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The National Geographic Magazine 



the sunset glow was gilding its many 

 towers, and near us on a worn spot on 

 the highway stood a group of poorly 

 clothed Vuichuas, with sad, unenlight- 

 ened faces, forgetting their cruel Span- 



ish masters, forgetting their Church and 

 their Cross. With heads bowed and un- 

 covered, they stood as in the long ago, 

 greeting their beloved capital — Cuzco, 

 Sacred City of the Sun. 



HOME-MAKING BY THE GOVERNMENT* 



An Account of the Eleven Immense Irrigating 

 Projects to be Opened in 1908 



By C. J. Blanchard 



Statistician, U. S. Reclamation Service 



WE have come upon a time in our 

 national life when the ques- 

 tion of providing homes for 

 our people bulks larger than ever before. 

 The time is not far distant when it will 

 become acute. The rapid narrowing of 

 the limits of our unoccupied public do- 

 main and the tremendous increase in land 

 values in all the settled sections of the 

 United States render it yearly more diffi- 

 cult for the man of small means to get a 

 foothold on the land. There is congestion 

 today in many of our cities, and the men- 

 ace of a great population underfed and 

 poorly housed looms more darkly each 

 year. So great is the land hunger that 

 already a quarter of a million families, 

 comprising some of the best blood of the 

 nation, have expatriated themselves and 

 taken up new homes under a foreign flag. 

 What is the use of preaching love of home 

 and country when we offer nothing but 

 crowded tenements to the toiler who 

 seeks to earn a roof over his family? 



Our nation's greatness has its founda- 

 tions in the home of the man whose feet 

 are firmly planted upon his own land. 

 There is no national stability in a citizen- 

 ship born and reared in tenements. Pa- 

 triotism, loyalty, and civic pride are not 

 bred and fostered in the crowded cen- 

 ters of population. The destiny of the 

 nation is foreshadowed in the provisions 



made for the prosperity and contentment 

 of its citizens. An assurance that the 

 great mass of our people shall reside in 

 homes of their own is an insurance that 

 our future will be one of stability and 

 progress. 



The home-making instinct is a well- 

 developed trait in American character. 

 Our forefathers who landed on the bleak 

 and inhospitable shores of New England, 

 their descendants, the pioneers who con- 

 quered the middle West, and the Argo- 

 nauts of this generation who crossed the 

 trackless plains were impelled by this in- 

 stinct more than by the love of adventure 

 or the lure of gold to wander forth into 

 strange lands. 



From the very inception of our Re- 

 public our legislators have recognized 

 that it was a national duty to render the 

 acquirement of homes as easy as pos- 

 sible. This recognition was shown in 

 liberal grants to the defenders of the 

 country in Revolutionary times, and later 

 in the beneficent homestead law which 

 opened to settlement the Mississippi Val- 

 ley. It has been recognized since by the 

 enactment of other statutes making easy 

 the acquirement of public domain. Areas 

 greater in extent than many of the 

 original states have been donated for the 

 purpose of making habitable the unutil- 

 ized lands of the people. At one time the 



* An address to the National Geographic Society, March 13, i< 



