THE IRRIGA TION A GE, 195 



The importance of providing under wise administration homes for 

 many millions of citizens is so great that some steps should be taken 

 toward completing our knowledge of the extent to which the arid lands 

 may be redeemed. 



EDUCATING THE EAST. 



BY COL. H. B. MAXSON, SECRETARY. 



For the first eight years of its life the National Irrigation Con- 

 gress met annually in the West. The attendance at its sessions was 

 largely composed of representative men of the West, and every phase 

 of the great problem of the reclaimation and settlement of arid Amer- 

 ica was discussed and considered in its deliberations. 



At the Eighth Annual Session, held at Missoula, Montana, it was 

 decided to hold the next session of the Congress in Chicago/ The 

 reason for this was that the West had practically become united in 

 favor of the adoption of a broad national policy for the preservation 

 of the forests and the storage of the floods. 



The subject was then brought before the people of the East 

 through their commercial organizations. The merchants of Los 

 Angeles began the work by correspondence with several thousand of 

 the Eastern merchants and manufacturers who find a market for their 

 goods in the city of Los Angeles, a city which is such a magnificent 

 object lesson of the marvelous transformation that water will work in 

 the West. 



The merchants of St. Paul and of Omaha next took up the work 

 of organization through correspondence with their business connec- 

 tions throughout the East, and a large number of the leading merch- 

 ants and manufacturers of the great city of Chicago have extended to 

 the movement their strong influence and support, and have likewise 

 taken up the matter by correspondence with other Eastern merchants 

 and manufacturers. 



As a result of this work the membership of the" National Irriga- 

 tion Association now comprises nearly one thousand of the leading 

 mercantile firms and manufacturing concerns of the United States, and 

 has a membership extending from California to Maine, and from Min- 

 nesota to Texas. Agricultural, commercial, horticultural and labor 

 organizations, from one end of the country to the other, have strongly 

 endorsed the national irrigation movement by resolutions, and given 

 to it their earnest aid and co-operation. 



Through a gradual evolution national irrigation has finally crys- 

 tallized into a movement which is essentially national in its broadest 

 sense, and the organizations that are now enlisting in the cause are 



