Phil Swing and Boulder Dam

By Beverley Bowen Moeller

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1971.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Release date: Apr 28, 2023
• ISBN: 9780520320925

Beverley Bowen Moeller

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Phil Swing and Boulder Dam

Phil Swing and Boulder Dam

By

BEVERLEY BOWEN MOELLER

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

BERKELEY LOS ANGELES LONDON

1971

University of California Press

Berkeley and Los Angeles, California

University of California Press, Ltd.

London, England

Copyright © 1971 by The 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

The 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.

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. Work, who had become Secretary of the Interior, and I rewrote the whole of Johnson’s bill. We 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. We provided that the power be sold as falling water measured at the bus bar and retailed at state regulated rates.

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 Work did not rewrite the whole of Johnson’s bill. The repayment plan was contained in each of the bills introduced to the Sixty-seventh through Seventieth Congresses. The 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. The compact was ratified not before, but as part of the Swing-Johnson bill.

The 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. The 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. Two 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 they dealt with the Colorado River legislation under consideration during the ’20s. The 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 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 two- basin 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. We 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 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. The 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.

The Boulder Canyon project signaled the start of litigation between Arizona and California which will probably never be resolved to the satisfaction of either party. The 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. The Asian colony 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.

The 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. The 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. They cannot be faulted in failing to recognize the enormous population gains that followed the war and the increased dependence on elec- trie power which would far outstrip the hydroelectric capacity of the nation’s rivers.

The 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. The 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

Contents

CHAPTER I The First Contest

CHAPTER II Freshman Congressman

CHAPTER III Second Term

CHAPTER IV The Difficult Election

CHAPTER V California Politics

CHAPTER VI The Third Swing-Johnson Bill

CHAPTER VII Passage

CHAPTER VIII Senatorial Aspirations

CHAPTER IX Former Congressman

Notes

Bibliography

Index

CHAPTER I

The First Contest

The 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 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-thousand- foot 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 thirty- four 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

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 hundred miles from north to south.

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. The 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. The 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 The 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.

The 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. The 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 water was an idea put forth by Dr. Oliver Wozencraft 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. He enlisted the aid of famed irrigation expert George Chaffey, and with others formed the California Development Company. The company suffered a number of financial crises, but by December 1900, the first canals were under construction. A diversion from the Colorado River was made on the California side a few hundred feet from the Mexican boundary. The water was turned south into a canal which took it to an old overflow channel of the river known as the Alamo River. The water flowed westerly through Mexico for fifty-two miles and then was diverted north onto Imperial Valiev. The Mexican government allowed the international diversion, provided a subsidiary Mexican corporation held the rights-of-way through Mexico. Water 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 The various mutual water companies in the valley began at that time to charge fifty cents 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. They served as fence posts, then sprouted into hedgerows.

The settlers continued to come and the demand for water continued to increase. Silt plagued the original headgate on the riverbank. The 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.

The 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 New River channel to the Saltón Sea. First to feel the damage of the Colorado’s shift to the northern delta area was the New Liverpool Salt Company at the edge of the Saltón Sea, about 280 feet below sea level.⁶ Its works were inundated. The tracks of the Southern Pacific Railroad which followed the shoreline had to be relocated to avoid a similar fate. The 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. The 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. The eastern half of San Diego County became Imperial County on