172 OUR FEDERAL LANDS 



Telephone lines (miles) 3,3So 



Transmission lines (miles) 1,761 



Excavation (cubic yards) 256,426,258 



Statistics of this kind have little meaning to 

 any of us, but assembled they cannot fail at least to 

 convey vivid impressions of magnitude and detail. 

 They help also to inspire respect for the purchasing 

 ability of two hundred million dollars. 



One may conceive the appeal that such works 

 made to the imaginations of inexperienced des- 

 ert farmers, and the enthusiasm and confidence with 

 which many thousands undertook to make their for- 

 tunes under leadership of the nation's wise men. 

 The power, capital, wisdom, and skill of the United 

 States assembled in the grim desert for no other 

 purpose than to insure their personal success! As 

 the latest investigators of the causes of failure have 

 remarked, these were conditions not unlikely to up- 

 set good judgment by seeming to offer without stint. 

 No doubt many inexperienced and incompetent per- 

 sons undertook these farms on the imagined assump- 

 tion that the government would see them through; 

 and, eager to fill their lands, reclamation officials at 

 first accepted practically all comers. 



So it happened that all the projects set out on 

 their careers as fast as each could serve enough wa- 

 ter for a beginning, with the confident hopes of 

 states, neighborhoods, farmers, project officials and 

 the national administration itself. In fact many im- 

 petuous entrymen were permitted to go upon the 



