RECLAIMING THE EARTH 



som and bear was to take the waters that for 

 uncounted centuries, coming down from their 

 homes in the white mountains, had gone waste- 

 fully by these arid lands, harness them, and 

 send them out to the service of man, has be- 

 gun the greatest reclamation project of modern 

 days, — in its scope the greatest perhaps in the 

 history of the world. 



In considering somewhat more in detail — 

 though, of necessity, in condensed detail— the 

 factors at work for the reclaiming of the arid 

 lands of America during this New Earth 

 period, this project of the national government 

 may first be referred to, — one of four distinct 

 reclamation features which, all told, promise 

 to work the mightiest transformation, — surely 

 the words are not overdrawn — ever accom- 

 plished in this line. 



There are, in round numbers, fifty millions 

 of acres of arid land which come directly with- 

 in the scope of this reclamation act of 1902. 

 It is the purpose of the government, under 

 the provisions of this act, to restore this vast 

 empire to fertility. By the exercise of sound 

 common sense, this national reclamation is in 

 no possible sense paternal. Paternalism, at the 



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