CONSERVATION THROUGH ENGINEERING. 25 



of our people. It will not, of course, solve the problem of increas- 

 ing the number of farms and the area of cultivation to meet the needs 

 of growing population. Neither will it enable us to expand our home 

 market rapidly and largely enough to keep the country on an even 

 keel of prosperity. 



We must go forward with the development of natural resources as 

 we have done for the past three centuries. And we must recognize 

 at the outset that conditions have changed with the depletion of the 

 public domain to the point where it offers comparatively little in the 

 way of cultivable lands. 



We have now to deal principally with lands in private ownership. 

 This calls for a new point of view and for the application of a 

 somewhat different principle than that which has governed our 

 reclamation policy heretofore. Moreover, reclamation is no longer 

 an affair of one section of the United States. The day has come when 

 it must be nationalized and extended to all parts of the Republic. 

 . To the deserts of the West we have brought the creative 

 of water, and we must find a way to go on with this work. But it is 

 of equal importance that we should liberate rich areas now held in 

 bondage by the swamp, convert millions of acres of idle cut-over lands 

 to profitable use, and raise from the dead the once vigorous agricul- 

 tural life of our abandoned farms. 



One more fundamental consideration we have outlived our day of 

 small things. Whether, we would or not, we are compelled by the 

 inexorable law of necessity arising out of existing physical condi- 

 tions to cooperate, to work together, and to employ large-scale opera- 

 tions, and on this principle we should move : Not what the Govern- 

 ment can do for the people, but what the people can do for them- 

 selves under the intelligent and kindly leadership of the Government. 



We have an instrument at hand in the Reclamation Service which 

 has dealt with every phase of the problem which now confronts us, 

 and with such high average success as to command the entire confi- 

 dence of Congress and the country. It has turned rivers out of their 

 natural beds, reared the highest dams in existence, transported water 

 long distances by every form of canal, conduit, and tunnel, installed 

 electric power plants, cleared land, provided drainage systems, con- 

 structed highways and even railroads, platted townsites, and erected 

 buildings of various sorts. In this experience, obtained under a 

 variety of physical and climatic conditions, it has developed a body of 

 trained men equal to any constructive task which may be assigned to 

 it in connection with reclamation and settlement in any part of the 

 country. 



True economic reclamation is a process of converting liabilities 

 into assets of transforming dormant natural resources into agencies 

 of living production. When such a process is intelligently applied 



