THE TRANS^MISSISSIPPI COMMERCIAL 



CONGRESS 



By J, B, CASE, President, 19074908 



THE nineteenth annual session of and irrigation plants are being built, 

 the Trans-Mississipppi Commer- In western Kansas, the beet-sugar 

 cial Congress held at San Fran- raisers have a $250,000 plant for pump- 

 cisco October 6-10 was marked by an ing to the surface the "underflow,"' 

 unusual enthusaism and had the atten- found a few feet beneath the top soil 

 dance of one of the most representative of the Arkansas River valley that 

 bodies of businessmen ever gathered in ditches may be filled and crops made 

 the West. Among its striking features certain. On seven great projects in- 

 was a message of greeting from Presi- volving the expenditure of $51,000,000 

 dent Roosevelt, the presence of his per- and the reclamation of over a million 

 sonal representative, W. H. Wheeler, acres, the benefit is directly to the 

 of the State Department, addresses by Northwest. These projects lie in North 

 John Barrett, of the South American and South Dakota, Montana and Wash- 

 Republics Bureau, and C. J. Blan- ington. In these states lands that have 

 chard, of the Reclamation Service. been considered worthless except for 



The theme of the session was greater the coarsest kind of grazing, are be- 

 markets for the West and the need of ing transformed. No private enter- 

 more transportation facilities. prise could undertake the vast plans 



The Trans-Mississippi West has being carried on by the government, 

 grown amazingly in fertility as better It has excavated forty-seven tunnels, 

 methods 0)f agriculture have opened with a total length of eleven miles. 

 larger areas and have made the old x\mong its accomplishments are ninety- 

 areas produce more abundantly. Then four large structures, 675 headworks, 

 the government has come in with its flumes, etc. ; it has built 375 miles of 

 wonderful reclamation service and has wagon road in mountainous country, 

 awakened the sleeping desert. The has 727 miles of telephone lines, has 

 work as a whole rivals the Panama Ca- manufactured in its own mills 90,000 

 nal in the labor and expense involved, barrels of cement, and in its own saw- 

 The employment of 16,000 men and mills has cut over 3,000,000 feet of lum- 

 the expenditure of $1,250,000 every ber. All this indicates a work of the 

 month are but incidents in the service, first magnitude. It will be returned 

 Already the canals completed reach a many fold to the nation, 

 total of 1,815 miles — as far as from Out of this remarkable advancement 

 San Francisco to Kansas City. Homes of the Trans-Mississippi country comes 

 have been made for 10,000 families, one great problem that overshadows 

 where before was barren land. In the all others. Important as are the va- 

 past five years $33,000,000 has been rious interests which we are trying to 

 spent, and the enterprises already build up, and close as are they to our 

 planned will add more than a hundred national life, the present-day question 

 millions to this sum. Nor is this before the Trans-Mississippi country is 

 money spent in one locality. In New that of transportation for its constantly 

 Mexico one of the largest dams in the rising abundance of production. The 

 world is being constructed. In Cali- one thing the farmer and the miner 

 fornia and Nevada great reservoirs want to know to-day is how to get the 



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