PROGEESS IN NATIONAL LAND EECLAMATION IN THE 
UNITED STATES.^ 
By C. A. BissELL, 
Engineer, U. S. Reclamation fievvice. 
[With 10 plates.] 
The full importance of national irrigation can not be measured 
in dollars and cents. In the building of new Commonwealths in the 
arid West the Government is utilizing largely its own undeveloped 
resources. It is creating opportunities for its citizens to establish 
themselves in permanent homes in which patriotism, loyalt}^, and 
civic pride are bred and fostered. The primary purpose of the 
Eeclamation Act was to create homes, and this purpose has been ful- 
filled richly and abundantly. Viewed from this standpoint, no one 
can deny that national reclamation has amply justified all its expo- 
nents declared for it. 
Since 1902 the Eeclamation Service has constructed the irrigation 
system to supjDly completely 1,780,000 acres of land. Also, the 
capacious storage reservoirs of the Government are furnishing a 
supplemental supply of stored water to 1,000,000 additional acres 
in other projects, or a grand total of 2,780,000 acres. 
On the Government project lands are 40,000 families in independ- 
ent homes. The population in cities, towns, and villages in these 
Government projects has been increased by an equal number of 
families. That is to say, on the 1,780,000 acres reclaimed there are 
now profitably employed and satisfactorily housed 400,000 people. 
The arguments for increasing and making permanent the Nation's 
virility, prosperity, and growth by creating more homes of this kind 
were never more forcible and unanswerable than just now. Ameri- 
can people can not rightly claim to have measured up to their 
opportunity until the deserts of the West and the unused agricul- 
tural lands of the balance of the Nation have been replaced by vistas 
of prosperous farmsteads. 
' This article Is in continuation of papers printed in the Smithsonian reports for 1901, 
pp. 407 to 423 ; 1903, pp. S27 to 841 ; 1904, pp. S73 to 381 ; 1906, pp. 469 to 492 ; 1907, 
pp. 331 to 345 ; 1910, pp. 169 to 198 ; 1915, pp. 467 to 488, all of which are out of print. 
497 
