ANNEX ARID AMERICA. 



'IN UNION THERE IS STRENGTH." 



The Cheyenne Irrigation Congress should heiv out a broad national 

 -policy that all can unite on ivho want Arid America Annexed by Irrj- 

 gation . 



BY GEORGE H. MAXWELL. 



While we hear so much about "annexation" would it not be well 

 for the people of this country not to lose sight of the fact that we have 

 an empire right in our midst which is today a desolate waste, but might 

 be reclaimed and added to our fertile national domain by the construc- 

 tion of irrigation works which would be far less costly than ships and 

 soldiers. 



The cost of one week of the war would build an irrigation system 

 which would reclaim a million acres, and just as much add it to our 

 territory as though we had annexed a new island in the ocean. The 

 building of the works would be a labor of creation, not destruction. 

 Every dollar disbursed would give employment to wage-earners who 

 are without work, relieving suffering at home and in our midst, and 

 creating new laws on which tnese same wage earners, when their labor 

 had reclaimed it, could upbuild rural homes which, in the words of our 

 Secretary of Agriculture, would be "safeguards of the nation" far 

 stronger and more enduring bulwarks of our liberties than any forts 

 or navies. 



This great question of the reclamation of the arid public domain, 

 and the creation of sufficient water supplies for the irrigation of all of 

 arid America that can be reclaimed, is no longer a dream of the future. 

 It is a problem of today, staring the people of this nation in the face, 

 and like Banquo's ghost, it will not down. It must be solved. The 

 lands are needed for homes. There is an appalling and cold blooded 

 cruelty in a national indifference which allows hundreds of thousands 

 of willing workers to be in want in the great centers of population in 

 the east, while millions of acres in the west need but their labor to be 

 transformed from worthless wastes into happy homes for these same 

 workers. 



Governor Mount, of Indiana, has stated this great problem in 

 words so strong and vigorous that they ought to be read and pondered 

 by everyone who has the welfare of this country and its people at 

 heart. In a letter recently published in the Los Angeles Times a 

 journal which is a strong advocate of the policy of the reclamation by 

 the federal government itself of its own arid lands Governor Mount 

 said: 



