The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1904-11-17
A LETTER FROM ROOSEVELT.
The President Points Out the Need OF
Irrigation in the West.

Ell Paso, Tex, Nov. 17.--The follow
ing letter from President Roosevelt
was read and aroused much enthusi-
asm at the irrigation congress-
Washington, D. c., Nov. 10.-To the
National Irrigation Congress: 1t is a
pleasure to send my greeting to you,
both as president of the United States
and as a man who has lived in the west
and is eager for its prosperity What
ever any man or body of men may be-
lieve as to any question in political
controversy, we may all unite in the
great duty of national improvement;
the duty of making every foot of soil,
every stream, and every other resource
of natural or human origin, contribute
to the very utmost to the permanent
prosperity of our country. l congratu-
late you because you are no longer
striving for what once seemed dis
tant hope; you are no longer engaged
in a campaign of education for the
passage of reclamation act. On
the contrary your first great object is
achieved. You have yet to consider
what has been done and what is being
done under that act by the reclamation
service, to consider means to give it its
largest and widest results, and to dis
cuss the broad problems of irrigation
methods and practices.
1t is through your efforts and those
of men like you, that the people of the
United States as a nation undertook
to attack the desert and to do away
with it only so far as there is water
now for that purpose; but to the FULL
est extent for which water may be de-
veloped hereafter. Such an attack can
be successful only when based on ac-
curate knowledge. When the re-
c1amation act was passed the essential
facts as to stream flow had been ascer-
tanned in many parts of the United
States, and the scientific basis for ma
tional reclamation, which otherwise
would have taken years to accumulate,
oil dU a large hand.
The fact that so much progress has al
ready been made by the reclamation
service is a striking example of the adj
vantage of scientific investigation by
the general government. 1t may be
true that to the man whose interest is
limited by immediate results the adj
rnirable work of the reclamation ser
vice at times seems slow, but we are
building for a great future, and it is
far more important that the works
built should be permanent and success
full than that they should be completed
in haste. There will be no unwise
necessary delay. Most of the great
problems of organization and methods
have now been solved, and progress in
construction and settlement is being
made with increasing rapidly The
passage of the reclamation law was
great step toward realizing the best
use is to produce water for irrigation.
But always and in every place, the best
use of public lands is their use by the
man who lHas come to stay.
There are, unfortunately, in every
part of our country a few men whose
interests are purely temporary, who
are eager to skim the cream and go,
instead of using the natural reservoir
upon which irrigation depends, to the
permanent loss of every agency which
makes for the true. development and
lasting greatness of the irrigable
states. Such interests cannot be al
lowed to control Now that your first
great object has been accomplished in
the passage of the reclamation law
YOU should make yourselves the
guardians of the future and the unre-
lenting and watchful enemies of every
attempt to waste any of the great
mineral wealth, the foundation stones