Yol. XX, No. 5 



WASHINGTON 



May, 1909 



THE 



©OISAIPIHIE© 

 MBAM 



a 



THE CALL OF THE WEST" 



Homes are being made for Millions of People in the 



Arid West 



By C. J. Blanchard 



Statistician, U. S. Reclamation Service 



THE Call of the West comes to us 

 today insistent and inviting. 

 Formerly it was a Call of the 

 "Wild, a voice from out a vast wilderness 

 of mountains, deserts, and plains. 



The iron horse has conquered distance 

 and the barriers long interposed by vast 

 spaces of waterless desert have been 

 thrown down. Irrigation canals long 

 enough to girdle the globe with triple 

 bands have spread wide oases of green 

 in the arid places. Cheerful, prosperous 

 •communities dot a landscape once vacant 

 and voiceless. 



The Great Plains invite the scientific 

 farmer to overcome the lack of rain by 

 intelligent methods of cultivation and 

 wisdom in seed selection. 



The unsurveyed and unexplored moun- 

 tains await the prospector to disclose 

 mineral riches untold. Countless streams 

 rushing downward from snowy summits, 

 unchecked and uncontrolled, lure the en- 

 gineer to harness and utilize for the needs 

 of commerce the power now wasted. The 

 desert — mysterious, silent, expectant, 

 -quivering under cloudless skies — holds a 



promise of freedom and independence to 

 the careworn and discouraged. It offers 

 the uplift of unmeasured distances and 

 the individual home with that broader 

 freedom of action which comes with life 

 in the open. 



May not the influence of its far-flung 

 horizons and its true perspective be po- 

 tential in character moulding and build- 

 ing? The cradle of our civilization was 

 rocked in the desert. Plato and Socrates 

 dreamed their dreams, imbibed their 

 splendid imagery and stately rhetoric in 

 a rainless land. May not our own desert 

 develop new systems of ethics and morals 

 to lead us back from the material to the 

 spiritual, into ways of gentleness and sim- 

 ple living. 



Untouched by plow, unleached by rain, 

 the desert holds fast the accumulated 

 fertility of ages. It awaits the quicken- 

 ing kiss of canal-borne water to yield 

 abundant harvests and to provide homes 

 for millions of our people. 



No national work is of more impor- 

 tance today than that of reclaiming for 

 home-builders an empire which in its 



* An address to the National Geographic Society, April 2, 1909. 



