i6 



FORESTRY AND IRRIGATION 



January 



That the country realizes this, and 

 has supported the Government in its 

 provisions for the future of the people, 

 shows conclusively that the old ways 

 of haste and waste are fast being dis- 

 carded. 



The swamps of the United States, 

 mainly in the South, cover an area 

 as large as Illinqis, Indiana and Ohio 

 — a vast sheet of stagnant water and 

 coarse rushes. All this land is now 

 useless, or practically so. If drained, 

 the soil is fabulously rich ; and what 

 now is waste, a home for mosquitoes, 

 and a haunt for creeping things, may 

 be changed into agricultural districts 

 capable of supporting 16,000.000 peo- 

 ple, with one family on each twenty 

 acres. The engineering difficulties 

 are not greater than others already 

 mastered. 



Practical The Buffalo N e tv s 



and Useful spg^j^g admiringly of 



Statesmanship ri -j ^ t~. d 



rresident Roosevelt s 



practical statesmanship : 



"For the first time in the history of 

 the United States a President repre- 

 sents the American idea of peace, in- 

 dustry and production in the fullest 

 sense. While inferior to no predeces- 

 sor in martial spirit, Mr. Roosevelt 

 has the good fortune to be the great- 

 est soldier of industry the world ever 

 saw. Is the West for Roosevelt, be- 

 cause he has lived in the West, and 

 wrote the story of its winning, and 

 shares the superb Western spirit? 

 Only in part is that the explanation. 

 The watchwords of Roosevelt men in 

 the West to-day are Irrigation and 

 Forest Preservation. And both ir- 

 rigation and forestry are business 

 propositions of the first rank in the 

 United States. 



"At heart the South is for Roose- 

 velt. . Why ? In addition to lesser 

 things the South knows that he is the 

 man who is making the dirt fly on the 

 Isthmus as it never flew before and is 

 thus opening the Pacific to the com- 

 mercial conquest of the South. It 

 followed his journey recently all the 

 way down the Mississippi from Keo- 



kuk to Vicksburg and learned that 

 for the first time in our history a Pres- 

 ident had completely grasped all the 

 immense significance of the internal 

 waterways of the Union when they 

 are developed as they should be, and 

 set himself the mighty task of getting 

 that project going actively while in 

 office. That is another business prop- 

 osition." 



A Third There is a form of re- 



Kind of clamation that is not ap- 



Reclamaticn i- j , 1 j 



plied to new land, 



whether arid or swamp. Land which 

 has. been worn out by bad methods of 

 cultivation and abandoned as useless 

 can be reclaimed by the introduction 

 of wise methods of cultivation. Large 

 areas of land in the Southern States 

 have been abandoned because they 

 were cultivated so long in one crop, 

 usually cotton, that they became un- 

 productive. The Office of Farm Man- 

 agement of the Department of Agri- 

 culture is doing a most interesting and 

 valuable work in teaching farmers, 

 who have long been used to putting all 

 their efforts into one crop, to diversify, 

 and thereby get better returns and in- 

 crease the fertility of their land. This 

 increase in fertility is as good as a 

 large increase in the amount of land 

 available. 



The annual report of the Board of 

 Agriculture in Jamaica describes sim- 

 ilar efforts in that island. Many 

 farmers there have been induced to 

 buy live stock in order to have the 

 manure to apply to the soil. Live 

 stock is generally an important ele- 

 ment in the cropping plans recom- 

 mended by the Office of Farm Man- 

 agement. 



A Municipal A municipal cement 

 Cement plant of the capacity of 



1,000 barrels per day is 

 proposed for making the cement re- 

 quired for the construction of the Los 

 Angeles aqueduct and accompanying 

 w^orks. 



The plant will be located at Teha- 

 chapi. Cal., and so far as we know, 



