408 THE IRRIGA TION A GE. 



of any industrious man. Men who want work should be given a 

 chance to labor in the construction of the irrigation works, and then 

 a chance to get a home on the land their labor has reclaimed. 



We are passing through a period of prosperity when there is work 

 for all who want it. But hard times are sure bo come again when men 

 will be thrown out of employment. Labor-saving machinery is con- 

 stantly lessening the need of human labor. Our wage-earning popu- 

 lation is increasing at an enormous rate. Year by year occupation 

 must be found for the new workers who are growing to youth and 

 manhood. 



Labor organizations have worked wonders in dignifying labor and 

 maintaining fair wages. But they can not create work where there is 

 none. They should use all their influence to open a channel through 

 which all surplus labor can constantly return to the land, and Arid 

 America beckons to them with open arms to tell them that she can 

 give this opportunity to millions of workers, not only of this genera- 

 tion but of generations yet unborn, if the people will only preserve 

 their birthright and adopt a national policy which will open up that 

 great Western territory tc the some class of men who settled the Cen- 

 tral Prairie States men who had something better than money men 

 who had strength and courage and tireless energy and ceaseless indus- 

 try, and with them coquered a wilderness and created the great com- 

 monwealths and cities and millions of rural homes that now stand as 

 monuments to their labor. _ 



When I stood on the top of the Masonic Temple a few days ago, 

 the spot where old Fort Dearborn once stood was pointed out to me- 

 The thought came into my mind that my mother, who still lives, had 

 in her girlhood days lived in that old Fort, and that this great interior 

 prairie region had been settled, and that this modern marvel the 

 great City of Chicago had been created by the labor of man within 

 the lifetime and memory of those who are now living. I was im- 

 pressed as I n^ver have been before by the giant possibilities which 

 the great arid region still farther to the west holds for the workers of 

 this generation. They can open the gateway to it themselves if they 

 but choose to do so. They have the key in their own hands. 



See how simple the proposition is. Year after year, every year 

 we are wasting five million dollars which might be realized from leas- 

 ing the public grazing lands. If this great sum were saved, by leasing 

 these lands, under the plan advocated by the National Irrigation Asso- 

 ciation, and expended in the construction of irrigation works, an enor- 

 mous area of irrigable lands could be annually reclaim 3!. It would be 

 reclaimed without the creation of a dollar of debt, without the issue of 

 a single bond, without the government parting with any interest in the 

 land, and when reclaimed the land could be sold to actual settlers 

 only, in small tracts, at a price so low as to bring an irrigated farm 

 within easy reach of any industrious wage-earner. 



