etary sat with entire patience urging every man to
speak his mind fully and freely. And if bitterness toward the Service
betokened free speaking, the complainants held back nothing.

A heavy set man, tanned and cheaply dressed, said: "Mr. Secretary, I was
born in Hungary. I am a tinner by trade. I lived in Sioux City. I have a
wife and six children. I got consumption and a real estate man fixed it
up with a friend of his on the Makon Project that I go out there, see?
It took all I saved but they told me crops the first year will pay all
my living expenses. I buy forty acres.

"Mr. Secretary, I get no crops for five years. I hauled every drop of
water we use seven miles from a spring for five years. Some days we got
nothing to eat. Me and my oldest boy, we work for Mellin when we can
and we stayed alive till the water come. I get cured of my consumption.
But my money is gone. I can buy no tools, no nothing. And, Mr.
Secretary, when the canal do come they run it through Mellin's place. My
money is gone and I can't afford to dig the long ditch to Mellin's.
Mellin's place is green and mine is still desert."

"Are there no small farmers or settlers who are succeeding on the Makon
Project?" asked the Secretary.

"Yes, sir," replied the man, "many, but also, many like me."

"Then is your complaint against the real estate sharks or the
government?" persisted the Secretary.

"Against both!" cried the man. "Why did that Freet give Mellin and the
other big fellow first choice in everything? Why must I pay for what I
can't get?"

There were several farmers from different projects who had stories that
matched the ex-tinner's. When they had finished, the Secretary called on
a real estate man who had come with a protest about the running of the
canals on the Makon.

"What was the net value of the crops on the Makon Project last year,"
asked the Secretary.

"About $500,000, I think."

"What was it, say the year before the Reclamation Service went in
there?"

"Perhaps $100,000."

"We are to believe, then, that some people have found the Service
useful?"

"Oh, yes, Mr. Secretary, there are a whole lot of contented farmers up
there who are too busy with their bumper crops to come to Washington,
even if they wanted to."

The real estate man sat down and the Secretary called on the Chairman of
the Congressional investigating committee to make a brief summary of his
charges.

The Chairman said, succinctly: "I charge the