lO 



FORESTRY AND IRRIGATION. 



January, 



IRRIGATION CREATES HOME MARKETS.* 



By Hon. James Wilson, 



Secretar}' of Agriculture. 



IF we take note of what is in men's 

 minds at the present time we find 

 that public discussion turns more upon 

 markets than on any other one proposi- 

 tion in planning for our national pros- 

 perity. The policy of the United States 

 for the last forty years has been to build 

 up home markets, not only for our man- 

 ufacturers, but for our farmers as well. 

 We have built up our manufacturers in 

 order that we might have home markets 

 for our farmers, and also to encourage 

 everything that could permanently live 

 and prosper within the United States 

 through the diversification of our in- 

 dustries. 



Changes are coming about gradually. 

 When I was a boy, forty-.six years ago, 

 I went to Iowa. It was a new country 

 in those days, and there was no home- 

 stead law. We bought our land. Our 

 friends, the farmers of the East, were 

 somewhat alarmed as to what the result 

 might be ; but those friends in the East 

 built railroads out to us, and overtook 

 us with the railroads, and sometimes 

 went farther West with them than we 

 had gone, and waited for us to come, 

 and the result, as regards the market- 

 ing of eastern farm products, was in 

 some ca.ses unsatisfactory to the eastern 

 farmer ; but the eastern manufacturer 

 got such a market as is not to be found 

 anywhere else in the world outside of 

 the Mississippi Valley, and theprosperit}' 

 of the eastern manufacturer has in turn 

 brought prosperity to the eastern farmer. 



Whatever temporary detriment the 

 opening up to agriculture of the rich 

 lands of the Mississippi Valley caused 

 the eastern farmer, has been wholly over- 

 come and overbalanced by the benefit 

 which the eastern farmer has received 

 from the establishment of the great 

 manufacturing industries of the East. 



We have gone on developing the West 

 as far as the one hundredth meridian. 

 East year we sold $950,000,000 worth, 

 of American farm products in foreign 

 countries, and we are developing a mar- 

 ket for our products in Asia which will 

 absorb the whole surplus of farm prod- 

 ucts from the West, no matter how many 

 additional acres of arid land we ma}' re- 

 claim and cultivate. The product of 

 the western lands will simply increase 

 the great aggregate of wealth which 

 the American farmer is bringing back 

 to this country for our agricultural ex- 

 ports. 



The immigration in those early days 

 of which I have spoken was of home- 

 seekers. People who came from for- 

 eign countries in those days wanted 

 farms, and they got them and built up 

 the northwest. A change has come a 

 most undesirable change : The home- 

 seekers who want farms are not coming 

 to such an extent as they did in those 

 early days. The man is coming to this 

 country to live in the cities and work in 

 the factories, and the admonition is 

 forced upon us that the United States of 

 America in its population is becoming 

 somewhat out of balance as regards the 

 town and the country. The cities are 

 growing in proportion faster than the 

 country. - 



There is danger in this, as all recog- 

 nize. We should do everything we can 

 to promote the growth of a rural popu- 

 lation by opening opportunities for peo- 

 ple to get homes on the land and train- 

 ing them to till it, so that they will 

 know how to get their living from the 

 ground. Everything we can do, and that 

 which the Department of Agriculture is 

 doing, to make conditions of rural life 

 more pleasant and prosperous, tends to 

 correct this growing evil of too many 



* Extract from a speech delivered at Washington, D. C, December 23, 1901, at a banquet 

 given by Hon. F. G Nevvlands to prominent public men, including members of the Senate 

 and House Committees on Irrigation. 



