund is necessary no matter what the candidate's merit, ability or record for accomplishment might be. I found myself unable conscientiously to cast the votes necessary to secure the support of metropolitan newspapers, and unfortunately my twelve years in Congress has left me a poor man. 60 Swing's loyal friends were very disappointed. T h e y urged him to file f o r one of the new congressional district seats. His election to a seventh term would be assured whether he represented the new nineteenth district of Orange, Riverside, and San Bernardino counties, or the new twentieth, which was made up of San Diego and Imperial counties. Swing declined. T h e third of March 1933 marked the end of the public career of Congressman Phil D. Swing, and the end of the "Seven come Eleven" congressional district. O n the final day of the Seventy-second Congress Mrs. Florence Kahn, a member of the California congressional delegation, paid Swing tribute in the House. She said: The name of Phil Swing will be connected for generations to come with one of the greatest projects of modern times, Hoover Dam. The years of hard work, in season and out, resulted eventually in his victory, and to him is due all credit of its success.61 From Addison Smith, also terminating his congressional service, Swing received the following private communication: The greatest reward must come from the personal satisfaction of having accomplished so much, regardless of the fact that the masses of the people do not realize the benefits which have resulted from your service in the halls of Congress.62

CHAPTER IX

Former Congressman P h i l Swing was undecided about what he should do. His brother Ralph urged him to come to San Bernardino and join him once again in the practice of law. He told Phil that he could easily win back his congressional seat in the coming year.1 Phil declined his brother's offer. He tended to favor a Los Angeles office, but his lack of an independent income meant that he would have to join a partner or a firm. The few investments he had made over the years, some El Centro real estate and some shares of Chrysler Corporation stock, had decreased in value, and, in 1933, provided no return at all. Swing left Washington for San Diego in late March. His former office association with Edgar Luce had been terminated when the partnership of Stearns, Luce, and Forward was formed. He was offered a place in the partners' offices without a formal financial arrangement. Swing took the matter under advisement.2 One client sought him out. He was Congressman-elect George Burnham, whose right to the new twentieth district congressional seat had been challenged. Swing agreed to represent Burnham before the

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House Elections committee. 3 T h e hearings on the matter were not scheduled to take place for many months. H e had a few calls, queries, and requests, but, "mostly I have been asked to make free speeches in different localities." 4 Swing was contacted by the Imperial Irrigation District in April. T h e directors had decided to press once again for the all-American canal. T h e y asked Swing if he would go to Washington for them to obtain the federal funds necessary to build the canal. 5 Swing sought Johnson's advice. " I am reluctant to undertake the mission," he wired Johnson, "unless you think chance for success." 6 Johnson could not make anv promises, but he gave Swing some encouragement, adding, " W e ' r e all crazy here, and upon the theory of trial and error, doing anything that is suggested b y the administration. It's been wonderful, though, the difference in the atmosphere at the W h i t e House. W e have exchanged there for the frown, a smile." 7 B y 7 May 1933 Swing had plunged into the new job in Washington with all the intensity and vigor he had exhibited as a congressman. On one day he saw Dr. Mead in the morning, had lunch with California's new Senator McAdoo, conferred with Johnson in the afternoon. T h e Johnson meeting resulted in Johnson's obtaining an appointment for Swing to meet Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes. 8 Swing got the impression from his first meeting with Ickes that he was sympathetic to the proposal to get the all-American canal funded through the public works program. T h i s program was in the process of being argued into shape in the legislative halls as part of a national recovery program. Swing was pleased to learn that Harry Slattery, the former director of the National Boulder Dam Association, had become Ickes's personal assistant in the Interior Department. 9 In mid-May Swing had further reason for cheer. Harold Ickes decided that the dam being built in Black Canyon would continue to be known as Boulder Dam. In giving his reasons for the decision Ickes said: The name Boulder Dam is a fine, rugged, and individual name. The men who pioneered this project knew it by this name. . . . These men. together with practically all who have had any first-hand knowledge of

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the circumstances surrounding the building of this dam, want it called Boulder Dam and have keenly resented the attempt to change its name.10 Ickes advocated the retention of the name for five reasons: (1) It was the name by which it was widely and popularly known; (2) Hoover had nothing to do with its conception, and little to do with its realization; (3) T h e bill was passed during the Coolidge administration; (4) Congress did not change the name when urged; (5) Wilbur acted without legal authority. 11 Swing lobbied indefatigably day after day for the canal funds. H e had to make the acquaintance of many new administration people. He had to explain the all-American canal proposal in detail to each of them. He also had to learn a new set of rules for getting federal help for the Imperial Valley. Since 1917 Swing had worked closely with the Interior Department, first as the Imperial Irrigation District attorney and then as congressman. His dealings with the department spanned the tenure of Franklin Lane, Albert Fall, Hubert W o r k , and Ray Lyman Wilbur. N o w he was going to have to learn the ways of the newly created Public Works Administration. This new body won congressional approval in June. T h e Secretary of the Interior was designated as the Public W o r k s Administrator. Public W o r k s was given a $3.3 billion sum by Congress. T h e President was authorized to construct any public works project he desired whether or not it had received congressional approval. T h e Boulder Canyon Project Act was superseded as far as the canal was concerned. T h e authority to build the canal was transferred from the Interior to the P.W.A. 1 2 Swing met all the new Public W o r k s people that he could. W i t h determination, persistence, and showmanship he repeated some, but not all, of the pro-canal arguments he had used fifteen years before. T h e water system must be gotten out of Mexico. T h e people of the Imperial Valley favor it. T h e Irrigation District was solvent and could repay later. H e added a new reason—the failure of recent attempts in 1929 and 1930 to come to a water agreement with Mexico. 13 Bringing new lands into cultivation, an argument f o r the canal in 1919, was one of the forbidden subjects in 1933. An item to underplay was the fact that California had been the recipient of several sizeable Reconstruction Finance Corporation loans. 14

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During the warm hectic weeks of early summer Swing found time also to do a personal service for Arthur Powell Davis. H e wrote to Davis in June. Using the restored dam name with newfound appreciation for it, he asked Davis if he would serve in some capacity in the task of building Boulder Dam. Mrs. Marie Davis wrote in reply that Davis's health was very poor. In regard to the name restoration she commented: It is very interesting to note in spite of a deep laid plan to eliminate any mention of my husband in connection with the project in order to glorify one person it has only served to show up his pettiness and my husband's bigness. In fact it seems to me Hoover tried to suppress everyone's name in connection with it, for I never heard of his mentioning your name or Senator Johnson, but it was only his efforts that made it possible.15 Harold Ickes cooperated with Swing in a generous gesture to Davis. On 10 J u l y 1933 Ickes appointed Davis consulting engineer in connection with the project. Davis died in August. T h e approved list of P . W . A . projects was due to be released in mid-July. Swing wired Mclver these detailed instructions for his part in the campaign for the canal funds: Start sending telegrams to Ickes beginning with outside communities. . . . Include city, county, and state officers, also congressmen and senators, editors, businessmen, and civic organizations. W e must show more than local interest. Avoid any urging of reclamation new lands.16 On 13 July Swing learned that the all-American canal was not on the list. He held out hope that it would be included in a later announcement, but was chafed at Public W o r k s ' lack of dispatch. O n 29 J u l y President Roosevelt announced his approval of the Grand Coulee project on the Columbia and the Casper, W y o m i n g , project. "Neither have been authorized b y Congress," Swing wired to Mclver, "but action result of vigorous urging b y Senators Dill and Kendrick. Ail-American still uncertain." 1 7 T h e project was not lost. Ickes told the press that the canal would be considered soon. T h e Secretary of the Interior, laden also with the title of Public Works Administrator, was not the key man, however. Swing deduced this and so informed the Imperial Irrigation District. H e

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suggested that the district should embark on a concerted effort for favorable canal publicity in the capital newspapers for its effect on the "President, who must be the object of our next drive."18 Swing's deduction had been confirmed by a high-ranking member of the Justice Department. He told Swing that the board which had been set up to review and recommend public works projects had already found that their views were of little value. For that reason Swing's informant excused his own refusal to acquire detailed project information. "If the President is favorable," Swing quoted Solicitor General James C. Biggs as saying, "the board's views are immaterial. If the President is unfavorable the board's decision in approving projects would accomplish nothing." 19 The fact that the final decision rested with Roosevelt was good as far as the canal was concerned, because Ickes had retreated from his sympathetic position on the grounds that the West, and California in particular, had already received more than its share of federal money. If the decision were left to him, the canal would not be funded. In explaining his position to Swing, Ickes cited Grand Coulee as part of the largesse which should satisfy Swing as a westerner. The Secretary considered the sum of the self-liquidating Reconstruction Finance Corporation loans and the total cost of Boulder Dam as funds already expended on public works in California alone. Swing argued that the $44 million for Boulder Dam charged to California was appropriated by Congress. Its transfer to Public Works was simply a bookkeeping transaction. Swing tried to make Ickes see the R.F.C. loans in a different light. The Reconstruction Finance Corporation had $1.5 billion to loan, but could find qualified borrowers for only $220 million. The fact that "$132,000,000 of that sum went to California was not an indication that that state had deprived any other state of the R.F.C. funds, but it demonstrated California had the projects and the securities to obtain the funds under the law."20 Harry Chandler's representatives were in Washington. A call for a new investigation of the canal's engineering plans and the Imperial Valley's ability to pay was traceable to their efforts. At the end of August Swing wrote to Johnson that the all-American canal project was no more advanced than when he came in May. 21 Dr. Elwood Mead and Colonel H. M. Waite, Deputy Admin-

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istrator of the Public Works Administration, proved to be strong supporters of the canal project. Dr. Mead's advocacy was of long standing. Colonel Waite's conversion was directly attributable to Swing's efforts. T h e information they gave Swing concerning the politics within the Interior Department and Public Works was invaluable to him in planning his continuing campaign for the canal. But the discussion of the merits of the canal did not remain confined within Mead's and Waite's purview. J . C. Allison, an owner of Mexican lands and an associate of Chandler's, was busy in the Mexican section of the State Department predicting dire international consequences of the canal's approval. He also reported to the Department of Justice that the proposed canal would violate an American-Mexican treaty. 22 Cautiously, the State Department men counseled delay while they investigated Allison's charges. State tentatively recommended in late September that the canal be built, owned, and operated by the U.S. government. In order to carry out the canal program in this manner, the Boulder Canyon Project Act would have to be amended. 23 Swing decided the time had come to go directly to Roosevelt. In the past he had made courtesy calls on Harding and Coolidge to help create a favorable climate of opinion for his legislation in the executive department. T h e real labor had to be done in Congress, the place in which authority rested. Now the situation had altered. It would be no mere courtesy call. It would be a wellplotted show of political strength to convince a skilled politician of the political advantages to be gained from the all-American canal. Fortunately for the former congressman, a degree of reciprocity endured. Swing enlisted the aid of another former congressman, John Nance Garner, now the Vice-President of the United States. He wired the gentleman in his Texas home: It appears clear to me that if Texas is ever to get satisfactory treaty from Mexico covering diversion waters Rio Grande our government must be placed in position to apply counter pressure. Colorado River furnishes best place to do this, all-American canal would give our government instrumentality whereby we could reverse present situation, free Imperial Valley's water supply from dependence on Mexico and in turn actually control water available for use in Lower California for diversion since there are no sites in Mexico available for constructMexico whose lands would then be dependent upon the United States

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ing permanent diversions in the Colorado whose channel there runs through alluvial soil. If you see this as I do would deeply appreciate you help getting ail-American canal constructed as part President's public works program. Will see President Monday. Believe cabinet council will vote on Canal Tuesday. Result in doubt. Please let me hear from you.24 Swing did not go alone to see Roosevelt. He made a grand entrance accompanied by Governor Henry Blood of Utah. Senator Carl Hayden of Arizona and Representatives Edward Taylor of Colorado and Clarence Lea of California also accompanied him, prominent Democrats all. 25 Swing handed the President a sheaf of telegrams, calling his especial attention to one from Texas and one from Colorado. The Texas telegram was from the Vice-President urging the canal as a means to get a satisfactory Mexican treaty in regard to the Rio Grande. 28 The one from Colorado said the canal "would be decidedly for the interest of every one of the seven states in the Colorado River Basin," and it was signed by Ward Bannister.27 Swing told Roosevelt that the canal construction could put 9,000 men to work for the next two years. It would assure American farmers of a continuous flow of water, and it would provide San Diego with future domestic water and power. 28 Swing and his party left the White House satisfied that they had made the best showing possible. The cooperation of the men from the other Colorado basin states had given the project much greater stature. It could not now be regarded simply as a local project. The demonstration had lifted it far beyond the confines of the state of California which would serve, Swing hoped, to overcome Ickes's attitude. The cabinet council would not vote until the following day. There was little else for Swing to do but pace the floor, as he was wont to do. If a negative decision came from the cabinet council, there was no place where a further appeal could be made. The case for the canal rested. Swing's agitation and concern was put at rest in the late afternoon when he received a two-word telegram from Hiram Johnson. Johnson wrote later and explained the brief telegram: I wired you as I did the day before the decision hoping you would understand what the two cryptic words meant. I could not say more

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without violating a confidence. From your response I learned that you did understand. I think, however, that the result was attained because of your persistence and because you remained right on the ground.29 The two words in the telegram had been, "Don't worry." There was no longer reason for Swing to stay on the ground in Washington. He returned to San Diego after an absence of six months, having made the decision to locate in that city. During the summer in Washington he had been offered an appointment to a four-year term as a Federal Trade Commissioner. He had refused it, reasoning that the appointment would merely postpone that which he had come to face this year: the necessity to build up a practice again. In December Swing went to his former associate, Edgar Luce, and told him of his decision. Stearns, Luce, and Forward became Stearns, Luce, Forward, and Swing. By 1934 actual work on the dam had started. Boulder City, a model city to house and serve the workers, had become the third largest city in Nevada with a population of 6,000. The 266-milelong power transmission lines between the dam site and Los Angeles were under construction. The Metropolitan Water District had completed almost 300,000 feet of tunnels for its main aqueduct. 30 This monumental undertaking received a great deal of popular publicity. Even Harry Chandler's newspaper, the Los Angeles Times, afforded ample space for the project in its columns. A copiously illustrated double pa^e article by Ward Bannister was introduced to Times readers with these words: In 1921, Herbert Hoover took the helm and his brilliant, determined leadership brought the following years of baffling intricate negotiations to a successful end, the start of actual construction on the dam, which, in token of popular appreciation has for years been known as Hoover Dam. Now Secretary Ickes would chisel his name from the monument.31 Repeated misinformation of this sort found a welcome home in the field of partisan politics. Unhappy Republicans, unaware of the legislative background of the project, adopted the idea that a Democratic administration was trying to rewrite history. Sparring went on for years. In 1939 the American Society of Civil Engineers adopted the name "Hoover Dam" for society usage.32 M. J. Dowd,

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the chief engineer of the Imperial Irrigation District, was writing an article for the society publication when the pronouncement was made. H e submitted the article, but warned the publishers not to change his use of the name "Boulder," or he would withdraw the article. 33 John C. Page, successor to Dr. Mead as Commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation, came to Ickes's defense: If an injustice was done to Mr. Hoover by restoring the historic name then a far greater injustice was done to many men who had played more important roles in the struggle for control of the Colorado River when the name "Hoover Dam" was applied. . . . Until that September day in Nevada, there is no room for doubt that the formal and accepted name of the dam was Boulder Dam.84 T h e controversy would not die. Boulder Dam was ever in the news. In 1940 its power plant was the largest in the world. T h e continuing growth of power demands in the industrial areas, stimulated by fears arising from the ominous European war, required the installation of additional generating units. T h e establishment of many defense industries in Southern California during World W a r II was due to the availability of Boulder Dam power. But the elephant did not forget. T h e Republican Eightieth Congress, the one which President H a r r y Truman repeatedly referred to as the "do-nothing Congress," officially changed the name of Boulder Dam to Hoover Dam. T h e issue was debated in the Senate along partisan lines. William Knowland, the California senator who had been appointed to fill the vacancy created b y Johnson's death in 1945, favored the change. California's other senator, Sheridan Downey, recalled to his colleagues that t w o other Californians in addition to Hoover also contributed to the creation of the engineering monument. 35 Oregon's Senator W a y n e Morse read a f e w sentences of a speech Hoover made in 1932, just a few days after his crushing defeat b y Roosevelt. At the dam site Hoover had said, "that as an engineer and the head of the Colorado River Commission I presented to Coolidge and to the Congress the great importance of these works and I had a further part in the drafting of the final legislation." 36 In the House the talk followed a similar pattern. It was asked that Hoover's name be restored to the dam "for which he, more

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than any other man, was responsible." 37 J. Edgar Chenoweth, representative from Colorado, embroidered this theme: It has always been conceded that he [Hoover] was the moving spirit in this stupendous undertaking. It took the skill and technical knowledge of an outstanding engineer like Mr. Hoover to suggest such a project, and it is only fitting that this great dam should bear his name.38 A number of legislators undoubtedly thought they were righting a wrong. In 1952 Herbert Hoover's memoirs treating his years in the cabinet and in the presidency were published. He repeated selected words of his 1932 speech in which he claimed credit for part of the bill's content. 39 Judson King, director of the National Popular Government League, wrote to Swing and questioned him about Hoover's assertion. Swing replied that it was "obvious that Mr. Hoover has forgotten or overlooked some of the happenings involved in the Boulder Dam controversy, or has been heavily biased by his dislike of Senator Johnson." 40 There the matter rested. Few men remained who cared. None remained whose words could carry as much weight as those written by the former president of the United States. Swing still had boxes and drawers full of telegrams, letters, and formal resolutions congratulating him and praising him and thanking him for his monumental achievement in securing the passage of the Boulder Canyon Project Act. Typical is the following letter from Swing's Orange County friend, William Jerome, written three days before the House finally passed the Senate version of the bill: Please remember that we are thinking of you, pulling for you, and trusting that the time is not far off when construction work will start, and the monument that will be erected to you and Hiram Johnson on the Colorado River will keep your memory green all over Southern California long after all of us have gone to our rewards.41 Like Jerome's letter, all the others, too, were a quarter of a century old in 1953. After he had secured the first appropriation of $6 million for the all-American canal work, Swing spent several years half in Washington and half in San Diego. H e represented a number of

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public bodies in their quest for water. In 1935 and 1936 he was special counsel for California and Nevada. He presented the oral argument before the Supreme Court of the United States in Arizona's action against California and the other states of the basin.42 For five years he was special water counsel for San Diego. When the San Diego County Water Authority was formed in 1944 he became that body's general counsel. During World War II President Roosevelt appointed him to a special commission to study the problems of San Diego's water supply, a matter of considerable military importance. Swing again represented California as Special Attorney General in 1944 and 1945. He presented his state's case against the Mexican water treaty under consideration in Washington. In 1945 the California governor, Earl Warren, appointed Swing to the newly formed Water Resources Board.48 He continued to serve on the board until 1958. On 28 March 1958 Phil Swing was singularly honored by his friends and associates. Five hundred people paid tribute to him at a festive luncheon at the U. S. Grant Hotel in San Diego. A number of communities in the environs proclaimed 28 March "Phil Swing Day." Most of the people who gathered to do him honor had not known him during his congressional years. M. J. Dowd of the I.I.D. told the group about the young Phil Swing as the Imperial Valley had known him. He described some of the difficulties Swing encountered in Washington during the years he labored to secure the passage of the Swing-Johnson bill. He reiterated the fact that Phil was the dynamic power behind this legislation. He gave unreservedly of his time and strength. Hours meant nothing to him, whether day or night of Saturday or Sunday. Phil was both coach and quarterback of the team that was organized to get the legislation through Congress, but unlike many quarterbacks, he had to carry the ball most of the time.44

Swing was growing old, but he still appeared full of zest and energy. He had undergone major surgery in 1950 which compelled him to regularize his habits. He continued to serve his clients, giving special preference to those who came to him with a water problem. This sometimes caused his later partners concern because Swing set his fees to water litigants extremely low. 45

Former Congressman

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Senator Carl Hayden sent Swing a congratulatory telegram upon the occasion of the testimonial luncheon. Swing did not acknowledge it until the following year. He apologized for the delay in answering, saying, "I was so overcome with the unusual ceremony that shortly thereafter, I suffered a heart attack and was hors de combat,"46 In December 1959 Nell Swing died. The Swings had been married forty-seven years. Often public duties and professional career had taken Phil Swing away from home, and for long periods at a time. In his reminiscences, written when he was in his seventies, he expressed a certain sorrow that this had been so. He had been away in Washington when he and Nell would have celebrated their silver anniversary. She summed up her thoughts and feelings on the long-time partnership with a simple message telegraphed to her husband, "No regrets." Swing continued to work. He lived in a well-appointed apartment not far from San Diego's central area where he played host and entertained one or two couples for dinner from time to time. He returned to Imperial Valley annually to help celebrate their "Pioneer Days." 47 His health failed in 1963. Phil Swing died in August of that year, a few months before his eightieth birthday. After Swing died, several civic activists in San Diego raised funds for a Phil Swing memorial fountain to be built in conjunction with one of the city's new municipal structures. No other type monument could have been more appropriate for Swing. The sparkling water now rises and falls in patterned cadence at the corner of Third and C Streets. A nearby plaque proclaims that Phil Swing was the "father of Boulder Dam." He would have liked that.

Notes CHAPTER I 1. M. J. Dowd, The Colorado River Flood Protection Works of Imperial Irrigation District: History and Cost (El Centro, 1951), 1. See fig. 2. 2. Imperial Irrigation District, Historic Salt on Sea (El Centro, 1960), 7. 3. Otis B. Tout, The First Thirty Years (San Diego, 1931), 26. 4. Tout, 48. 5. At first settlers feared that chickens could not be raised in Imperial Valley because it lacked gravel. Instead, the valley proved to be a natural incubator. In October 1904 a woman reported a flock of four hundred chickens hatched from untended eggs in a mesquite woodpile on her property, ibid., 176. 6. The present level of the Salton Sea is approximately —230. It is 35 miles long and 15 miles wide. Imperial Irrigation District, 7, 25. 7. This struggle was the basis for Harold Bell Wright's novel, The Winning of Barbara Worth (Chicago, 1911). 8. Tout, 181. 9. In the early 1960s Will Swing discovered proof in Swing family records that Phil Swing was born in 1883, not 1884 as he had assumed most of his life. Interview with Marian Allen, 3 January 1968. 10. San Bernardino v. Riverside, 186 Cal. 7 (1921); "Memorandum on Training, Experience and Qualifications of Phil D. Swing," (typewritten) Swing papers, Special Collections, University of California, Los Angeles, Box 6. Hereafter cited: Swing, UCLA. 11. Materials pertaining to the Swing and Garner families are to be found in holograph, Swing, UCLA, Box 59; Robert R. Hind and Margaret Swing Carry, eds., "The Struggle for Boulder Dam and other Reminiscences of Phil D. Swing," hereafter cited as "Reminiscences" (typewritten), ibid., Box 35. Swing's account of his Stanford years appeared in Edith R. Mirrielees, Stanford Mosaic (Stanford, 1962). A description of his railroad work titled "From Railroad Shops to Congress" was in the Santa Ana Register, 18 September

152

Notes to pp. 9-18

1929. He had been a boilermaker's helper, a car repairer's helper, a machinist's helper, and did duty in the railroad ice house. His college debating activities were detailed in a letter from Robert R. Hind to Beverley Moeller, 19 April 1968. 12. Tout, 257; Imperial Valley Press, passim. 13. Other early actions by the supervisors of the new county became known as the "Imperial Lid." One ordinance prohibited the sale of alcoholic beverages in the county, and another prohibited betting and gambling. Edgar F. Howe and Wilbur Jay Hall, The Story of the First Decade in Imperial Valley, California (Imperial, 1910), 16J. 14. Franklin Hichbom, "The Party, the Machine, and the Vote," CHSQ, XXXIX (March 1960), 22. 15. Imperial County Water Company No. 1 v. Board of Supervisors of Imperial County, 162 Cal. 14 (1912). 16. "Reminiscences," 42. 17. Tout, 121-122. 18. U.S. Congress, House, Committee on Flood Control, "Colorado River Survey, Imperial Valley Flood Project," Hearings, 66th Cong., 1st Sess., 14. 19. Dowd, 19, 24. Federal flood control expenditures on the lower Colorado in Mexico were $2,112,665.17. This amount included the $1,000,000 paid in 1910, an appropriation of $100,000 in 1915, and a later payment of $1,012,665.17 to the Southern Pacific Company for the closure of the 1905 break. 20. Tout, 363-364. 21. Flood Control Hearings, 14. 22. James J. Hudson, "California National Guard and the Mexican Border, 1914-1916," CHSQ, XXXIV (June 1955), 157-158; Tout, 196. 23. U.S. Congress, Senate, Imperial Valley or Salton Sink Region, 59th Cong., 23 Sess., S. Doc. 212. 24. Tout, 123; "Reminiscences," 43. 25. Swing papers, formerly housed at the Colorado River Board of California, Los Angeles, and transferred to Special Collections at UCLA in 1970. They now comprise boxes 132-150 of the Swing Collection. Items from this portion of the collection are hereafter cited: Swing, CRB. 26. U.S. Congress, House, Committee on Irrigation of Arid Lands, "AllAmerican Canal in Imperial County California," Hearings, 66th Cong., lsit Sess., on H.R. 6044, 116. 27. Ibid., 49. 28. Ibid. 29. U.S. Congress, House, Committee on Flood Control, "Colorado River in Arizona," Hearings, 65th Cong., 3d Sess., 15. 30. California, Colorado River Commission, Analysis of Boulder Canyon Project Act (Sacramento, 1930), 59. 31. Swing, UCLA, Box 60. The brief biographical pamphlet of Addisom Smith in the Swing Papers bears Swing's written declaration, "Addisom Smith changed the entire cource Isic] of my life." 32. "Reminiscences," 49. 33. Interview with Congressman James B. Utt, 27 December, 1967. Utt was> working as an irrigator for the San Joaquin Fruit Company in Orange County

Notes to pp.

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during the summer of 1920. "While we were having lunch under a mulberry tree Swing made a speech to about twenty of us." 34. Dickson had no hands. He lost both of them in an accident while working as a locomotive fireman. He later took up the study of law. 35. The vote was 59,425 for Swing and 22,144 for Dickson. Congressional Directory, 67th Cong., 2d Sess. (Washington: 1921), 12. The district had a population of 349,000.

CHAPTER II 1. Los Angeles Examiner, 4 August 1920. 2. E. C. LaRue, The Colorado River and its Utilization, U.S.G.S. Water Supply Paper 395 (Washington, 1916); C. E. Grunsky, W . W . Schlecht, and Dr. Elwood Mead, "The All-American Canal," Report of the All-American Canal Board (Washington, 1919). 3. Los Angeles Examiner, 4 August 1920, quoting Thomas Yager, Coachella representative. 4. T w o of the photos of the canyon were enlarged and framed by the I.I.D. and sent to Swing in Washington. They hung in his offices to the end of his life. They are now in the Pioneer Museum, Imperial County Fair Grounds, Imperial, California. 5. Los Angeles Examiner, 23 July 1920; El Centro Progress, 14 April 1921. 6. Charles L. Clapp, The Congressman: His Work as He Sees It (Washington, 1963), 50; U.S. House, Committee on the Census, "Apportionment of Representatives in Congress among the Several States," Hearings, 71st Cong., 3d Sess., on H.R. 15983 et al„ 128. 7. Riverside Enterprise, 15 September 1921. 8. Swing to F. N. Cronholm, 27 April 1921, Swing, CRB; Swing was also asked to introduce a bill for Southern Pacific Railroad claims. He refused, not wanting to act as their spokesman. Swing to O. B. Tout, 9 July 1921, ibid. 9. Congressional Record, 29 June 1921, 3212. 10. Swing to T . W . Lyons, 18 July 1921, Swing, CRB. 11. A full account of the meeting appeared in the Brawley News, 30 July 1921. 12. Shortly after its introduction Swing sent copies of the Mondell bill to newspapers in his district. "The expectation announced by Mondell on the floor of the House during debate was that the states could probably arrive at a scheme this coming summer. Personally, I rather doubt the possibility of such early action," Swing to Dr. S. S. M. Jennings, 22 June 1921, Swing, CRB; Swing to David O. Woodbury, 28 December 1940. Swing, UCLA, Box 61. 13. 20 September 1921. 14. 21 June 1921, Swing, CRB. Because of the resignation of J. S. Brown from the I.I.D. board in 1921, and the appointment of Roy Breedlove, the ailAmerican canal supporters were in the minority on the board. Tout, 153. 15. Riverside Enterprise, 11 December 1921. 16. The proceedings of this conference are printed as an appendix to Sen.

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Notes to pp.

28-35

Doc. 142, "Problems of Imperial Valley and Vicinity," 67th Cong., 2d Sess, 1922. 17. Ibid, 239. 18. Ibid. 19. In later years Swing repeatedly declared that he went to Congress with a mandate to get Boulder Dam. The project was too nebulous until 1921 to have a firm advocate, much less an informed constituency which would deliver the "mandate" at the polls. Swing began to champion the idea of a government-built high dam after the first session of his first term in Congress. Remi Nadeau accepted Swing's declaration in The Water Seekers (New York, 1950), 183. 20. Arrowrock was 350 feet high. The largest storage reservoirs at the time were Gatun in Panama, 4,410,000 acre-feet; Elephant Butte, 2,368,000 acrefeet; and Aswan in Egypt, 1,865,000 acre-feet. 21. U S . Congress, House, Committee on Irrigation and Reclamation, Report 1657 to accompany H.R. 9826, 69th Cong., 2d Sess., 3; see also chapter III, note 35. 22. El Centro Progress, 8 December 1921. 23. 14 January 1922, Swing, CRB. 24. Los Angeles Times, 22 January 1922. 25. Swing to Myron D. Witter, 22 December 1922, Swing, CRB. Swing's emphasis. 26. H.R. 11449. With Johnson's companion bill in the Senate the proposed legislation became known as the Swing-Johnson bill. 27. Hearings, H.R. 11449, Part 3, 83-87. 28. The decision in Wyoming v. Colorado made it clear that water appropriation priorities applied in the appropriation law states regardless of state lines. The rights of California's Imperial Valley were senior to nearly all other Colorado River appropriations and would be upheld if she were t o enforce the claims in court. 29. Hearings, H.R. 11449 64. 30. Ibid, 107. 31. Ibid, 24. 32. Ibid, 25. 33. Ibid, 62. 34. Swing was unopposed for reelection. The birth of his daughter Phyllis; on 23 June 1922, was probably a strong reason for his remaining in Washington with his family. 35. 8 September 1922, Swing, CRB. 36. Many years later Herbert Hoover claimed to have originated the twobasin concept at Santa Fe in November 1922. Herbert Hoover, Memoirs, II, 116. 37. Swing to McClure, 28 October 1922, Swing, CRB. 38. Colorado River Compact, 42 U.S. Stat. 171. 39. Hoover to Swing, 2 December 1922, Swing, UCLA, Box 59. 40. Swing to William J. Carr, 13 December 1922, Swing, CRB. 41. Swing to Ralph Swing, 20 January 1923, ibid. 42. Nickerson to Swing, 28 November 1922, ibid. Swing's underlining, with marginal notation, "Who says?" 43. Hoover to Richard Emmet, copy to Swing, 28 November 1922, Colo-

Notes

to pp.

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rado River Commission files, l-M/351 Hoover Papers, Hoover Presidential Library. 44. Hoover to Swing, 20 December 1922, Commerce Department files, 1-1, 164, Hoover Papers. 45. Swing to Hoover, 21 December 1922, Swing, UCLA, Box 59. 46. Hoover wrote to Jeffry Prendergast, a member of the California legislature, and congratulated him on California's ratification of the compact. "One of the primary things that needs to be done in Southern California now," he told Prendergast, "is for the sane men to get together and provide a constructve program on which legislation can be carried out in Congress at the next session for construction at Boulder Canyon." 12 February 1923, l-M/344, Hoover papers. Author's emphasis.

CHAPTER III 1. Ira Aten to Swing, 23 February, 1923, Swing, CRB. "The board is going be criticise [sic] very severely for this [sic] heavy expenses of this congressional delegation but I believe it will be worth it." 2. Information, H.R. 2903, 68th Cong., 1st Sess., (Washington, 1924), 33. 3. Swing to Bankhead, 3 May 1923, Swing, CRB. 4. Los Angeles Examiner, 19 April 1923. 5. Swing to Bacon, 26 April 1923, Swing, CRB. 6. Ibid. 7. Swing to Saunders, 7 May 1923, ibid. 8. Organizational details are to be found in Boulder Dam Association file, ibid. 9. S. C. Evans to Addison Smith, 21 May 1924, ibid. This information was also included in the printed Hearings on H.R.2903 (Washington, 1924). 10. 13 April, 1923. 11. Brawley News, 26 May 1923. 12. El Centro Press, 28 May 1923. 13. Swing to Henry Barbour, 12 May 1923, Swing, CRB. 14. Swing to B. D. Irvine, 8 June 1923, ibid. 15. Hayden to Swing, 11 May 1923, ibid. The above letter to Swing was written a few days after Hayden had received a letter from Dwight Heard, editor of the Arizona Republican, in which Heard reported his recent meeting with Hoover to discuss Hoover's new plan of Colorado River development. The plan was to establish a "Lower Colorado Conservancy Board" with corporate powers, secure a $20 million appropriation for initial works, charge a small amount against all lands under irrigation, and allow the federal government to select the board. "Both Secretary Hoover and myself are more than willing that the plan should be known as the Hayden Plan." Dwight B. Heard to Carl Hayden, 1 May 1923, l-M/349, Hoover papers. 16. Senate Document 142, 67:2 (Washington, 1922), 302. 17. Hayden to Swing, 11 May 1923, Swing, CRB. Colorado River water now reaches from Ventura to San Diego. 18. 11 June 1923, ibid.

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Notes to pp. 43-4%

19. E. B. Debler to John Page, 7 July 1939, Swing, UCLA, Box 62. "Hs [Hoover's] connection with the dismissal of Authur P. Davis and Mr. Weymouth is all too well known by many of us although the public knows nothing about that and credits him with the project." Debler was Chief Engineer of the Reclamation Department and Page the Commissioner of Reclamation at the time this letter was written. William Warne sent a copy of the letter to Swing on 25 July 1939. 20. Fly to Swing, 27 June 1923, Swing, CRB. 21. Work to Fly, 26 June 1923, ibid. 22. Swing to Fly, 29 June 1923, ibid. 23. Mclver to Work, 3 July 1923, ibid. 24. Long Beach Sun, 11 August 1923. Governor Friend Richardson was in attendance. An estimated 8,000 people were at the services. 25. There was no scandal attached to Fall's resignation in March 1923. Not until the following December did the Senate investigation link actual wrongdoing with Teapot Dome oil leasing. "On March 4 he left for New Mexico with colors flying and character unsullied." Burl Noggle, Teapot Dome (Baton Rouge, 1962), 55. 26. In reporting the activities of the California delegation in Washington Swing had written to Governor William D. Stephens, "President Harding said [to us J this morning that it would take very little argument to persuade him of the desirability of the undertaking; that the matter had been discussed favorably by the cabinet." 7 June 1922, Swing, CRB. 27. O. C. Merrill to Swing, 22 March 1922, Swing, CRB; U.S. Congress, House, Committee on Irrigation and Reclamation, "Protection and Development of the Lower Colorado River Basin," Hearings, 68th Cong., 1st Sess., on H.R. 2903 (Washington, 1924), 203 (hereafter referred to as Hearings, H.R. 2903). 28. "Hearings before the Federal Power Commssion," 68:1, Information to accompany H.R. 2903 (Washington, 1924), 101. 29. Ibid., 192; "Governor George W. P. Hunt was persuaded by George H. Maxwell to oppose the ratification of the Colorado River Compact," Senator Carl Hayden to Beverley Moeller, 24 January 1968. 30. "Hearings before the Federal Power Commission," 26. 31. San Diego Tribune, 6 October 1923; Ward Bannister suggested to Governor Richardson that he send Swing as California's representative to Hunt's conference. Bannister to Swing, 15 September 1923, Swing, CRB. 32. Boulder Dam Association officers included John L. Bacon, San Diego, president; W. J. Carr, Pasadena; Burdett Moody, Los Angeles; W. F. Coulter, Fullerton. 33. "I should be proud if during my administration I could participate in the inauguration of this great project by affixing my signature to the proper legislation by Congress through which it might be launched." 34. Swing to S. C. Evans, 22 October 1923, Swing, CRB. 35. A number of units are used in water calculation. One second-foot measures flow. It is the equivalent to 40 miner's inches of water (California and Arizona), 7.48 US. gallons per second, or 646,317 U.S. gallons per year. The second-foot and the acre-foot, the amount to cover an acre with one foot of water, were the two units most commonly used during the discussions

Notes to pp. 48-53

157

of the Boulder Canyon project. A second-foot can be converted into an annual acre-foot measurement simply by multiplying by 750. Thus Mulholland's request for 1,000 second-feet for Los Angeles was the equivalent to 730,000 acre-feet per year, or approximately 238 billion gallons. 36. 27 October 1923, Swing, CRB. 37. "Hearings before the Federal Power Commission," 195. 38. "Statements by Arizona Citizens," 68:1, Information to accompany H.R. 2903, 6, 57. 39. Hearings, H.R. 2903, 4. 40. Los Angeles Examiner, 24 January 1924. 41. In addition to the American Legion endorsement which Swing had personally secured, he offered endorsements from the National Association of Real Estate Boards, American Farm Bureau, the General Federation of Women's Clubs, the American Federation of Labor, and the Spanish War Veterans. Hearings, H.R. 2903, 5. 42. Ibid., 20. 43. Ibid., 53. 44. Ibid., 63. 45. Ibid., 97. Swing changed his mind about Mulholland's water plea. "My first analysis as to the effect in Washington of the demand of Pacific Coast cities for domestic water was wrong. I find that this demand can be used to help the cause along." Swing to John Covert, April 21, 1924, Swing, CRB. 4