THE TRANS/MISSISSIPPI COMMERCIAL 



CONGRESS 



By J. B. CASE, President, 1907-1908 



THE nineteenth annual session of 

 the Trans-Mississipppi Commer- 

 cial Congress held at San Fran- 

 cisco October 6-10 was marked by an 

 unusual enthusaism and had the atten- 

 dance of one of the most representative 

 bodies of businessmen ever gathered in 

 the West. Among its striking features 

 ua^ a message of greeting from Presi- 

 dent Roosevelt, the presence of his per- 

 sonal representative, W. H. Wheeler, 

 of the State Department, addresses by 

 John Barrett, of the South American 

 Republics Bureau, and C. J. Blan- 

 chard, of the Reclamation Service. 



The theme of the session was greater 

 markets for the West and the need of 

 more transportation facilities. 



The Trans-Mississippi West has 

 grown amazingly in fertility as better 

 methods of agriculture have opened 

 larger areas and have made the old 

 areas produce more abundantly. Then 

 the government has come in with its 

 wonderful reclamation service and has 

 awakened the sleeping desert. The 

 work as a whole rivals the Panama Ca- 

 nal in the labor and expense involved. 

 The employment of 16,000 men and 

 the expenditure of $1,250,000 every 

 month are but incidents in the service. 

 Already the canals completed reach a 

 total of 1,815 miles as far as from 

 San Francisco to Kansas City. Homes 

 have been made for 10,000 families, 

 where before was barren land. In the 

 past five years $33,000,000 has been 

 spent, and the enterprises already 

 planned will add more than a hundred 

 millions to this sum. Nor is this 

 money spent in one locality. In New 

 Mexico one of the largest dams in the 

 world is being constructed. In Cali- 

 fornia and Nevada great reservoirs 



and irrigation plants are being built. 

 In western Kansas, the beet-stiL;ar 

 rai-ers have a $250,000 plant for pump- 

 ing to the surface the "underflow, " 

 found a few feet beneath the top soil 

 of the Arkansas River valley that 

 ditches may be filled and crops made- 

 certain. On seven great projects in- 

 volving the expenditure of $51.000,000 

 and the reclamation of over a million 

 acres, the benefit is directly to the 

 Northwest. These projects lie in North 

 and South Dakota, Montana and Wash- 

 ington. In these states lands that have 

 been considered worthless except for 

 the coarsest kind of grazing, are be- 

 ing transformed. No private enter- 

 prise could undertake the vast plans 

 being carried on by the government. 

 It has excavated forty-seven tunnels, 

 with a total length of eleven miles. 

 Among its accomplishments are ninety- 

 four large structures, 675 head\v<>rk-. 

 flumes, etc. ; it has built 375 miles of 

 wagon road in mountainous country, 

 has 727 miles of telephone lines, has 

 manufactured in its own mills 90,000 

 barrels of cement, and in its own saw- 

 mills has cut over 3,000,000 feet of lum- 

 ber. All this indicates a work of the 

 first magnitude. It will be returnee! 

 many fold to the nation. 



Out of this remarkable advancement 

 of the Trans-Mis^i-sippi country comes 

 one great problem that overshadow^ 

 all others. Important as are the va- 

 rious interests which we are trying to 

 build up, and close as are they to our 

 national life, the present-day question 

 before the Trans-Mississippi country i- 

 that of transportation for its constantly 

 rising abundance of production. The 

 one thing the farmer and the miner 

 want to know to-day is how to get the 



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