95 



and is to provide homes for 300,000 people. All of this is 

 founded on faith and courage, for the hunger for land and food 

 is driving the people of the Old World tO' create land and to 

 increase the supply of food. 



But there is no need to go to the Old World for examples of 

 land reclamation. In the State of Louisiana there are probably 

 16,000 square miles of territory which are swamp land out of a 

 total of about 45,000 square miles. In other words, in the State 

 of Louisiana alone there is an area of twice the size of New 

 Jersey which is potentially fertile, but which can be made valu- 

 abfe only after the surplus of water is removed. In the same 

 manner the bottom lands of the Illinois River and the Mississippi 

 River offer striking examples of reclamation by pumping, involv- 

 ing about 240,000 acres in the valley of the Illinois River and at 

 least as much again in the valley of the Mississippi. 



Reclamation projects are no longer experiments. They show 

 that at an initial outlay of $30 per acre, or less, and a mainte- 

 nance cost of 80 cents to $1 or $1.20 per acre, very fertile land 

 may be made to supply large quantities of foodstuffs. Hence it 

 is quite proper for us in New Jersey, living so near as we do' to 

 the large consuming centers of the United States, to think of 

 the possibilities of adding to the supply of food for these mar- 

 kets. There are in New Jersey nearly 300,000 acres, of tide- 

 marsh, tO' say nothing of the other swamp areas of the State. 

 The reclamation of this land would not only create very large 

 value, but would furnish material for the improvement of the 

 adjoining upland. There are in several of the counties of South 

 Jersey nearly 240,000 acres of this tide-marsh. Atlantic, Cape 

 May and Cumberland have a total of about 155,000, or rather 

 more than 50,000 acres of tide-marsh land each. Burlington 

 has about 10,000 acres. O'cean has about 40,000 acres and 

 Salem about 32,000 acres. Hence there is a vast domain of 

 land naturally rich, for all marsh lands are rich in the most ex- 

 pensive of plant food constituents, nitrogen. The salt-marsh 

 soil of New Jersey contains, when air-dried, i per cent, or more 

 of nitrogen as compared with one-tenth per cent, or less of 

 nitrogen in the upland soils of South Jersey, or as compared 



