THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



25 



SPEECH BY JOHN W. SPRINGER. 



President National Live Stock Association, Denver, Colo. 



Before the Tenth National Irrigation Congress. 



This congress is called to inaugurate the redemp- 

 tion of arid America. Sixteen States with 600,000,000 

 acres of land are vitally interested in the provisions of 

 the irrigation bill passed by the last Congress. When 

 our bill was being weighed in the balance, and the 

 crucial test was upon the faithful men who for a quarter 

 of a century had been educating the people as to the 

 benefits of irrigation, when the East was objecting to 

 giving away government lands or government money 

 to aid this great undertaking, it fell to the lot of Theodore 

 Roosevelt to administer the allopathic dose of irrigation, 

 which means more to the western states than any 

 measure ever adopted by the American Congress. 



Irrigation is our western ignis fatuus, which will 

 draw thousands of landless tenants from the over- 

 crowded East, and tens of thousands from the valley of 

 the Mississippi. The twentieth century is heavy with 

 possibilities. Irrigation is now a fixed fact, and we 

 have $8,000,000 available for immediate expenditure 

 under federal management for an actual demonstration 

 of the practicability of storing the flood waters oi the 

 Rocky mountains. The conservation of waste waters is 

 the chief link in what shall be a great chain of lakes, 

 reservoirs and dams, which, during this decade, shall 

 make glad the waste places of the great American 

 deserts. A new empire is to be builded ! All hail to the 

 progressive men who aided in its birth, and will, from 

 this congress, direct the first step toward making the 

 wilderness of the West blossom and bloom as the rose. 



This proposition, like every other great question 

 confronting us at the dawn of the twentieth century, 

 must be handled by men who do things progressive 

 men men who believe in their country, men who believe 

 that the pathway to industrial independence and com- 

 mercial supremacy lies before us and not behind us. 

 We firmly believe in hitching our wagons to a star 

 where there is light, than to a hole in the ground where 

 there is no light, but a symbol of the old warning "aban- 

 don hope all you that enter here," I admire a typical 

 American. I enthuse when I read the history of the 

 struggles and trials and hardships of the leaders of the 

 decades now sweet in memory. It has been a symposium 

 &t national successes, and I would not pluck one star 

 from our national diadem. History, however, can never 

 solve actualities. You and I live to-day and it is our 

 province to aid in writing the history of greater successes. 



STOCKMEN HAVE HELPED. 



The great industry I have the honor to represent 

 before this congress is the live stock industry of the 

 United States. The stockmen of America have aided 

 this irrigation bill during the five years' existence of 

 the National Live Stock Association of the United 

 States. We were the first great organization to wire 

 our approval to the President on his irrigation message 

 to Congress, and we here, now and unreservedly, pledge 

 our best efforts to aid in effecting what we believe will 

 bring more people and more money into the West than 

 all the other measures enacted by. Congress .in over a 

 hundred years. The stockmen who ride the range 

 who climb the hills, the mountains ; who live along the 

 trails; who follow their flocks and herds looking for 

 water, know better than any other class of men living 

 what the value of water is to a country. We know that 

 the more water we have, the more moisture, and that 



means more grass, more forage crops and more feed. 

 The stockmen have been the great American pioneers; 

 they have fought the Indians ; scattered the wild beasts ; 

 annihilated the buffalo; builded ranches on the confines 

 of civilization, and with true, progressive American 

 spirit, left a heritage to their children typified in the 

 beautiful lines : 

 "Our fathers crossed the prairies as of old their fathers 



crossed the sea, 

 To make the West, as they the East, the home land of 



the free!" 



Evolution has come to our interests, as well as to 

 every other interest on this continent. The time is upon 

 us for the breaking up of the great ranges. The old 

 free grass and general mavericking days are laid away 

 with the recollections of pioneer days. Unnumbered 

 herds of cattle and bands of sheep are referred to now 

 around the camp fire of the modern outfit as the "boys" 

 tell of other days and other cow punchers and sheep 

 herders. We are yearly getting closer to humane ideas 

 of breeding and fattening and marketing live stock. 

 We have been taught severe .lessons that now we must 

 have quality rather than quantity in our flocks and 

 herds. We are prosperous and our values of live stock 

 have increased over $400,000,000. in the five years' his- 

 tory of our organization. Our people are meat eaters, 

 and the consumption continually increases, while pro- 

 duction fails to keep pace with our growing popula- 

 tion. 



We. have at last placed on the federal statute books 

 the principle of "the conservation of the waste waters," 

 and this small beginning will work like a little leaven; 

 the conquest with a bloodless revolution of our American 

 wilderness. 



We are constantly growing broader in our national 

 life. We have learned to get away from our own door- 

 yard and our own neighborhood. We are no longer 

 circumscribed by the narrow limits of down east ; of the 

 coal fields; of the oil fields of Ohio and Indiana; of 

 the wheat belt of the northwest ; of the corn district of 

 Illinois, Iowa and Kansas; of the cotton fields of the 

 south or of the fast developing sugar beet districts of 

 Colorado, or the cattle and sheep ranges of the far west. 

 Our national life is too great, too broad, too unselfish; 

 too cosmopolitan; too national. We are all striving for 

 success. We want to grow, expand, advance. We want 

 in fine to go forward ! 



Woe to that leader who seeks to sidetrack the 

 energies of the American people ! Woe to the pessimist 

 who continually predicts clouds, failures and defeat for 

 American genius he will drop out, down, like the 

 Irishman in Mexico, who, in going down to work in a 

 mine for the first time, became very nervous as the 

 shadows gathered about him. As the bucket dropped 

 lower and lower his fears increased and he yelled, 

 "Lower me up; 0, I say lower me up, or I'll cut the 

 rope !" 



NEED NEW LAND LAWS. 



At this great irrigation congress, I wish to state 

 another contention of the National Live Stock Asso- 

 ciation, and that is, that we believe the time is opportune 

 to re-write the land laws of the United States. What 

 was good for our people 100, fifty and twenty-five 

 years ago, when they had the virgin prairies of the east 

 and the Mississippi valley, with their rich loams, will 

 not apply to the arid and semi-arid lands remaining in 

 the far West. We believe the homestead laws should be 



