George Hebard Maxwell was an American lawyer and conservationist.
Background
George Hebard Maxwell was born in Sonoma, California. He was the first of three children of John Morgan Maxwell and Clara Love (Hebard) Maxwell. His mother was born in Ashtabula, Ohio; her parents had been early settlers in the Western Reserve; his father, born in Stonington, Connecticut, spent several years in Atlanta, Ga. , before going in 1849 via New Orleans and Panama to California, where he worked in the mines until 1858. He then settled on the Sonoma Valley farm where his son was born. The farm continued in the family, and Maxwell returned to it often, especially in summer.
Education
Maxwell was educated in the public schools and at St. Matthew's Hall, a military academy in nearby San Mateo.
Career
He became an official court stenographer for the federal circuit court in San Francisco and, after reading law in the office of Judge Mesick, was admitted to the California bar in 1882. As a member of the firm of Mesick and Maxwell, he became a recognized expert on water rights. He helped farmers establish private irrigation organizations but became aware of their limitations without government assistance. Whether such assistance should be state or federal was one of the much argued questions of the 1890's. In December 1896 Maxwell attended the seventh annual meeting of the National Irrigation Congress in Phoenix, Arizona, and there, as he later confessed, became convinced that a national program was the answer. He had started the California Advocate, a monthly devoted to irrigation, but soon changed its name to the National Advocate. In 1899 he gave up his law practice, organized and became executive director of the National Irrigation Association, and began an energetic writing and speaking campaign to enlist support for a national irrigation program. At the National Irrigation Congress in Chicago in November 1900, Maxwell and Francis G. Newlands, then congressman from Nevada, made notable speeches outlining proposed national legislation. Maxwell and Frederick H. Newell drafted a bill that Newlands introduced in the House, and Senator Henry Clay Hansbrough in the Senate, in January 1901. Both spoke frequently in the series of hearings that followed. Congress was reluctant until President Theodore Roosevelt, using memoranda prepared by Maxwell and Newell, strongly endorsed the Newlands bill and called for speedy action. Credit for the Reclamation Act of 1902 must be divided, but Maxwell's strenuous speaking campaigns helped swing Eastern businessmen and political leaders to its support. From 1912 on, he spent much time in Washington working closely with Newlands, by then an influential senator, on river regulation legislation, but results were disappointing. In 1917 an amendment to the Rivers and Harbors Act established a National Waterways Commission with broad powers, but no appointments to the commission were made, despite many letters and conferences on Maxwell's part. The act continued inoperative until, in Maxwell's words, it was "entombed" in the Waterpower Act of 1919. He organized the American Homecroft Society as early as 1907 and published its monthly journal, Talisman. He was a strong supporter of Eleanor Roosevelt's "subsistence homesteads" program. His ideas contributed to other New Deal programs, notably the Soil Conservation Service and the Civilian Conservation Corps, but poor health after 1930 did not permit him to participate actively. Maxwell's last ten years were spent in retirement in Phoenix, Ariz. , and a paralyzing stroke left him bedridden for several years before his death in Phoenix at eighty-six years of age. His ashes were interred in the family plot at Mountain Cemetery in Sonoma Valley in 1948.
Achievements
Maxwell was a lobbyist, publicist and journalist for the causes of reclamation and a unified, federally administered water policy. He played an important part in the development of United States water conservation, particularly in the arid Western States. He influenced legislation and systematic water development planning, river management, and flood control. In 1941 the National Reclamation Association named George Maxwell “Father of Reclamation. ” His many causes were set forth in several books, the best probably being his Golden Rivers and Treasure Valleys: Wealth From Wasted Waters (1929).
One of Maxwell's important contribution to a national irrigation program was his organization of the Salt River Valley Water Users' Association in Arizona. The valley farmers wanted a federal project; this meant taking over existing canal corporations and smoothing out tangled and snarled water rights, which Maxwell, as an experienced lawyer, understood. Also, the federal government felt it could not deal with individuals but must deal with an organized cooperative body of water users. Maxwell carefully drafted articles of incorporation for such an organization and persuaded the water users to adopt them in 1903. The Salt River project got off to an early start and became a model. Of the first twenty-six federal irrigation projects in the West, no less than twenty-three required the formation of a water users' association, and the Salt River pattern and even Maxwell's language were freely copied. Meanwhile, his interests had broadened to include drainage, flood-control projects, and river regulation in general, and he persuaded the National Irrigation Association to change its name to the National Reclamation Association to reflect this wider concern.
He spent much time in New Orleans in 1911-1912 promoting drainage projects on the lower Mississippi and worked unsuccessfully to get legislation enacted that would permit the Bureau of Reclamation to take on drainage, as well as irrigation, projects. At the New Orleans National Drainage Congress in 1912, he insisted that to control Mississippi River floods the levee system below St. Louis must be supplemented by a great national system for headwaters control on all tributaries. As executive director of the Pittsburgh Flood Commission (1908 - 1911), Maxwell drafted plans for the upper Ohio tributaries that he hoped would lessen Ohio River floods and thus those of the Mississippi. Later, as a member of the Ohio State Water Conservation Board, he initiated what he regarded as a model program for the Muskingum River watershed. He fought a continuous battle with the Army Corps of Engineers, whose programs he felt were not comprehensive enough. Another lifelong interest of Maxwell's was getting workers in industry into contact with the soil. He advocated municipal weekend gardens for city dwellers and suburban cooperative homecroft living, a "homecroft" being a one-acre garden home.
Membership
a member of the Ohio State Water Conservation Board
Personality
Maxwell’s concepts were visionary and his approach was idealistic. Occasionally, perhaps, his imagery was unrealistic. He envisioned water diversion projects, for example, which would produce new forests that would in turn create regular rains in previously desert areas. His social projects were based on a sentimental and paternalistic view of the life of small farmers. Much of his interest in reclamation rested on his desire to “educate” this class and make it “self-sufficient. ”
His efforts to secure systematic water management, on the other hand, were quite realistic. The legislation he wrote or influenced was pragmatic and dealt with basic issues. Maxwell was foremost a capable lobbyist and propagandist, but he recognized the qualifications of trained specialists. He was not a hydrologist or engineer; however, he worked effectively with these professionals and he had their respect. He was a good organizer and administrator, a skillful advocate and negotiator, capable of communicating his ideas attractively to ordinary, and to influential people on the level of their interest.
Connections
Mr. Maxwell was married twice. His first wife, Katharine Vaughan Lanpher of San Francisco, whom he married on October 28, 1880, died in 1934. They had a son, Donald, and a daughter, Ruth. On June 3, 1935, he married Lilly Belle Richardson, who survived him.
