Millions for Moisture 



221 



in the demand for such articles, the man- 

 ufacturers will be compelled to enlarge 

 their plants and add to the number of 

 their employees. Such increase will add 

 to the demand for home-grown crops and 

 assures the continued prosperity of the 

 eastern farmers. Thus we see that the 

 eastern farmer and manufacturer are 

 both directly concerned in the work of 

 reclaiming the great American desert. 

 Aside from the fact that the limitless 

 West is the safety-valve against the 

 threatened overcrowding of the East, it 

 is also the treasure chest from which the 

 East may draw fat revenue for all the 

 years to come. 



$1,000,000 EXPENDED EACH MONTH 



Although only four years have passed 

 since the enactment of the law, the engi- 

 neers are today employed upon the con- 

 struction of twenty-five great projects in 

 fourteen states and two territories. The 

 expenditures average more than a million 

 dollars a month. Three of the great 

 projects are practically completed, and 

 six more will be in service this summer. 

 On many of the projects the work goes 

 forward night and day, and the rate 

 of progress is strikingly at variance with 

 that at which government work usually 

 proceeds. 



There is, of course, a reason for this. 

 The Reclamation Service is absolutely 

 divorced from politics ; it is a business 

 organization and its motive is to build 

 engineering works and to erect an empire 

 in the desert. 



The reclamation fund available for the 

 25 projects now under way amounts ap- 

 proximately to $33,000,000. Before these 

 are completed it will be about $41,000,- 

 000. When this has been expended, 

 1,400,000 acres will have been reclaimed 

 and will begin to return annually 

 $4,000,000 to the fund. 



The vast area in these projects and 

 their remoteness from each other make 

 it impossible in one short paper to de- 

 scribe all of these works. 



SAET RIVER PROJECT IN ARIZONA 



Let us go in fancy to the land of mys- 

 tery, of lost races and hoary ruins, a 

 land whose civilization was old when 

 Rome was in the glory of its youth — 

 Arizona. 



"In that weird land, where the wild winds 

 blowing 



Sweep with a wail o'er the plains of the dead, 

 A ruin, ancient beyond all knowing, 



Rears its head." 



Antiquity is associated so seldom with 

 things American that most of us confess 

 to an extraordinary interest in the pre- 

 historic on this continent. Owing to the 

 absence of decipherable hieroglyphics and 

 to the few poorly preserved examples of 

 aboriginal workmanship which our an- 

 cient Americans have left us, an atmos- 

 phere of impenetrable mystery envelops 

 the age in which they lived. Today their 

 ruins stand alone in the desert, and the 

 passage of time is marked in the crum- 

 bling walls or in the ancient canals, 

 choked with the wind-swept drift of cen- 

 turies. 



They were the first American irri- 

 gators and their works evidence no small 

 skill in engineering. The modern canals 

 of today follow closely the line of their 

 ancient ditches. A splendid compliment 

 to the intelligence of this prehistoric race 

 is being paid by our government in the 

 selection of the valley in which they dwelt 

 for the initiation of one of the greatest 

 irrigation works ever attempted. 



No national work under the Reclama- 

 tion Act has attracted more general in- 

 terest and none has been more widely ad- 

 vertised by the press than the Salt River 

 project, surrounding the city of Phoenix, 

 Arizona. While the engineering features 

 are stupendous and spectacular, the charm 

 and mystery of the region in which the 

 work is going on appeal even more 

 strongly to the visitor. This is the land 

 of uncorrupted distances, of opal-tinted 

 landscapes and perpetual sunshine. Its 

 atmosphere is one of enchantment and its 

 silence holds a voice of the vanished past. 



