ARIZONA AND NEW MEXICO 



Extracts from a Speech of Hon. B. S. Rouky, Formerly Delegate of 

 New Mexico, in the House of Representatives 



IT is said that there are great arid 

 wastes in New Mexico and Ari- 

 zona. Now, that is true to some ex- 

 tent ; but there is not anything" so hard to 

 get rid of on the face of this earth as a 

 popular misconception, and there is not 

 a more deep-rooted misconception extant 

 in this nation than the conception that is 

 in the minds of the people of this Con- 

 gress with reference to Arizona and New 

 Mexico. 



There is not a square mile of the sur- 

 face area of either of those great territo- 

 ries that has not its use for something, 

 either for pasture, for lumber, for coal, 

 for minerals, or for agriculture. The 

 area of New Mexico alone is bigger than 

 the area of the state of New York, all the 

 New England states, and New Jersey 

 combined. We can give up the size of a 

 few ordinary states to the desert and still 

 have a good many others left for the pur- 

 pose of agriculture. 



Most people think we have no re- 

 sources in those territories. There are 

 not a dozen men within the sound of my 

 voice who know that Arizona has the 

 greatest forest within this nation. The 

 greatest forest of white-pine timber 

 which the continental United States af- 

 fords exists in Arizona; it runs from its 

 northwest corner flown to its southeast- 

 ern cornel - . The second greatest forest 

 in this nation is in New Mexico. The 

 greatest coal field in this nation is in New 

 Mexico. The greatest iron deposit in 

 this nation is in Xew Mexico. Our ter- 

 riton has iron enough to gridiron China 

 with steel rails and coal enough to smelt 

 it : and yet we are told by gentlemen that 

 we can never support a great population, 

 and that unless we have vast, agricultural 

 resources we can never have people. The 

 city of Xew York alone has more people 



than each of three-fourths of the states of 

 this Union and it does not produce a 

 potato. The state of Pennsylvania does 

 not raise enough farm products to sup- 

 port its 6,000,000 splendid people. 



Is there nothing but agriculture that 

 will support a population? I deny but 

 what we have sufficient agriculture for 

 that purpose, and we will have a great 

 deal more when our waters are im- 

 pounded, as they will be under the be- 

 neficent reclamation act, which was the 

 greatest law in my estimation since the 

 homestead act itself; and when, under 

 the provisions of that act, New Mexico 

 and Arizona shall have their available 

 waters impounded — the flood waters — 

 that now go down, unused, to the sea, 

 they will have an area of cultivation 

 amounting to at least 20,000,000 acres, 

 and that will be equal to 80,000,000, or a 

 tract almost as big as New Mexico itself, 

 because when once irrigated, one acre of 

 our lands is equal to four of any other 

 land in non-irrigated sections. 



Do you think that with all these re- 

 sources we will not support a population? 

 Look at the city of Denver. Twenty- 

 five years ago gentlemen who are now- 

 objecting to us would have said that no 

 such city as that could ever come into be- 

 ing in a place like that. It has no more 

 agricultural resources, as the gentleman 

 from Colorado will confess, than we have, 

 and yet there is there today a city of 

 150,000 or 200,000 people. 



New Mexico grazing lands now sup- 

 port seven millions of sheep, a million 

 and a half of cattle, hundreds of thou- 

 sands of horses, and a vast number of 

 Angora goats. She shipped last year 

 200,000 head of cattle, 30,000,000 pounds 

 of wool, a vast number of sheep and 

 lambs, and a million and a half tons of 



