TME MAKING OF NORTHERN MINNESOTA 327 



and in a few years that will be exhausted, and the country will 

 go back to an irreclaimable desert. 



On the other hand, if you will go into that country and, 

 wherever it is practical, instead of draining it out, preserve 

 every lake that is there as a natural reservoir, and put hydraulic 

 dredges out into the lakes and into the shallow swamps, and 

 pump the sand and silt out of the bottom, that is to a greater 

 or less extent vegetable matter, pump it out on lands that can 

 be raised to a point so they may be cultivated, after being pro- 

 tected by a low levee, but never lowering the water table below 

 a point where capillary attraction will draw moisture up to the 

 roots of growing crops, you can reclaim a good many thou- 

 sands of acres in that northern country by a combination of 

 irrigation and drainage and intensive cultivation and fertiliza- 

 tion of small farms. 



If you have never seen those hydraulic dredges work you do 

 not realize what I mean. They run a great, long pipe way out 

 into the water and the dredge draws up the sand and discharges 

 it out on the land. That may be a slow process of reclamation. 

 It would be a great big scheme that you cannot carry through 

 in two or three years, but it will reclaim the land faster than you 

 can find good gardeners to cultivate it. (Laughter and ap- 

 plause.) You establish a combined system of drainage and ir- 

 rigation and open a small farm system, where you can develop 

 a community of intensive farmers raising a crop on ten acres, 

 farming as they do in Germany, Belgium, Japan and France, 

 where ten acres will produce more than one hundred acres 

 in northern Minnesota today, and the small farmer with that 

 kind of farming can afiford to irrigate, can afford intensive culti- 

 vation, can afford to fertilize, where the man with 160 acres of 

 land cultivated according to our American ideas will fail every 

 time. Somebody will say we do not get our gardeners from 

 France, but a few hours ago I was talking to 500 students over 

 at your farm school who will solve this problem. 



You want forests, and you want agricultural lands in this 

 country ; you Want all kinds of prosperity, and you want all 

 kinds of splendid institutions; but I tell you the thing you need 

 the most, and ought to make the greatest effort to get, is the 

 men and women who know how to farm a small piece of land 

 and make a home and build up a rural community. (Applause.) 

 They are the foundation of your social and political structure, 

 and until your plans for the development of your magnificent 

 state contemplate such a training of the children as will teach 



