236 THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



be accused of indirection and trickery and all that because we are in 

 favor of giving proper attention to a great subject? The greatest sub- 

 ject now agitating the minds of the people, so far as this country is 

 concerned, is whether we can irrigate that vast region and populate it 

 as thickly as Indiana and Illinois. Although we will always have 

 waste lands there, there are valleys you can populate much more 

 thickly than those States. More people can live on the same area of 

 irrigated land than can live where you depend on a rainfall. You can 

 have the thickest kind of population where you have irrigation. 



The people all over the country, not in the arid region alone, are 

 looking to this as a heritage of America where American enterprise is 

 to go, and from which great results are to come. To accuse men of 

 bad faith, and all that because they are in favor of what is for the 

 manifest interests of the country is something which I reject and repel. 

 There has been nothing done in connection with this question which 

 should reflect upon anybody as honorable men. This proposition was 

 commenced two years ago. It has progressed thus far. The question 

 is, Shall the investigation be completed and the proposition be put in 

 a position where Congress cau do it, or should somebody else do it? 



I do not care how much talk there is about the flow and about get- 

 ting the water there, you have now got to support the Indians at the 

 rate of $30,000 a year, and if the Government went on with this enter- 

 prise it would give them all employment. They will work. They are 

 good Indians and they have been accustomed to work. There will be 

 no trouble about that. They go off to find work. I know them well. 

 They are Indians who have always had "a local habitation and a 

 name" where they live; and if- you give these Indians an opportunity 

 to work they will do so; and if you give them back the water for their 

 farms they will cultivate them and make a living for themselves. If 

 you feed them you make paupers of them. You have no right to do 

 that. They were never beggars. They always took care of them- 

 selves, and we must give them that same chance again. It would be 

 a great wrong to make beggars of them. Let them work and earn 

 .their own living from their little farms. That is what they want. 



If Congress will not authorize the Government to do it, let us give 

 the contract to other parties to build this dith, and make it a condition 

 that these Indians shall be employed. But that question is to be de- 

 termined when the result of this investigation comes in. I do not 

 think that the investigation should be stopped for the bare fear that 

 it might illustrate the possibilities of developing that country and bene- 

 fiting mankind, and showing what vast resources we have. Because 

 the possibilities are good that may come from the investigation 1 do 

 not think should be stopped. 



Nothing is asked from the Government of the United States ex- 



