State only about one-quarter of the prairie sod had been turned over. In this address Senator McCumber went on to say:

Eastern Montana, an empire in itself, has scarcely been scratched by the plow. Just as soon as farming can be made profitable, all that soil will respond to the consumptive demand of the country and will supply that demand for centuries to come. Mr. James J. Hill, who has made a careful study of our agricultural possibilities, asserts and demonstrates that we can raise in the United States all the food we will need to supply 800,000,000 people.

Here are the possibilities of food production. There is a rapid increase in the world's production in excess of the increase in the world's population, and the world's level of prices will necessarily be low. With our doors thrown open to the food products of the world, we must sell on the world's level of prices. Will you be satisfied with this low level, with an ever-widening gap between city earnings and farm earnings?

Well-informed men of all parties who live in the States of great undeveloped agricultural possibilities, or know the conditions there, join in calling attention to the great tracts of American land calling for cultivation and adequate development. In fact, the present Democratic administration itself calls attention to these lands and their tremendous opportunities, and explicitly admits that we have only begun our agricultural development. As far as agriculture is concerned, the leading authority in the administration at Washington is the Secretary of Agriculture. He is himself from the great State of Texas, whose area is more than 28 times that of New Hampshire. In his latest annual report the United States Secretary of Agriculture said:

The situation is one about which many have become pessimistic; but, of course, there is no ground for thinking that we have yet approximated the limit of our output from the soil. As a matter of fact, we have just begun to attack the problem; we have not even reached the end of the pioneering stage, and have only in a few localities developed conditions where reasonably full returns are secured. With a population of less than 95,000,000, living on more than 3,000,000 square miles, it is unreasonable to speak as if our territory had been much more than pioneered.

Look at it from another point of view. According to the best statistics available, it appears that the total arable land in the Union is approximately 935,000,000 acres; that only about 400,000,000 of this is included in farms and improved; that over 100,000,000 is unimproved, and not included in farms; and the remainder is unimproved lands included in farms. But there is another thought. What about the efficiency of the work on the land now under cultivation? What part of it may be said to be reasonably efficiently cultivated? What part of it is satisfactorily cultivated, and is yielding reasonably full returns? The opportunity for guessing in this field is unlimited, but according to the best guesses I can secure it appears that less than 40 per cent of the land is reasonably well cultivated, and less than 12 per cent is yielding fairly full returns, or returns considerably above the average.

These millions of good American acres are to-day nonproductive simply because American farmers can not at this time meet the expense for labor involved in cultivating them. The demand for food products up to this time has not been great enough to warrant the outlay for the labor. To those who are studying our agricultural conditions closely it is clear that the American farmers are not making enough money per acre. It is a fact that with the higher wages for labor, shorter hours, and better standards of living generally, farmers are really not enjoying enough prosperity to permit the greatest efficiency. With better returns for the enterprise of the farmers, which would be secured by maintaining for them their proper advantage in the American market, the normal conditions of demand and supply, in connection with the improved methods of distribution which are being worked out, would bring it about that

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gradually but steadily the unused acres would be used and the used acres more efficiently used, and in this way-the really sensible and truly constructive way-the permanent welfare of the whole consuming and producing public would be accomplished.

It is only by this way-the way which the Republican policy provides and which Senator Gallinger is earnestly laboring to establish that the difficulties of the much-discussed cost of living can be solved. The Democratic way of free trade in agricultural products is giving and can give no help to the consuming public. It may help certain great trusts to make more money by using foreign products in place of American products, but it is well known that none of this advantage gets to the consumers.

THE CONFESSED FAILURE OF THE DEMOCRATIC POLICY.

The Democratic Party practically admits the failure of its policy as to agriculture. There has been none of the promised reduction in the cost of living, and they do not now claim that there has been or is likely to be as a result of the removal or reduction of duties. Their leading authority on agriculture, the Secretary of the United States Department of Agriculture, to whom I have already referred, in his latest annual report, from which I have before quoted, writes these significant words:

We have been suddenly brought face to face with the fact that in many directions further production waits on better distribution and that the field of distribution presents problems which raise in very grave ways the simple issue of justice. That under existing conditions in many instances the farmer does not get what he should for his product; that the consumer is required to pay an unfair price; and that unnecessary burdens are imposed under the existing systems of distribution, there can be no question.

And so it is now clearly seen that further production from the great basic industry of American agriculture, which alone can help the consumers, waits upon better distribution of the products and better recompense to the producers. Both of these necessary conditions are impeded or prevented by the Democratic policy. Both have been greatly advanced by the Republican policy. Hence it should be apparent to all farmers and to all the friends of the farmers, and as well to the real friends of the American consumers of food products, that the Democratic policy is a blunder that should be repaired at the earliest possible moment.

The moment for the first steps in its repair is at hand. We are about to choose our Representatives in Congress and a member of the United States Senate from New Hampshire. We must send Republicans to the lower branch of Congress in order to make the beginning of repairing the Democratic blunders. And for the same work, the most important work that is to engage the attention of the American people for the next few years, we must send back to the United States Senate that great leader who has been one of the ablest and devoted friends of the Republican policy, Senator Gallinger. He has in his long and distinguished service at Washington acquired so much experience and shown so much ability and won so much respect from all his colleagues, that his strength to serve our cause is greater than ever before, and in the period of construction work to come he can be, and I am sure will be, a leader whose work will be of value beyond our ability to fully realize at this time.

О

"WATERING THE DESERT"

"NATIONAL IRR.GATION AS A SOCIAL PROBLEM"
AND "DRY FARMING"

By

HON. FRANCIS G. NEWLANDS

UNITED STATES SENATOR FROM NEVADA

PRESENTED BY MR. ASHURST
OCTOBER 8, 1914.-Ordered to be printed

WASHINGTON

GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE

IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES,
October 8, 1914.

Resolved, That the manuscript submitted by Mr. Ashurst on September 12, 1914, entitled "Development of the West," being a series of articles on western topics by Hon. Francis G. Newlands, United States Senator from Nevada, be printed as a Senate document.

Attest:

JAMES M. BAKER, Secretary.

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DEVELOPMENT OF THE WEST.

THREE ARTICLES ON WESTERN TOPICS.

BY

HON. FRANCIS G. NEWLANDS,

United States Senator from Nevada.

[From the Youth's Companion, 1903. Reproduced by permission.]

The irrigation bill which passed both houses of Congress during the session of 1902 was a measure of great importance and is expected to work inestimable benefit to the people of the United States.

It is the first notable mark of progress of the national irrigation movement, begun 10 or 12 years ago, and continued with gathering strength and determination to the present time. It sprang from the needs of a growing Nation; and this clamor for proper legislation to make useful the great American desert has been in direct proportion to the increase of home-seeking people.

The bill provides that all moneys received from the sale and disposal of public lands in Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming-comprising the arid belt of the country-excepting the funds set aside from the sales of public lands in these States for educational and other purposes, shall be set aside as a special fund in the Treasury, known as the reclamation fund. It is to be used "in the examination and survey for, and the construction and maintenance of, irrigation works for the storage and diversion of water in reclamation of the arid and semiarid lands."

This income includes the proceeds from the sales of mining and mineral lands, as well as from those of a different character, and, at present, aggregates about $3,000,000 a year. By the provisions of the bill any one person will not be able to gain for private ownership a tract exceeding 160 acres, and in order to procure even this he must reside upon it for five years and actually reclaim at least onehalf of the total irrigable area for agricultural purposes. Thus it will be impossible for one individual, or a group of individuals, to gain a monopoly in land.

WHAT IRRIGATION MEANS.

This has before been possible, and has kept great portions of the West under the control of a few. The first object of a cattle owner is to obtain the control of water. This he does by securing the entry