CONSERVATION THROUGH ENGINEERING. 23 



as gains, for the Nation has sometimes been too prodigal in offering 

 its natural resources as an inducement to private effort. Not only 

 so, but with the exhaustion of the free public lands in our great cen- 

 tral valleys the most remarkable natural heritage that ever fell 

 into the lap of a young nation conditions of home making and set- 

 tlement have radically changed. 



-There can be do doubt that there is an important sphere of action 

 which the Government must occupy if we are to go steadily forward 

 with the work of continental conquest, and all it implies to the future 

 of the Nation, but in suggesting practicable steps of progress at this 

 time I do not forget the burden of taxation which confronts our 

 people nor the delicate and difficult task which Congress is called 

 upon to perform in trying to keep the national outgo within the 

 national income. Hence, I am now suggesting such constructive 

 things as the Government may be able to do through the exercise of 

 its powers of supervision and direction and with the smallest pos- 

 sible outlay of money. 



Under this head I put, first, the matter of suburban homes for 

 wage earners; second, reclamation of desert, overflow, and cut-over 

 areas, together with improvement of abandoned farms, under a sys- 

 tem of district organization which may be made to finance itself; 

 third, cooperation with various States in the work of internal devel- 

 opment. 



GARDEN HOMES FOR THE PEOPLE. 



There is no more baffling problem than that presented by the con- 

 tinued growth of great cities, but it is a problem with which we must 

 sometime deal. It bears directly on the high cost of living and is, 

 indeed, largely responsible for it. Rent is based on land values. 

 Land values rise with increasing population. The price of food is 

 closely related to the growing disproportion between consumers and 

 producers, resulting from urban congestion. 



Here is Washington, a city of some 400,000 people, doubtless 

 destined steadily to grow until a Member of Congress predicts 

 it may touch 2,000,000 twenty years hence. Already the housing prob- 

 lem is acute, as it is in almost every other large American city. It 

 would be a pitiful thing if the provision of more housing facilities 

 to meet the needs of growing population meant merely more con- 

 gestion and higher rents, with an ever-decreasing degree of landed 

 proprietorship and true individual independence. Such conditions, 

 it seems to me, undermine the American hearthstone and carry a 

 deep menace to the future of our institutions. I believe there mugfc 

 be a better way, and that the time has come when we should make 

 an earnest effort to find it. 



