160 OUR FEDERAL LANDS 



eleven million people have been added to the popula- 

 tion and more than two hundred and fifty million 

 acres of arid land then public have passed into pri- 

 vate ownership. The one-room schoolhouse has 

 been replaced by the consolidated community school. 

 On some reclamation projects the school tax alone is 

 now more than all taxes combined were twenty-four 

 years ago. 



"At that time there were neither automobiles 

 nor tractors. The covered wagon still wended its 

 slow course along dim sage-brush trails. Now, 

 eighty thousand miles of concrete and surfaced high- 

 ways built in the last twenty-four years make travel 

 easy for the automobile but add to the farmer's 

 yearly tax burden. More than five million motor 

 cars are owned in the seventeen arid states, and the 

 farmer spends more money for tires, gas, and oil 

 than it cost to operate a majority of the farms in the 

 first years following the reclamation act. 



"Equally fundamental changes have taken place 

 in crops grown and in farming. Cotton and sugar- 

 beets, now important money crops, were not grown 

 on reclamation projects during the first ten years. 

 Some farmers now have more money invested in 

 facilities to market their crops than their farms 

 would have sold for ten years ago. 



"Grain and hay were the standard crops of the 

 pioneer. Now they are grown only in rotations to 

 prepare the land for products of higher acreage 

 value. Only intensive scientific farming will meet 



