3° 2 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



authorizing the retention of rights in power developed by private means, 

 the time limitation in grants for state or private works, and the leas- 

 ing of power developed on public works. 



Land Waste and Reclamation 



Each year the rivers of mainland United States pour into the 

 seas a thousand million tons of richest soil-matter in the form of 

 suspended sediment — an impost greater than all our land-taxes com- 

 bined, and a commensurate injury to commerce in the lower rivers 

 which are rendered capricious and difficult of control by the unstable 

 load. Moreover, the greater part of the sediment is swept down during 

 floods which annually destroy and depreciate property to the average 

 value of scores if not hundreds of millions, besides preventing develop- 

 ment of the fertile lowlands; and furthermore, expert determinations 

 show that the organic contamination of running water varies directly 

 with the suspended sediment, so that muddy water is a common cause 

 ' of disease and death. ISTow any comprehensive plan for waterway im- 

 provement will necessarily involve prevention of floods by means of 

 far-sighted forestry, intensive farming, judicious reservoir-construc- 

 tion, and other devices whereby the waters will be compelled to flow 

 even clearer and purer than they did before nature's delicate balance 

 between rainfall and slope and natural cover was disturbed by settle- 

 ment and industry. It is conservatively estimated that the benefits 

 resulting from the clarification and purification of the water will in 

 themselves balance the entire cost of the system of waterway improve- 

 ment required to relieve the existing congestion of traffic. 



And the control of the waters involves reclamation of arid lands 

 by irrigation, and of certain swamp and overflow lands by drainage. 

 It is estimated that these means, extended to projects already in sight, 

 will fit 150,000,000 acres of highly fertile land for settlement, thereby 

 furnishing (in forty-acre farms with necessary villages) homes for 

 an additional population of 20,000,000 — or four times that number 

 under the intensive culture which finds " ten acres enough/' The 

 expense involved might by judicious administration be made incidental 

 to that required for improving the waterways for navigation (which 

 would hardly exceed that of a trans-continental railway line), while 

 the direct benefits, as illustrated by the operations of the U. S. Eec- 

 lamation Service to date, would amount to many times the cost. 



Development and Conservation 



Such are some of the conditions and values brought into view by 

 the recurrent congestion in transportation — for which relief is im- 

 perative, else the nation, must sacrifice its supremacy and by reason of 



