174 OUR FEDERAL LANDS 



the United States as a whole, which statistics show 

 ranged from $14.45 to $3574 for tne same period. 

 The Okanogan and Yakima projects in Washington 

 showed averages ranging from $77.30 to $385. The 

 programme will not, however, carry out in full. 

 Four projects have been abandoned, and every proj- 

 ect had its unsuccessful parts. Eighteen millions 

 were written off by the Board of Survey and Ad- 

 justment in 1925 as lost Beyond recovery for all 

 causes, including lands discovered in practice to be 

 unproductive and irreclaimable. For so great an 

 experiment conducted under conditions so varied 

 and lasting over so many years, I do not think a loss 

 of ten per cent in an attempt only to break even can 

 be fairly criticised. 



"The economic side of reclamation as it relates 

 to the investment of the United States," writes Fran- 

 cis M. Goodwin, formerly Assistant Secretary of the 

 Interior, "has been repeatedly stressed. The invest- 

 ment of settlers and others is equally important. A 

 conservative estimate places the average investment 

 of each reclamation settler on federal projects at 

 three thousand dollars, and loans by private parties 

 in addition will greatly increase this amount. As a 

 matter of fact, actual investments of settlers plus 

 private loans on reclamation property will exceed, if 

 it does not double, the amount invested at any given 

 time by the United States. Reclamation economics, 

 therefore, involve safeguarding investments by 

 United States and settlers alike, and this in turn in- 

 volves social and all other factors of life. 



