Attitude of the Administration Toward the Recla^ 



mation of the Arid Lands of the West" 



By Hon. RICHARD A. BALLINGER, Secretary of the Interior 



(BELIEVE nothing has done so existence may have its excuses. The 

 much to stimulate and bring about pioneer could not eat the timber, and 

 the development of the West and its what may now appear to have been 

 settlement as the policy of the Govern- reckless prodigality may have been, at 

 ment in connection with free home- the time, abject necessity ; nevertheless, 

 steads for landless settlers and the en- waste is always to be deplored, and true 

 couragement of exploration in the min- conservation of all our natural re- 

 eral regions. It is true the great land sources means the elimination of waste 

 grants were productive of railroad con- so far as possible, and the production 

 struction, linking the Atlantic with the of the greatest utility for the greatest 

 Pacific, and the construction of these number. The protection of the great 

 railroads was an almost indispensable water-sheds of the mountain ranges 

 element in the progress of settlement from being denuded of their forests so 

 west of the Mississippi River. Since that the streams may flow through their 

 the adoption of the homestead and min- courses and carry water to the arid 

 eral laws, the public lands have been lands of the plains is of vital necessity 

 considered less of a direct national as- in the reclamation of these lands, 

 set than as a means for the advance- The Nation is, therefore, to be con- 

 ment of our people and the encourage- gratulated that, even if not seasonably 

 ment of agricultural, industrial, and undertaken, we have now 7 entered upon 

 commercial growth. a period of rational protection and of 

 Up to the last decade it was not fully saving of its resources in the public 

 apparent that the vast resources of the domain. You may be assured, my f el- 

 Government in the public domain were low citizens, that all the energies of the 

 rapidly disappearing, and that for set- Government will be put forward to 

 tlement nothing but arid and semi-arid make effective the means necessary to 

 lands would be left ; that the forests accomplish this result. 

 and streams and coal deposits were be- Appreciating the necessity of further 

 ginning to be the prey of speculators development in encouraging the settle- 

 and the Government's title therein di- ment of the West upon lands which 

 vested by fraud and criminal devices. without irrigation were uninhabitable 

 The necessity for the conservation of and fit only for grazing (and that to a 

 public utilities had not ripened into a very limited extent), Congress in 1902 

 conviction that the Government owed adopted the method of appropriating 

 any responsibility either to the present the receipts from the sale and disposal 

 or to future generations. of public lands in certain states and ter- 

 In reference to the forests, particu- ritories to the construction of irrigation 

 larly, tremendous loss existed, not only works for the reclamation of arid and 

 from fires, but from the wasteful semi-arid lands. The wisdom of this 

 methods of logging and of manufactur- measure could hardly have been fully 

 ing. Under pioneer conditions waste- recognized by those who \vere respon- 

 fulness on account of the necessity for sible for its enactment. It not only 



*Delivered before National Irrigation Congress at Spokane, Wash., on August u, 1909. 

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