JtJLT 10, 1914] 



SCIENCE 



47 



Association, Mr. Walter Parker, of New 

 Orleans, declares that there are ten naillion 

 acres of land in the upper Missouri Eiver 

 basin that could be sufficietitly irrigated to 

 yield a crop of hay worth more than one 

 hundred million dollars each year. This land 

 would require no seeding', only water. A kind 

 Providence has furnished the soil and placed 

 the seed in the soil and sends sufficient rain 

 and snow to germinate the seed and support 

 the growing plants. It only remains for man 

 to utilize the precipitation, and receive the 

 benefit. 



You are urged to consider the above figures 

 in connection with the present high cost of 

 food. This high cost of food is undoubtedly 

 due to the fact that millions of acres of land 

 are producing nothing, while hundreds of 

 thousands of farms in all sections of the 

 country are producing only a fraction of the 

 possible productivity, owing to the lack of 

 water. It should also be noted that the con- 

 struction of dams and reservoirs would also 

 result in a large development of hydro-electric 

 power. This increase of electric power should 

 decrease the cost of production and should 

 therefore be a contributing factor in decreas- 

 ing the cost of living. The Newlands Bill 

 recognizes the absolute necessity of conserving 

 the food supply of the nation, which food 

 supply is in such imminent danger from 

 waste of water and from waste of soil by 

 erosion. It would therefore seem that the 

 bill is one that every person who is interested 

 in the cost of living should urge their repre- 

 sentatives in Congress to support. 



We are told that the chief opposition to the 

 Newlands Bill comes from the railroads. If 

 this is true, the railroads have adopted a very 

 unwise and short-sighted attitude. All fair- 

 minded people realize aud concede that the 

 railroads are by far the most important in- 

 dustry of the country. Personally, I believe 

 that the federal government should do all that 

 it properly can to promote the safety, solvency 

 and prosperity of the railroads. But the rail- 

 roads would not suffer by the adoption of the 

 Newlands plan, for the reason that they would 

 gain through the increased productivity of the 



soil far more than they would lose through 

 competition with water transportation. 



Among those who recognize the importance 

 of a new policy that will prevent this enor- 

 mous waste of water and soil are President 

 Wilson, ex-Presidents Taft and Eoosevelt. 

 The Congress of Governors which met at the 

 White House in 1908 also strongly endorsed 

 the new policy, which is splendidly stated by a 

 Philadelphia newspaper, from which I quote 

 as follows : 



We must prevent floods. We can make use of 

 the natural reservoirs which nature has provided 

 for the absorption of rains, and we can create 

 artificial reservoirs for the storage of flood waters, 

 as we are now doing on the Panama Canal. The 

 natural reservoirs are the forests and the agricul- 

 tural lands which absorb the rainfall and the 

 melting snows. Our aim should be everywhere to 

 increase the porosity and absorbent properties of 

 the soil and thus prevent run-offs, which swell our 

 streams into great floods, which now aggregate a 

 damage upon property of the stupendous sum of 

 nearly 200 millions a year in the United States. 



We have land enough to produce food 

 sufficient to supply a billion people. But we 

 can supply nothing without water. Wasteful- 

 ness is our national sin. Wastefulness of men, 

 of time, of money, and of our great national 

 resources, but I believe the figures I have 

 quoted prove conclusively that we can not 

 afford to continue to waste water. In con- 

 clusion, attention is called to an old saying to 

 the efl^ect that if each before his own door 

 would sweep, the village would be clean. Let 

 me paraphrase this by saying that if each and 

 every farmer, planter and landowner would 

 prevent the wasteful run off of water from 

 his land, there would be no more floods or 

 danger from floods, and the land would be so 

 benefited that its value would be enhanced to 

 an amount many times greater than the cost 

 of operation, and the entire nation would 

 benefit to a degree beyond computation. 



JuDSON G. Wall, 

 Chairman of the Committee on Soil Erosion 



of the Social and Economic Section of the 



American Association for the Advancement 



of Science 



Note. — Since the above was written the United 



