I wish now to ask consideration for another matter of home concern to
which I gave attention in my last report and as to which the intervening
year has strengthened and perhaps broadened my ideas--the development of
our unused lands.
It was never more vital to the welfare of our people that a creative and
out-reaching plan of developing and utilizing our natural resources
should go bravely forward than it is to-day. Ours is a growing country,
and as its social and industrial superstructure expands its agricultural
foundation must be broadened in proportion. The normal growth of the
United States now requires an addition of 6,300,000 acres to its
cultivable area each year, which means an average increase of 17,000
acres a day.
Fortunately, the opportunity for this essential expansion exists not
only in the West, where much of the public domain is yet unoccupied, but
in every part of the Republic. We have a great fund of natural resources
in the very oldest States, from Maine to Louisiana, which invite and
would richly reward the constructive genius of the Nation. It is claimed
by those who have specialized for years on the subject of reclamation
that the control and utilization of flood waters now wasted would
produce within the next 10 years more wealth than the entire cost to the
United States of the war with Germany.
After every other war in our history the work of internal development
has gone forward by leaps and bounds, and our people have thus quickly
made good the economic wastes of the conflict. The needs of to-day are
different from those of the past and require different treatment, but
they are by no means beyond the reach of enlightened thought and action.
More than a year ago we began an earnest discussion of reconstruction
policies, particularly with respect to the land. But nothing has been
done. Not one line of legislation, not one dollar of money has been
provided except in the way of preliminary investigation. We stand
voiceless in the presence of opportunity and idle in the face of urgent
national need.