THE NATION'S PRIDE 



601 



of work, but already held positions with 

 railroads, in banks, on farms, or in some 

 city shop. They wished a taste of the 

 large life of this new land. There are 

 many more of the same desire, some of 

 whom will make Alaska richer by their 

 presence and find happiness in searching 

 out the land. 



TAMING THE RIVERS EOR USE 



No one can survey the physical condi- 

 tion of the United States without being 

 impressed and almost overwhelmed with 

 the magnitude of the work that must be 

 done in keeping our rivers within bounds 

 and putting them to use. It is the largest 

 task that the government must under- 

 take sooner or later, and the sooner, in 

 my judgment, the better. This matter 

 came immediately and most practically to 

 my attention on a trip made in the late 

 spring to the lower valley of the Colorado 

 River. On the Arizona side of this river 

 the government is reclaiming the desert. 

 That lowland will grow almost anything, 

 from dates to alfalfa. Its most helpful 

 friend, and its unrelenting enemy, too, is 

 the river itself, for without the river it 

 would return to cactus and sage. Yet the 

 river is so jealous of her freedom that 

 she yearly attempts with violence, and by 

 insidious methods as well, to reclaim for 

 herself each foot of land that has by 

 stealth been taken from her. 



On the opposite side of the river, the 

 California side, the river is held in by 

 mountains, until it has reached the Mex- 

 ican line. There, by a capricious turn, it 

 deserts its old, accustomed channel and 

 flows westward into what was once a 

 lake, but is now little more than a morass, 

 and so slowly finds its way to the Gulf 

 of California. 



Immediately north of this westward 

 bend in the river is the Imperial Valley, 

 which has lately been used by several 

 novelists to illustrate the heroic struggle 

 of man with nature ; for this valley was 

 once a sea itself, and has indeed left a 

 sort of rudimentary sea in a lake known 

 as the Salton Sea. The fruitful soil of 

 this valley, hundreds of feet deep, is the 

 silt of the Colorado, the deposited wash 

 of a thousand miles of mountain channel. 



Each June, when the snows of the 



Rockies melt, the Colorado, resenting the 

 limitations which man has set up for it, 

 presses with two strong shoulders against 

 both sides of its prescribed banks, like 

 Porthos under the slow caving of the 

 earth. And as long as that flood comes 

 the people on both sides must watch and 

 work as the Hollanders have done. 



CATCHING YOUNG WATERS 



Now, far above this point of danger 

 there are thousands of square miles of 

 land that need but the water of the Colo- 

 rado River to make them as fruitful as 

 the lands of the San Joaquin or the Salt 

 River Valley. We need to catch that 

 water when it is young, soon after it has 

 been born from the snows. There, in 

 mountain valleys, it should be kept for a 

 time and, as needed, led into the peaceful 

 paths of usefulness. And on that prob- 

 lem the Reclamation Service is working. 

 The difficulty is to find large reservoir 

 areas. 



This instance is cited to show how in- 

 timately the matter of flood control and 

 of reclamation are bound together. The 

 problem extends from sea to sea. When 

 we come eastward, to the Missouri and 

 the Mississippi, for example, we find that 

 in their upper reaches the lands need the 

 waters, while in their lower reaches the 

 lands must be saved from the waters. 



No one can take the yearly toll of lives 

 lost and of property destroyed by the 

 furious and unrestrained sweep of our 

 rivers without realizing that the people 

 of this country cannot regard themselves 

 as owning this land, really possessing it, 

 until they have brought these waters 

 under subjection. And in doing this they 

 will literally create new land by the mil- 

 lions of acres — lands that will support 

 millions of people as against the thou- 

 sands which live upon it today. 



WHY SHOULD THE WHOLE BURDEN BE 

 BORNE TODAY? 



How these great works can be carried 

 on calls for constructive thought, not 

 merely on the engineering side, but more 

 immediately upon the financial side, as to 

 those ways and means by which the lands 

 reclaimed shall be made to bear in some 

 degree the burden of the expense. As to 



