In the mountains water is dropped many hundreds
of feet upon the turbines which move the dynamos that produce the
electric current. Water power on navigable streams is usually produced
by dropping immense volumes of water a short distance, as twenty feet,
fifteen feet, or even less. Every stream is a unit from its source to
its mouth, and the people have the same stake in the control of water
power in one part of it as in another. Under the Constitution, the
United States exercises direct control over navigable streams. It
exercises control over non-navigable and source streams only through its
ownership of the lands through which they pass, as the public domain and
National Forests. It is just as essential for the public welfare that
the people should retain and exercise control of water-power monopoly on
navigable as on non-navigable streams. If the difficulties are greater,
then the danger that the water powers may pass out of the people's hands
on the lower navigable parts of the streams is greater than on the upper
non-navigable parts, and it may be harder, but in no way less necessary,
to prevent it.
It must be clear to any man who has followed the development of the
Conservation idea that no other policy now before the American people is
so thoroughly democratic in its essence and in its tendencies as the
Conservation policy.
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