Home-making by the Government 



2 59 



RAISING HOGS IN THE KLAMATH VALLEY : KLAMATH PROJECT, OREGON (SEE 



PAGE 267) 



In many parts of it Nature has placed 

 in juxtaposition all the natural elements 

 except rainfall required for a fruitful, 

 prosperous country. Its climate is health- 

 ful and salubrious ; its valleys and plains 

 possess a soil of inexhaustible fertility, 

 and from the forest-clad mountains, with 

 summits in regions of perpetual snow, 

 countless streams rush downward to both 

 oceans or flow into desert sinks and there 

 evaporate. How to overcome the absence 

 of moisture from the clouds and thus 

 bring the region to its proper state of de- 

 velopment is today a problem of para- 

 mount importance. Its successful solu- 

 tion will provide a safety valve against 

 the impending dangers of congestion in 

 the cities of the East. 



The future of our desert empire is, in 

 a measure, predicated by the marvelous 

 achievements of the pioneers. With a 

 courage born of conviction and fostered 

 by the hope which dwells perennial in 

 the breast of the Argonaut of the sage- 

 brush country, they have, within the past 

 few years, wrested from a region long 



regarded as absolutely worthless a crop- 

 producing, home-supporting area of in- 

 exhaustible fertility, greater in extent 

 than the cultivated lands in Massachu- 

 setts, Connecticut, Delaware, New Hamp- 

 shire, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and 

 Vermont, and capable of supporting a 

 larger rural population. More than 

 $120,000,000 have been expended in ir- 

 rigation works in the West, and 70,000 

 miles of canals now carry the life-giving 

 waters to 10,000,000 acres, which each 

 year produce crops valued at more than 

 $250,000,000. 



As good American citizens, we owe it 

 to ourselves to extend our knowledge of 

 this splendid country. There is an in- 

 spiration in the breadth and vastness 

 of this sleeping empire in the West, and 

 a sublimity in the lofty mountains whose 

 summits are clothed in perpetual snow. 

 One breathes optimism and grows in 

 mental breadth and strength in contem- 

 plating scenery which has no counterpart 

 in the world. 



The economic value of national irri- 



