324 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



that if you are going to solve that question at all you must 

 solve it as you would if you stood at the mouth of the Father 

 of Waters at its highest flood, looking up that river and realiz- 

 ing that the great volume of water that comes down that stream 

 had its source originally in million upon million and millions 

 upon millions of little, trickling streams that had their birth in 

 the drops of rain that fell from the heavens, and if you are go- 

 ing to control the floods you must go back to where the rain- 

 drops fall and hold back those drops. (Applause.) 



You must do it, for one thing and as one way, by an enor- 

 mous and comprehensive system of tree planting. And there is 

 more than that reason for planting trees. Trees will not only 

 make great artificial reservoirs to hold back the flood waters 

 from all the lower rivers, but they will supply our commercial 

 needs and regulate the flow of the tributaries of that river. Let 

 that broad idea once find lodgement in the public mind, and the 

 people of the whole Mississippi Valley and all its tributaries, 

 from the Alleghenies to the Rocky Mountains and from Canada 

 to the Gulf of Mexico, will realize that there is one problem 

 that the people of Minnesota and the people of Mississippi 

 should clasp hands on, and that is, that we should plant those 

 vast new forests and should bring under successful cultivation 

 every possible acre of land that can be used for making homes 

 for farmers (applause), and, as a result of doing so, that we can 

 control the whole volume of the floods. If we go at it that way 

 we will have the people of this country doing it with the same 

 determination to overcome any obstacle that they are showing 

 in the digging of the Panama Canal. 



When the American people grasp a great national ideal, ob- 

 stacles only stimulate them to higher action, and it would be so 

 with that great problem. The difficulty has been that the prob- 

 lem has been sectionalized. The plantation owner in Mississip- 

 pi thought he needed nothing but a levee, the owner of swamp 

 land in Illinois thought he needed nothing but a ditch and today 

 the owners of swamp lands in northern Minnesota draining in- 

 to the Mississippi who are interested in its development think of 

 nothing but local interests. 



Now, my good friends, let me say this to you : I came into this 

 forestry and irrigation work from the west, California being my 

 native state, and the national irrigation movement made no im- 

 portant growth until the last six or seven vears. For more than 

 a quarter of a century the people of the west, from one section 



