Under the act of March 3, 1891, as amended by the act of January 21, 1895, and May 11, 1898, the Secretary of the Interior is authorized, under general regulations to be fixed by him, to grant, without exacting compensation, permits for right-of-way on the public lands for canals and reservoirs which may be used for furnishing water for domestic, public, and other beneficial uses, and for the development of power. Several valuable water-power sites have been secured under these laws as well as under the homestead and timber and stone laws. To put a stop to such practice the Interior Department, in the later part of 1908 and in the early part of 1909, withdrew all power sites from every form of disposal under our land laws and these sites have remained thus withdrawn ever since, except during an interval of a few days or perhaps a few weeks in the spring of 1909; and during that interval no power sites were secured or disposed of. Most of these power sites are of considerable value, and they ought not to be disposed of under any of the existing land laws. Adequate provision should be made by law for the utilization of these water-power sites to the end that the Government may receive fair compensation for the same, and to the end that the public may receive the beneficial use to be derived from the development of any water-power in connection with such sites, at fair and reasonable rates (applause). The problem under our dual system of Government, State and Federal, is not free from embarrassment, as it is the opinion of men versed in the law that while the general Government may own the power site, with all the rights of a riparian owner, the water in the streams, except for purposes of navigation, belongs to the State, and that the State may allow its citizens to appropriate such water for their beneficial use and thereby render the power site of no value; for without a sufficient supply of water the power site will not be worthy of improvement or development. It seems to me (though perhaps I may err) that the problem of developing and utilizing water-power in such cases can be properly solved only by the cooperation of the State and the Federal Government (applause): the one owning the power site and the other the water in the stream, it strikes me that cooperation is essential and furnishes the only practical solution. And some plan should be devised by which the Federal and State Governments could act in harmony and in unison in such cases. Of course, when the State owns both the water and the power site, the problem is of a less complex character, and is one exclusively for the State to solve except as to the question of navigation. And I may also add in this connection that Congress, at its last session, passed a general law to regulate the construction of dams across navigable waters, by which ample provision is made for protecting the interest of the general Government in all such cases.