When Mr. Harriman, on the 20th of December 1906, telegraphed the President that, “in view of” his “message,” he would resume efforts to control the Colorado, he ventured to express the modest hope that the Government, as soon as the necessary Congressional action could be secured, would “assist with the burden.” Mr. Roosevelt replied that he would recommend legislation to “provide against a repetition of the disaster and make provision for an equitable distribution of the burden.” (House Report No. 1936, 61st Congress, 3rd Session, p. 163). Three weeks later, however, when the work was actually in progress, he merely said, in his message to Congress, that “the question as to what sum, _if any_, should be paid to the Southern Pacific Company for work done since the break of November 4th, 1906, is one for future consideration. For work done prior to that date no claim can be admitted” (Same Report, p. 157). This may have seemed to Mr. Roosevelt a proper recommendation, and one likely to secure “an equitable distribution of the burden;” but it would not have made that impression upon an irrigation expert, say, from the planet Mars, because it suggested a doubt whether “_any_” of the burden should be borne by the chief beneficiary, namely the Government. However, when a bill to reimburse the Southern Pacific Company was introduced in the House of Representatives in 1908, the President did give it cordial support by saying, in a letter to the chairman of the Claims Committee: “... I accordingly wrote an earnest appeal to the officials of the road” (the Southern Pacific) “asking them to act. They did act, and thereby saved from ruin many people in southern California, and saved to the Government the Laguna dam.... I feel that it is an act of justice to act generously in this matter, for the railroad, by the prompt and effective work that it did, rendered a notable service to the threatened community. In no other way could this result have been accomplished.” (House Report No. 1936, 61st Congress, 3rd Session.) Mr. Roosevelt’s “earnest appeal” had been addressed, as a matter of fact, to E. H. Harriman, not to “the officials of the road;” but the President, apparently, could not bring himself, either in this letter or in his previous message, to mention the name of the man who, at the very time when he was struggling with the Colorado River at the request of the Government, was being prosecuted by that same Government as a malefactor. Names are often embarrassing, and the name in this case might have suggested to the public mind the obnoxious idea that Mr. Harriman, after all, might not be a wholly “undesirable citizen.” Then, too, there would have been a certain incongruity in denouncing “Harriman,” by name as a public enemy, while asking the same “Harriman,” by name, to render a great public service; so it was apparently thought safer to mention the name in one case and drop it out of sight in the other.