42 The Dawn of a New Constructive Era 



an acre, just indicating how these things are going on. In 

 northern Montana we have an Indian reservation, known as 

 Fort Peck, and we opened there three years ago a million acres. 

 That had been picked over and the best allotted to the Indians. 

 These lands were appraised at $2.00 to $7.00 per acre, and Ave 

 opened them to homestead entry with the appraised price in 

 addition. At that time there were other lands available, and only 

 27,000 acres were taken up the first year; but the next year, 1915, 

 71,000 acres were taken; and last year 198,000 acres were taken 

 up. So that the price didn't trouble them. The demand for 

 land on which they can raise something, on which they can 

 make a Hving in this country, is pressing and urgent. Just one 

 other word with respect to Fort Peck. A large part of that 

 land was classified as coal, and a lot of fellows wanted that land 

 so badly they paid for coal filings on it at $10 and $20 an acre. 



Now, the United States Reclamation Service is another in- 

 stance of this new era of interrelation between public and private 

 business. The government has now expended probably 120 mil- 

 $120,000,000 lion dollars in building reclamation projects for arid lands. The 

 Spent to ^ ^ ^.Qs,t of reclamation is spread over the land reclaimed. The 

 people buy the water rights, and they must pay annual install- 

 ments, under a recent law, covering a period of twenty years, for 

 the total cost. What is that cost? All throughout the Western 

 states you will find people willingly and gladly paying anywhere 

 from $30 to $1C0 an acre just for the water alone, to say nothing 

 of the cost of reclaiming the land ; and leveling it and getting 

 it readv for crops which may run up to $50 an acre more. 



I am saying these things to you just t0| point out a little of 

 what is going on in different parts of the country, just to show 

 the demand for farm land under conditions such that a poor 

 man can work out a home. 



It was mentioned by a gentleman here today that if you 

 don't give a man enough land to make a living on, he is going 

 to make a failure. Congress saw that proposition. Back in 

 1909 Congress saw that there were large areas in the Western 

 country now known as the so-called dry-farming region. It 

 has been ascertained that there are great areas in Montana, 

 Washington, Idaho and Colorado where crops, particularly grain 

 crops, can be raised successfully, where they couldn't raise any- 

 thing and didn't raise anything twenty years ago; the idea is 

 to crop the land alternate years so as to put two years' moisture 



Reclaim Arid 

 Lands 



