The Montgomery advertiser., 1906-03-25
TO FARM THE SWAMPS
Great Government Drainage Projeds--Enlarge
 ment of the Old Homestead Idea,

 the irrigation work now being done by that branch of the Interior Depart
 ment. Government lands, ceded IH- dian lands and private lands may be
 included in any drainage project, but in each case the cost of the drainage improvement Is to be borne by the | owner of the land and no settler can have drainage provided for more than , 160 acres. thus insuring the division of
 the tracts into small farms which must be actually settled upon and titled. Drainage Work Already in Progress. This work the Reclamation Service Is qualified to do at this very moment.
 While primarily an engineering bureau
 It has, in all it's great irrigation projects to deal drectly with the farmer. It must outline a comprehensive drainage system for each irrigation project, since there is as much danger from too much Irrigation as too little. and to do this the service has it's own farm and soil experts. Some of the irriga- tion projects have distinctiyelY drain age features. In fact are almost us much drainage as they are irrigation projects. In the Klamath project l36,-
 900 acres. or more than half of tho area of the total project. is rich tule land covered by eight or ten feet of
 water. and Is to be drained and con verted into over thousand farms. The
 topographic branch of the Geological
 Survey, of which the Reclamation Ser
 vice Is also a branch, has already run
 its lines over many of the great swamp
 as the Steenerson bill becomes law the Geological Survey engineers will be ready to launch out into immediate
 activity In drainage projects.
 Would start Wth a Million Dollars.
 The fund provided by the bill would
 be small as compared with the irriga-
 ton fund-it would approximate half
 million dollars a year and would start off with about $1.000.0 900. the re- ceipts from the sales for the fiscal year 1905 being included-but on the other hand the cost of drainage would not be so great as that of Irrigation. The importance of this work of wholesale drainage. in order to pro- vide homes for increased population. is | scarcely second in importance to the | irrigation work. It means that tens of millions of acres of the most fer tile land imaginable. which has lain idle for ages may be converted from | dismal and presidential swamps and l useless bogs into highly prosperous homes. to become the garden spots of
 the nation.
 The Dutch have reclaimed vast areas
 in Holland from the encroachments of the ocean. lHOuSHDuS or IdlnllltN llNb and farm below the sea level, gaining
 their security by magnificent feats Of engineering and persistence. They now
 contemplate the drainage of the Zuy-
 der Zee. reclaiming some l.S5O.0OO ad-
 ditional acres of meadow land. Ameri-
 can drainage in most cases would be
 far more simple and less expensive:
 1t Is simply a question as to whether
 the nation will see the wisdom of set tfncr hand to this work
 Another Island Empire.
 Tn Florida the everglades 9lone-al- most solid muck beds-would afford an empire of some 100000 acres; Tn New Jersey and Virginia are vast swamps. among them the famous Dis maj swamp Tn Illinois which Is gen | eralIy regarded as a well-settled agri- cultural State, there are 10000 acres | of swamp and: in Michigan there are nearly 6O00000 acres. Fertile Iowa | has about 2,00O.000 acres of swamp | land In Minnesota there are almost 1000. 900 acres of rich surveyed swamp lands and huge areas NNt yet survey ed Arkansas has tremendous swamp areas which could be drained and made hatitable and in all there Is a swamp area in the eastern part of the United States which Is equal in extent to the | great agricultural States of Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa, with three or four
 smaller eastern States thrown In. IT the Steenerson bill demonstrates | that the Government can transform
 swamps into fertile farm land and that | the settler or owner will pay back to | the Government the relatively small | cost of the improvement. there seems | to be no reason why this work of crea- l ton of value out of wosthless wastt | should not go on indefinitely and pro- vide homes for millions more of rural l population.