d be behind a studied, fact-based,
long-viewed plan to make America the home of the cheapest and the most
abundant and the most immediately and intimately serviceable power
supply in the world. If we do this, we can release labor and lighten
nearly every task. We will not need to send the call to other countries
for men, and we can distribute our industries in parts of the country
where labor is less abundant and where homes will take the place of
tenements. One could expand upon the benefits that would come to this
land if a rounded program such as has been but skeletonized here could
be carried out. I am convinced that within a generation it will be
effected, because it will be necessary.

The simple steps now obviously needed are to pass those primary bills
which are already before Congress or are here suggested. But beyond this
there is imperative need that some one man (an assistant secretary in
this department would serve)--some one man with a competent staff and
commanding all the resources of this and other departments of the
Government shall be given the task of taking a world view as well as a
national view of this whole involved and growing problem, that he may
recommend policies and induce activities and promote cooperative
relationships which will effect the most economical production of light,
heat, and power, which is more than the first among the immediate
practical problems of science, as Sir William Crookes said, for it is
foremost among the immediate practical problems of national and
international statesmanship.

LAND DEVELOPMENT.

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, b