ADMIXTSTRATTOX FOR THE PROPLE 



549 



o{ the United States patted (larfield on 

 the back for having done that, and the 

 present President of the United States, 

 unfortunately after the damage had 

 been done, ordered the Secretary of the 

 Interior, Mr. Ballinger, to withdraw 

 again from pubHc entry those lands 

 wliich were left and had not been 

 grabbed because they did not contain 

 power sites ; and let me say that Mr. 

 Taft, before he became President of 

 the United States, had a reputation 

 among the common, every-day, ordi- 

 nary people of the country as being 

 quite a lawyer. 



At any rate, the Secretary of the In- 

 terior first restores land to public entry 

 because there is no specific law, I am 

 informed, authorizing him to keep them 

 from public entry, and then, at the or- 

 der of the President of the United 

 States, he again withdraws those lands 

 from public entry. But law^ or no law. 

 specific or unspecific. is it not about 

 time that the plain, ordinary, every-day. 

 God-fearing, law-abiding, patriotic peo- 

 ple of this country should receive some 

 little attention in the disposal of these 

 things? And is it not time that if, by 

 any possibility, there can be any doubt, 

 that doubt should be resolved once in a 

 while to the benefit of the people of the 

 country ? 



Ladies and gentleman, the future 

 prosperity and very perpetuity of this 

 country depend upon keeping a due 

 proportion between the rural and the 

 urban population. England found, to 

 her cost, when she fought the Boer war. 

 that because London and the great 

 cities had swallowed up those country 

 people of hers which had made her 

 armies invincible, she had not the men 

 to whip the Boers, and that harl it not 

 been for her colonial troops, England 

 would never have whipped the Boers. 

 The reason for that w-as that England's 

 country population had been decreasing 

 while her urban population had been 



mcreasmg. 



To every large city in this country 

 there is a stream of young men and 

 young women marching from the coun- 

 try. The time was when there was land 

 enough for every man who wanted a 

 quarter-section to go and take it and 

 raise upon it a family of American boys 



and American girls. Where can it be 

 be done now, except in the arid West 

 and Southwest ? And this land is avail- 

 able and can only be so used when 

 water is put upon it ; and it is, in my 

 humble judgment, the patriotic duty of 

 every citizen in office or out of it to see 

 to it that everything possible is done so 

 that this irrigation, this conservation, 

 this preservation of the public lands for 

 the people, may be so conducted that it 

 may be as cheaply, as quickly as pos- 

 sible put into the hands of the people 

 who are hungry for it. The Flathead 

 reservation, the Nez Perce reservation, 

 the departure of so many of our 

 farmers for Alberta, show that there 

 are people still hungry for public lands. 



I am sorry that the Secretary of the 

 Interior is not present here at this time. 

 I am sorry he has not heard what I 

 have to say; but, of course, his public 

 duties require his presence elsewhere. 



One ruling of the Secretary was that 

 those people who are unable to pay cash 

 for their land under a reclamation proj- 

 ect could receive from the Reclamation 

 Service scrip. That ruling was made 

 by Secretary Garfield. Secretary Ballin- 

 ger has reversed that upon a statement 

 of fact believed to be incorrect and 

 upon an opinion rendered upon that 

 incorrect statement of facts by the At- 

 torney General of the United States. 

 The result is that those people who arc 

 unable to produce the cash, who have 

 a horse or two and a spade or a harrow 

 or a shovel and want to go upon that 

 land and put in their work instead of 

 the money, and receive in lieu thereof 

 scrip which will be received as pav 

 for the land, are now unable to do it. 

 Singular, is it not, why everything that 

 is done is to the detriment of the man 

 who, by his brawn and his sinew and 

 sweat of his brow, wants to go upon 

 the land and earn him a living, and 

 raise a family of American boys and 

 girls to bear the future burdens of the 

 country? And yet these things are 

 done — done, perhaps, because the strict 

 construction of the law might say that 

 these things should be done. But 

 Roosevelt never hesitated under those 

 circumstances ; his motto was, "Go, do 

 it, and talk about it afterward." 



