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Reviews
Water and American Government: The Reclamation Bureau, National Water Policy, and the West, 1902–1935
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By Donald J. Pisani
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University of California Press, Berkeley, 2002. Photographs, notes, index. 408 pages. $49.95 cloth.
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Reviewed by Dorothy Zeisler-Vralsted
University of Wisconsin, La Crosse
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| A thorough and exhaustive work, Water and American Government is the second volume in Donald Pisani's planned multivolume history of water in the American West. Although the title implies a broad treatment of water, Pisani mainly focuses on the history of federal reclamation policy. His thesis challenges the prevailing belief that the Reclamation Act of 1902 signaled a shift toward modernization. Instead, Pisani argues that federal reclamation activities from 1902 to 1935 reflected a continuation of nineteenth-century American ideals and concerns. For Pisani, the Reclamation Act was not forward-looking but driven by fears about the country's future, especially after the turbulent 1890s. |
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Pisani's research is impressive. He draws on numerous archival resources, including several record groups from the National Archives and, of course, the records of the Bureau of Reclamation. His discussion of federal reclamation policy begins by placing the movement for federal reclamation within the national context. He considers many reclamation boosters' claims that federal reclamation legislation would offer homes and a rural lifestyle to those living in overcrowded cities. The ideas of three major spokesmen for the reclamation movement — William Smythe, George Maxwell, and Frederick Newell — demonstrate that each saw the potential of federal reclamation for homebuilding. Ultimately, however, their initiatives were not successful, and reclamation legislation produced very different results. |
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In Pisani's recounting of the implementation of the Newlands or Reclamation Act, he exposes myriad problems that plagued the fledgling Reclamation Service. To students of western history, most of the stories are familiar, describing how Reclamation Service engineers failed to evaluate soil compatibility in newly constructed irrigation projects, thus dooming many projects to immediate failure. Other obstacles to success were the internal politics among federal agencies, such as the Agriculture Department's criticism of the Reclamation Service, led by the well-respected Elwood Mead, and water rights conflicts within states. Still, Pisani's extensive research uncovers unknown details about and insights into the early years of the Reclamation Service. After viewing the reclamation movement from a national perspective, Pisani examines the effects of irrigation projects on two separate Idaho communities, one federally funded and the other a private undertaking. These case studies bolster Pisani's thesis that reclamation projects were attractive because investment in the land ensured a stability that contrasted with the economic instability of the 1890s. |
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In viewing reclamation's early years, Pisani also discusses the leadership of the Reclamation Service. When considering the political tensions between Frederick Newell and Elwood Mead, Pisani clearly supports Mead's position. Further, he credits Mead with recognizing that the Reclamation Service in the 1920s was becoming a very different institution than it had been originally. In his discussion of the 1920s, Pisani reveals a reclamation agency concerned with various aspects of rural society, including home improvements and the family diet. All of these discussions appeared in the agency's newsletter, The Reclamation Record. |
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The agency's accommodation to the needs of a rural society was limited to the white population. Relating the experience of Native Americans living in the arid West, Pisani explains, "Their story demonstrates that federal reclamation was not just the engine of agricultural expansion and homemaking, but also an instrument of cultural imperialism" (p. 153). In interesting case studies of the Yakama and Pima Indians, Pisani convincingly explains how detrimental market agriculture was to Native American societies. |
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In the last chapters, Pisani discusses another shift in reclamation policy — the interest in hydroelectric power. The construction of major hydropower facilities altered the future of reclamation policy for several decades. For the first time, the Reclamation Service had a profitable industry to support irrigation. Paralleling the development of hydropower facilities were bureaucratic rivalries and attempts by reclamation policy leaders such as Herbert Hoover to implement comprehensive river planning. Although unsuccessful, Hoover emerges as a forward-thinking conservationist whose ideas foreshadowed future resource planning. |
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In concluding, Pisani critiques other well-known works on water use in the West. As he evaluates the success of the Reclamation Bureau, he broadens the discussion and looks at resource planning in other countries. Unfortunately, this discussion is very brief. The book would have benefited from a lengthier comparison. Still, Pisani's work will undoubtedly be the definitive history of the Bureau of Reclamation. His meticulous research and careful scholarship are a model for traditional history. I expect that Water and American Government will be required reading for all future students of the twentieth-century American West. |
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