“There are no useless American acres,” Secretary Wilson is reported to
have said. “The Government is seeking in all parts of the world for
crops that have become acclimated to dry conditions, and it has been
so successful that many places that were once accounted desert land
are to-day supporting productive farms.” Says Guy Elliott Mitchell,
secretary of the National Irrigation Association, in an article on
“Resources of the American Desert,” contributed to _The Technical
World_ (Chicago):
“It has been estimated that in the neighborhood of 100,000,000
acres of the American desert can be reclaimed to most intensive
agriculture through irrigation; yet Frederick V. Coville, the
chief botanist of the Department of Agriculture, does not
hesitate to say that in the strictly arid region are many
millions of acres, now considered worthless for agriculture,
which are as certain to be settled in small farms as were
the lands of Illinois; and this without irrigation. This
applies particularly to the great plateaus in the northern
Rocky Mountain region. ‘I would confidently predict,’ said
Mr. Coville, ‘that the transformation of these barren-looking
lands into farms, through the introduction of desert plants,
will be as extensive a work as the enormous reclamation through
irrigation.’”
Moral wastes should be and can be reclaimed, as surely as the American
deserts. There is no such thing as a wholly useless life. (Text.)
(2628)
See IRRIGATION.
* * * * *
Doctor John Clifford, of London, tells this story about Gladstone. It
relates to two young men who had got into drinking habits:
Gladstone knew of them, heard of the downward road they were
traveling, and felt necessity laid upon him to try and reclaim
them. He invited them to Hawarden, impressively appealed to them
to mend their ways, and then knelt and fervently asked God to
sustain and strengthen them in their resolve to abstain from
that which had done them so much harm. “Never,” says one of the
men in question, “can I forget the scene, and as long as I have
memory the incidents of the meeting will be indelibly imprest
upon my mind. The Grand Old Man was profoundly moved by the
intensity of his solicitation. Neither of us from that day to
this has touched a drop of intoxicating drink, nor are we ever
likely to violate an undertaking so impressively ratified in Mr.
Gladstone’s library.” (Text.)
(2629)
=Recluse Ignorance=--See MONEY, IGNORANCE OF.