A MIND'S-EYE MAP OF AMERICA 



501 



desert in southern Utah and sticking 

 down a probe into the earth and striking 

 oil flowing at the rate of a thousand bar- 

 rels a day ! 



And better things than oil or fruit or 

 copper come from those Western lands. 

 Take that land over in Oregon, to which 

 I have referred. In that valley was raised 

 a boy who walked from the Willamette 

 Valley down to Stanford University that 

 he might have an education as a mining 

 engineer — Mr. Herbert Hoover. Those 

 are the great, great things that we are 

 producing. There is hardly a State that 

 is not known by some one individual's 

 name; and there are some of them that 

 are already known by the names of a 

 dozen men who have given distinction to 

 the States from which they come. 



the; noblest view in America 



Now let us go up north again, into 

 Montana. You are at Glacier Park. I 

 have not seen all of the grand places of 

 the world ; but if I were to be asked what 

 one thing in nature had most impressed 

 me I would not say the Canyon of the 

 Yellowstone, beautiful and rich in color 

 as it is, or the Grand Canyon of the Colo- 

 rado, overwhelming in majesty and in- 

 spiring as it is ; but I would say that when 

 you stand at the edge of Saint Mary's 

 Lake and look across and up to the two 

 mountains — one named by the Indians 

 "Going to the Sun" and the other "Al- 

 most a Dog" — you would find probably 

 the one thing on the North American 

 Continent that would inspire you most 

 and make you feel most properly humble. 



Glacier Park, with glaciers and lakes, 

 alongside of the Blackfeet Indians, and 

 down south of them the Sun River irri- 

 gation project. 



Six years ago I was petitioned by a 

 great body of people on that project to 

 release them from their obligation to 

 take water. I went out to see them. We 

 held a mass meeting of all the people on 

 the project, and all begged that they 

 might be allowed to continue their life 

 as farmers by the dry-farming method. 

 They said there was no danger of drouth 

 coming; that they were doing splendidly, 

 and that they did not wish to be obli- 

 gated to pay $60 or $70 an acre for water 

 rights. 



I protested, I urged, I begged them to 



look further ahead ; I held out to them 

 the prospect of sure crops, larger crops; 

 but my voice was not listened to. 



The only person on my side was a girl, 

 a girl, I suppose, 19 or 20 years of age, 

 who had been a school teacher in the 

 East. She saw what that country could 

 be with irrigation and what it would be 

 without irrigation. She made a capital 

 speech, but she did not succeed; so I 

 said, "We will abandon this project be- 

 cause you wish it." 



A few weeks before I relinquished the 

 duties of Secretary of the Interior I re- 

 ceived a petition, signed by every man 

 that was left on that project, asking that 

 we again take it up and develop irriga- 

 tion upon it, thus testifying that the girl 

 was the one true prophet of the whole 

 group. 



Come down out of Montana, with its 

 beauties and its Indians and mines, into 

 Wyoming — irrigation there, Indians 

 there, mines there, oil there — and into 

 Colorado. In Colorado we have a park 

 where you can stand at one spot and see 

 twelve mountains, each one 12,000 feet 

 high. I want to see that park extended 

 along the east side of the Rocky Moun- 

 tains, so that it will include everything 

 from the Rocky Mountain Park down to 

 Pike's Peak. Already one hundred and 

 fifty thousand people visit this section 

 with their automobiles every year — car 

 licenses from New York and Maine, 

 from Manila and Honolulu. 



HE TREATED HIS TREES LIKE CHILDREN 



In Colorado, too, we have irrigation 

 projects. I was on one of these projects 

 some years ago, and I met a man who 

 had gone there to combat tuberculosis. 

 He had left Illinois, where he had been 

 a railroad man. He had a little money, 

 bought about five acres of land, and put 

 it into peaches. He told me that the year 

 before he had made $2,500 off those five 

 acres of peaches. 



I asked him the secret of his success, 

 and he said, "Because I love every tree. 

 Each morning when I get up I go out 

 among the trees and treat them as if they 

 were my children. I look at them, I pat 

 them ; I look at the soil ; I look up at the 

 leaves to see if any leaf has turned yel- 

 low, and if there is I discover the cause 

 of it. I love each of those trees, and the 



