The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, June 10, 1918, Page 9

_ Homes on the Land for Our SoldleTsLil\ Returned Warriors Can Be Offered Work at Building ‘Dams and Power Plants “for Irrigating Millions of Acres Washington Bureau, Nonpartisan Leader ECLAMATION projects in the United States during the past 20 years show a startling con- trast in results, when those built and operated by private cor- those built and operated by the public. Judge Will R. King of Oregon, chief counsel of the United States Reclamation service, says that 90 per cent of the government reclamation projects have been a success, while only about 10 per cent of the private projects have been satisfactory. It is on the basis of this fact, and in view of the need for the development of new lands for cultiva- tion when the armies and the men in the war indus- tries are demobilized after the war, that the Recla- mation service is asking for new legislation that will allow it to open up another 100,000,000 acres to farming. “You will never be able to make a great natlon, said Secretary of the Interior Lane, recently, “un- less you preserve a great body of the people upon the land and identified with it, and having it as their own to use. Here is a plan of reconstruction’ after the war that will populate a great part of our western country, and that upon the most simple lines. We have along the Colorado river, for exam- ple, a million or a million and a half acres which can be irrigated if we will dam that river and de- velop power and hoist that water to the mesa. I would take enough men to build those dams from the returned army, to put up that power plant, and I would pay those boys in farms upon the mesa itself. Let each man have his 40 acres of irrigated land, with a house, with stock, and let him pay Uncle Sam in labor for it by constructing the works that make it possible. RECLAIM SWAMPS AND FLOOD LANDS “T would follow that course along the other rivers of the West ‘in the arid-and semi-arid sections. I can give you 4,000,000 -acres of irrigable lands if you can give me the hands that will build the dams and dig the ditches. “Then I would come to the Mississippi valley. : Okanos-n lmnect, Okanogsn,‘ Wflh- Apples‘m the mlmerop ‘.»»:Other pgoducts are’ grown between the orchard rows. porations are compared with Shoshone dam in northern Wyoming. Water stored behind this high dam, constructed by Reclamation service engineers, would cover 465,000 acres one foot in depth Away below you have 15,000,000 acres of overflow- ed lands. Build dikes, and save that land, and di- vide it among the men. Up to the north you have the cut-over lands and the swamp lands. TAKE THEM FROM THOSE WHO HAVE THEM, at a reasonable figure, pull up the stumps, build houses upon the land, and let the men have 40 years in which to pay. “We want to deal with these men upon plain business grounds, not as giving them largesse, but as giving them opportunity, and unless democracy means opportunity it means little.” That plan of Secretary Lane’s is the plan covered in the bill that the Reclamation service has drafted and that is now ‘awaiting action by congress. The /bill provides a method by which reclamation dis- tricts may be organized, where there are a number of private owners, and by which, upon the issuance of bonds by such a district to cover the cost of the work, the Reclamation service will take charge and perform the work—whether it be irrigation of dry B ,Government efiorts have n\ade tlns 1mproved lgnd wo;th from $250 to $700 an acre. PAGE NINE "act as builder for local districts is made necessary Secretary of the Interior F. " K.Lane Would Reward All Workerson Reclamation Projects With Forty- | Acre Tracts lands or drainage or clearing of swamp or cut-over lands. There are today 82 000,000 acres of 'swamp and cut-over lands in the Umted States that are worth } reclaiming by big-scale operations, such as this bill { would afford, but are not worth reclaiming in small tracts. There are nearly 18,000,000 acres of arid lands waiting for reclamation on the same big scalee. THE GOVERNMENT ALONE CAN DO THE JOB. WHY PROFITEERING METHODS FAIL New leg}slation which will permit Uncle Sam to because congress has mnot seen fit to appropriate ‘money fast enough to meet the demand for new projects, and because a large proportion of the settlers under the existing projects are not paying their dues to the Reclamation service promptly. This cripples the revolving fund with which the new dams and ditches were to be financed. At the same time, the Sérvice engineers find that there are so many tracts of privately owned land within each project that the difficulties of adjustment of water taxes are almost too much for a government expert. There are numerous groups of landowners ready to organize bondmg districts in regions where public lands are found in considerable amounts. The new law would permit wholesale improvements, without waiting for another big appropriation from the “federal treasury. Judge King points out that the settlers under the privately built reclamation projects are as a rule dissatisfied, and are anxious to come under the Reclamation service. A careful study of the cost of the 15 largest government projects and of the 15 largest projects built and run by private corporations shows why the discontent exists. The government improvements cost an average of $47 3 an acre, and the farmer pays no interest; the private compames projects cost $67 an acre, and the farnier is forced to pay 6 per cent annually on that cost. Without wrapping themselves in the flag or proclaiming publicly their own virtues, the engi- neers of the Reclamation service have done some wonderful things for the good of the American na- tion. They have constructed, at a cost of $120,- 000,000, a series of projects that already have brought water to 1,750,000 acres, or 37,000 farms, -and when the 30 projects now un- der way are completed, more than i 3,000,000 acres of farming lands in | 15 states will be brought under exhaustless cultivation. WONDERS' OF ENGINEERING In the course of thls Job these workers for Uncle Sam: have con- structed the highest masonry dam, the longest tunnel, and the biggest irrigation reservoir in the world. In 16 years they have built 10,313 miles of canals in the desert country, and they have built reser- voirs. in the mountains, to hold back _the flood waters, to the amount of. 9,000,000 acres. , The Elephant. Butte dam alone stores up for use enough water to cover 2,500,000 acres of land with water one foot deep. These engineers have . taken hydro-electnc power development . in their stride.. The Service has de- veloped 48,093 horsepower, which is used in construction and lease to numerous_ municipalities and / dividuals. The Roosevelt dam m Arizona is today earning enough from its power development so that _the government ' could afford to give .to every farmer under that project a. receipt in' full for his _.debt on the water-nght And tha,t; - o S