The Dawn of a New Constructive Era 



189 



Why are people afraid of the stumps? Is it not because the 

 methods used have been so cumbersome and the tools so primi- Drudgery of 

 tive and used for so many generations that the people, g-ener- Stamp Re- 

 ally, have gotten the idea that making a home in cut-over lands ^^o^Q' Ended 

 means long, slow years of laborious back-breaking toil? Now, 

 is not that the case? 



The reclaiming of Western lands by irrigation is just as 

 hard ; it is almost as slow ; it is practically as costly in leveling 

 them and getting irrigation in ; but the people generally do not 

 recognize that fact ; it has not been given the publicity which 

 cut-over land has ; and, therefore, people going out into a new 

 country will go to those places in preference to the cut-over 

 land area. Even the artists recognize that clearing land is hard, 

 laborious work. In the National Library, at Washington, there 

 are seven or eight semi-circular paintings in the ceiling that 

 depict various home scenes — religion, art, etc. — and the artist 

 for labor has shown a picture of a man with a grub hoe, trying 

 to grub out a fairly sized stump, and if that isn't labor I don't 

 know what is. Such things no longer exist in land clearing, but, 

 like a lot of other fears and superstitions, it will take some real 

 education and rural demonstration before those ideas can be rid ' 

 of in the minds of the people who are coming in and who already 

 are in these cut-over lands. 



We have shown in Wisconsin that we can reduce the cost, 

 reduce the time and reduce the drudgery of land clearing, and 

 we feel that just in the proportion that we have done those 

 things, we have made the cut-over lands popular and desirable. 



An organized effort, directed along engineering lines, will do 

 a great deal to demonstrate to the people that such is the case, ^^^^ Wiscon- 

 and a clearing house where all this information can be gathered ^j-^ Began 

 together, inspected, and, if found good, given publicity; and if Organized 

 found bad, condemned ; if such an institution can be formed, a Efforts 

 clearing house, it will have more value than any other one thing, 

 in my opinion, that can happen to the cut-over lands. 



As evidence of these statements, I wish to offer the work of 

 the Department of Agricultural Engineering at the University 

 of Wisconsin. A year and a half ago a special branch was or- 

 ganized, the sole purpose of which was to deal with problems 

 connected with clearing cut-over lands. Previous to that there 

 was no exclusive agency in the Lake states where any man could 



