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Show GRASSROOTS Honest Harold Ickes 'Stole' Tide Lands Oil Wells By Wright A. Patterson WHEN I WAS A BOY in Washington Wash-ington county, Iowa, Long's Creek was one of the waterways of that county. It was not navigable even for a light canoe. It was just a creek, with water in spots in the summer,, and those spots provided breeding places for bull heads and swimming pools for the boys of the neighborhood. Because of the swimming holes, the boys claimed Long's Creek as their rightful property. Had the federal government of those days attempted to do what the federal government is doing today, it would have meant an insurrection on the part of those Washington county boys, that would have taken a corps of marines to suppress. The counties of southern California Cal-ifornia have creeks similar to those In every county of every state. These California creeks serve the specially useful purpose pur-pose of irrigation for the hundreds hun-dreds of foothill farms, without which they would not produce, and would be valueless. Those creeks have been the source of irrigation for those foothill farms, back to the Spanish mission mis-sion days. Now, without warning of any kind, the federal government notifies noti-fies the farmers that they can no longer use the water of those creeks, as they are federal' government govern-ment property, and the rights to the water they carry belong to the federal government. Those water rights have been recognized as be longing to the farms they irrigate for more than 100 years. That is seizure of property by the government, without adequate compensation to the owner, and it is specifically forbidden by the fifth amendment to the Constitution, Constitu-tion, but the federal' government has refused to recognize the rights to compensation by the citizens. What has happened in these California counties, could happen hap-pen in Washington county, Iowa, or in any other county in any state, if California permits the central government to get away with such a steal. It will be tried in other states, and the citizen will soon have no rights the government at Washington Wash-ington will recognize. That bold move on the part of the attorney 'general's office is more far-reaching than the little community of Wallbrook in southern California. Should it get away with that steal, there is no limit to what it can take. In the days when F. D. R. and the New Deal was operating with the regularity of weU greased clock work, honest Harold Ickes, then secretary of the interior, was a recognized source of New Deal ideas. One that bobbed up in his always fertile brain was for the government to take over the tide lands oil and so gather in the royalties roy-alties the operators were paying to the states for each barrel of oil they recovered from the ocean depths, and to secure which they had invested large, very large, sums in the drilling and operation of those tideland wells. The terms Honest Harold offered of-fered were far from satisfactory to the operators, and they refused. re-fused. But they stopped pumping pump-ing and drilling. The states lost the royalties they had been receiving, re-ceiving, and to supplement their diminishing revenues had to levy other taxes on their already al-ready over burdened people; the nation lost the supply the tide lands fields had provided. And all because Honest Harold Har-old had a bad dream. He would provide more revenue with which to meet New Deal spend-ings, spend-ings, and put one over on the wealthy oil operators. Like some other of his ideas, that one did not work out as be had planned it. Without that tide land oil we cannot meet the national defense requirements and keep 52 per cent more automobiles on the roads. Should the service station refuse to sell you all the gas you might wish, it will be safe to lay the blame at the door of Honest Harold's Har-old's New Deal dreams. Appropriation for Fair Deal Point 4 projects is one of the unnecessary expenditures Congress can well afford af-ford to forget under our present circumstances. With Fair Deal tutors to guide us, we are rapidly becoming a benighted nation, in need of our own philanthropy. |