Fourth. The holding of public lands for actual settlers under the
homestead act in small farm units sufficient to support a family.
Fifth. The sale of water rights to private land owners, but not for
more than 160 acres.
Sixth. The ultimate turning over to the people of the irrigation
system, to be operated and managed by them under a system of home rule.
[Illustration: HIGH SCHOOL BUILDING, MINIDOKA PROJECT
This beautiful, fully equipped school stands where there was only
desert in 1907]
The policy of national irrigation is broadly paternal and of enormous
economic importance to the whole country. In the building of new
commonwealths in the arid West the Government is utilizing its own
undeveloped resources. It is creating opportunities for its citizens to
establish themselves in permanent homes in which patriotism, loyalty
and civic pride are bred and fostered. For a number of years the growth
of population has been abnormal when compared with the development
of the agricultural industries that must support the people. Farming
as a profession has been languishing and falling behind the general
development of the country. The rapid increase in land values has
made it correspondingly more difficult for the man of small means to
acquire a foothold on the land. Practically every progressive nation
in the world has come to recognize this fact, and is making provisions
to encourage and assist its citizens to undertake farming. The primary
purpose of the Reclamation Law, therefore, is to make homes on the
land. To the new empire in the West have flocked the young, the strong,
the adventurous, and herein we are witnessing a gradual welding of
all the Aryan races into a final race type. Signs are not lacking
that this type in time will dominate the world, for the desert offers
to every man his true birthright--room to breathe, sunshine, a sure
reward for intelligent labor, the individual home, and an opportunity
to become independent. Desert reclamation already has gone beyond the
stage of prophecy. The material and substantial results that have been
accomplished place the work of the Government on a practical and solid
foundation.
_The Romance of Reclamation_
The history of national reclamation is as interesting and romantic
as a tale from the Arabian Nights. Romance colored the vision of
builders that saw in the sparkling streamlets, the unchecked floods,
the wide, free plains and the vacant mountain valleys a promise of
independence, happy homes and laughing children. Theirs was not the
incentive of large emoluments, for Government salaries are notoriously
meager. Their inspiration came from doing a signal work of splendid
usefulness,--conquering nature in her unfriendliest mood for the
permanent and lasting good of mankind. As they toiled in the fastnesses
of the mountains, in abysmal canyons or far out in the voiceless
desert, through the blazing summer heat of the Southwest or the fierce
blizzards of the northern plains, this thought was uppermost, “By this
work we shall make the desert blossom.”
[Illustration: CHICKENS THRIVE