far less laboriously than the average family of the entire country 

 lives on a quarter-section or even a section of fairly fertile land. 

 Yet under this intensive farming it is not the land but the water 

 that counts; for" each of the five acres of homestead must receive 

 about five acre-feet of water yearly. Now this water weighs more 

 than 6,000 tons ; the first foot of soil which sustains the plants 

 weighs but 2,000 tons and lasts for uncounted generations ; but 

 in order to sustain its inhabitant each acre must use three times 

 the weight of its soil in water, and this during each year. The 

 lesson of the arid region, by which Mississippi will one 'day 

 profit, is that of the paramount value of water among the re- 

 sources of the earth ; and in this paramount resource Mississippi 

 with its neighbor on the southwest are, richer than any others 

 among our commonwealths, save in a few others less favorably 

 conditioned in other respects. Mississippi has the land; she also 

 has the water ; she has skies fair as those of Italy ; a climate finer 

 than that of the Mediterranean, so that within her borders the 

 stream of life flows easily and steadily. 



Those there are indeed who repine because this fair State 

 lacks those mineral resources commonly supposed to form the 

 foundation of industrial activity and material prosperity; but 

 they err. It were wprth while to make a comparison or two, 

 not invidiously since each commonwealth of our Union is not 

 only sovereign but splendid in its way yet none the less in- 

 structively. Consider then that State best supplied with coal 

 and iron, which more than any other made this a manufacturing 

 nation great among the nations of the globe. Her wealth is vast, 

 her population is large, yet it were well to remember that far 

 the greater part of her wealth is concentrated in a few monopolies 

 and controlled by a few monopolists, and that by far the greater 

 part of her people are industrial dependents. She has wandered 

 far from the standards of the Founders of this Union of States, 

 of which the ideal was a free landed citizenry, each citizen the 

 peer of all the rest that ideal toward which Mississippi more 



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