int where it offers comparatively little in the way of cultivable
lands.

We have now to deal principally with lands in private ownership. This
calls for a new point of view and for the application of a somewhat
different principle than that which has governed our reclamation policy
heretofore. Moreover, reclamation is no longer an affair of one section
of the United States. The day has come when it must be nationalized and
extended to all parts of the Republic.

To the deserts of the West we have brought the creative touch of water,
and we must find a way to go on with this work. But it is of equal
importance that we should liberate rich areas now held in bondage by the
swamp, convert millions of acres of idle cut-over lands to profitable
use, and raise from the dead the once vigorous agricultural life of our
abandoned farms.

One more fundamental consideration--we have outlived our day of small
things. Whether we would or not, we are compelled by the inexorable law
of necessity arising out of existing physical conditions to cooperate,
to work together, and to employ large-scale operations, and on this
principle we should move: Not what the Government can do for the people,
but what the people can do for themselves under the intelligent and
kindly leadership of the Government.

We have an instrument at hand in the Reclamation Service which has dealt
with every phase of the problem which now confronts us, and with such
high average success as to command the entire confidence of Congress and
the country. It has turned rivers out of their natural beds, reared the
highest dams in existence, transported water long distances by every
form of canal, conduit, and tunnel, installed electric power plants,
cleared land, provided drainage systems, constructed highways and even
railroads, platted townsites, and erected buildings of various sorts. In
this experience, obtained under a variety of physical and climatic
conditions, it has developed a body of trained men equal to any
constructive task which may be assigned to it in connection with
reclamation and settlement in any part of the country.

True economic reclamation is a process of converting liabilities into
assets--of transforming dormant natural resources into agencies of
living production. When such a process is intelligently applied it
should be able to pay its own bills without placing fresh burdens on the
national treasury. It is in the confident belief that such