292 



THE FORESTER. 



December, 



which are as old as the first pages of 

 written history itself. We have evidence 

 that the aborigines of the southwest had 

 perfected a system of irrigation, and the 

 natives of New Mexico, and Arizona, 

 who brought their methods from Mexico 

 and Spain, handed down their skill to 

 posterity. These methods are at once 

 simple, inexpensive and effective, and can 

 easily be adapted to the needs of a large 

 proportion of our great arid country. 



I am not optimistic enough to believe 

 that the ingenuity of men can encompass 

 the redemption of the six hundred millions 

 of acres which comprise the nation's vacant 

 public lands, but if, as has been claimed, 

 there is water enough for the irrigation of 

 one hundred millions of acres (providing 

 the supply is economically used), I can 

 easily imagine ten millions of good citi- 

 zens finding homes on farms which are 

 self-supporting. In the State of Texas 

 there are still many millions of acres of 

 unclaimed areas which would lend them- 

 selves readily to irrigation methods and 

 become valuable to settlers. The area of 

 this great State may be appreciated by re- 

 membering the fact that if it were popu- 

 lated as densely as the State of Massa- 

 chusetts there would be over ninety mil- 

 lions of souls within its borders. But it 

 is the immense tracts that embrace a large 

 part of Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and 

 Nevada, much of Wyoming, Colorado, 

 California and Oregon, and the basin of 

 the Columbia in interior Washington, 

 which comprise mainly the public domain, 

 the reclamation of which you are strenu- 

 ously advocating. Whether this great 

 work is to be left to private or corporate 

 enterprise, whether it shall be turned over 

 to the States in which the land is situated, 

 for such treatment as is thought best by 

 those most interested, or whether the 

 national government, the owner of this 

 vast arid region, should perform the duty 

 of reclamation, are questions which you 

 are no doubt now ably discussing. It ap- 

 pears that private or corporate enterprise 

 cannot be trusted to control the improve- 

 ment with justice and equality for all con- 

 cerned. The States themselves are as yet 

 not financially strong enough to undertake 



the task. It seems to me, therefore, that 

 the plan proposed by one of the members 

 of your Association is the most feasible 

 and just. It is: "Let the government 

 build the storage reservoirs and the main 

 line canals, and the settlers provide the 

 smaller distributing system by banding 

 themselves together in cooperative organ- 

 izations." 



I believe that Congress is awakening to 

 a sense of the importance and propriety of 

 lending national aid to the movement. 

 Already considerable sums have been ap- 

 propriated for the purpose of investiga- 

 ting hydrographic conditions, measuring 

 streams, making reservoir surveys, etc., 

 and I believe that before long the policy 

 of national aid in the building of storage 

 reservoirs will be established. The gov- 

 ernment has spent over eleven millions of 

 dollars in improving the navigation of the 

 Missouri River, and, as its middle course 

 is through an arid or semi-arid region, and 

 as the necessity for water transportation 

 increases in direct ratio to the productive- 

 ness of the land through which the river 

 flows, it seems logical and right that the 

 attention of the Federal authority should 

 now be given to the conservation, for irri- 

 gation purposes, of its surplus flood, which 

 does such great damage along its lower 

 course when, swelled by melting snows, 

 its mighty volume bursts through its ex- 

 pensive confines. 



The national government has appropri- 

 ated, to June 30, 1900, for expenditure by 

 the Mississippi River Commission, $37- 

 647,780.17, of which $15,403,901.87 

 were expended for levees. There must 

 be added to this latter item over 15 mil- 

 lions of dollars contributed by the 

 States, making 30^ millions expended 

 in efforts to confine the surplus wealth of 

 vitalizing fluid contributed by mountains 

 until it is lost in the great ocean. Think 

 of the thousands of farms that could be 

 made productive by the judicious expendi- 

 ture of only a part of this great sum. 

 There are able engineers who even ques- 

 tion the wisdom of constructing artificial 

 banks, claiming that sooner or later the 

 resistless flood will break through, and 

 when it does the damage done will be a 



