Arizona republican., 1896-12-16

cltlc slope, we greet you With out stretched arms; here in the center of what has been known as the Great American desert.
 With this feeling in our hearts, we not only greet you today in this, the queen city of the southwest, for the respect and affection we entertain for each of you personally, but also for the advantage we expect that will result to the great work in which we are all engaged, work second to none in importance that claims the time and attention of man.
 And what more appropriate spot could have been selected for your meeting than here, where generations ago, yea, perhaps thousands of years gone by, that race of people of which we know but little,s constructed inn mense waterways, erected great dwell ings, and covered mother earth for miles with glowing fields of corn, wheat and barley? Some of the ca nals of that wonderful period can be as easily traced today as those which are the product of our own genera tion. Here millions of acre-feet of water go to waste annually down our streams for want of capital with which to construct dams for the purpose of impounding and storing them; here there are already projected grand en- 1, terprises for the storage of the flood | waters which, when completed, will bring under cultivation over a half
 million acres of land and supply abundance of that fluid which gives life to the vegetable world
 Well do I remember when I first spread my blankets on the dreary sands of this great valley on the 26th of May, 1862. Then I saw for the 1 first time the ruins of the homes of | that extinct race and traced the lines | of their canals. Little did I think | that in little over quarter of a cen i tury what then was but desert would i be covered with green fields and blos-
 soming orchards, supporting a popu- lation of twenty-five thousand people
 who would gladly welcome representa-
 tives from nearly every state in the | Union as well as from Canada and
 Mexico. The latch-string of the door to an Arizona home always hangs on
 the outside
 Again I say, to all the glories of
 our city and valley, we bid you vel
 come. May your labors be productive
 of many benefits to arid America
 The mayor was applauded as he took his seat at the conclusion of his en- tertaining speech. On behalf of the
 people of the territory, Governor
 Franklin then welcohssd the delegates. This is what he said:
 Arizona extends to you a cordial
 and grateful welcome I esteem it a
 great honor to have the privilege of greeting such a distinguished body
 assembled from many of the great
 commonwealths of this Union for the purpose of discussing one of the su- preme questions that now interests
 not only Arizona, but all the arid west
 Tt is certainly appropriate for this
 congress to meet on this soil where
 thousands of years ago irrigation be-
 gan. Professor Powell, a distin- guished authority, in one of his re- ports to the secretary of the interior
 says that the first indications of irri-
 gation are to be found in the territory u
 sits in the garden of the most mag nificent valley on the continent. That more than three hundred years ago when Coronado was seeking the seven , cities of Cibola, he discovered the , Casa Grande ruins. They seemed as , much decayed then as now and scien- 1 tific researches show that long before . Abraham fed his flocks on the plains , of Judea, long before our great Mas. E ter delivered His Sermon on the Mount, long before Buddha preached } his philosophy, there was fiourishins community in this great valley. we had an immense population il this valley History will repeat it l self, the population will again increase and when water is applied to our fer tile lands, and capital comes, all th' valleys of Arizona will bloom as 7 garden.
 ) What is true of Arizona is true O l all the arid lands of the west. Yol = have met, gentlemen of this congress 1 for a great purpose. Our convention l which lasts for only three days, shoult e last for ten or fifteen days, for tn 1 questions you are to discuss are su l preme questions. We may differ a to politics, we may differ as to re
 ligion, we may differ on many othe n things, but all the people from tn : plains of Nebraska and Kansas, iron e Dakota to the Pacific coast, agree tha 0 we desire reclamation of the ari a lands. That is the supreme question r with us.
 
 e T believe that the governmen Il should give aid to the reclamation c l. arid lands. Every year the govern g ment passes a river and harbor bi '- bestowing hundreds of thousands c
 dollars for the improvement of insig d T, if bo orhOrc and riuorc NauiOn