The Elbert County tribune., 1907-09-26

The little country of Holland has
been snatched from the sea, and her
fertile fields and contented people
justify the expense and trouble which
the shutting out of the sea cost. With
in the United States there are sub
merged lands equal in area to nine
Hollands, and there can be no question
of the wisdom of reclaiming these
lands and Transforming them from
disease breeding spots to fruitful
fields, giving homes and comfort to
thousands of settlers. The splendid
irrigation work which the government
has been carrying on for years and
thus making productive the arid por-
tions of the country is to be followed
by the reclamation of the 10000, 900
acres of inundated land and thereby
creating another agricultural empire
Holland in America, or rather, many
/ Hollands.
Such effort is authorized by a bill
now before congress, by the provisions
of which a drainage fund is to be es-
tablished for the construction of works
for the reclamation of swamp and
overflow lands. This bill was intro
duced by Senator Flint, of California,
is most comprehensive measure and,
involving as it does a work of equal
Importance to the reclamation of the
arid lands of the west, is attracting
widespread attention. 1t provides for
the adoption and application to drain
age of practically the same system
that is now applied to irrigation. The
w oh ic tn ha xrrixr l,a
sale of government land in all the pub
lie land states. other than those COW
cred by the reclamation act, is to be
expended under the direction of the
secretary of the interior The lands
will be sold to homesteaders only, in
tracts of not less than 40 nor more
than 320 acres. The cost will be ap-
portioned pro rata among the owners
of the lands benefited and paid back
into the fund in ten annual install
ments, without interest, to be used
over again on additional reclamation
work. When the lands are in private
ownership the cost will be assessed
against the property.
The fund provided will be small
compared to the irrigation fund, as
the area of public land remaining in
the humid states is no longer large
and the sales are therefore limited.
On the other hand, the cost of drain
age works will not be so great as that
required for irrigation. For instance
the irrigation systems now under con-
struction involve some of the most
stupendous engineering works of the
century, the three highest dams in the
world, hundreds of miles of road in al
most inaccessible canyons, and tunnels
through mountains of rock The drain
age works will be the comparatively
simple construction of bitches for
drainage and levees to protect the low
lands which are subject to annual in
undation during high water. The
swamp lands are situated for the most
part in the Mississippi valley and con-
tiguous to the Atlantic and gulf
coasts. There will be no long rail or
wagon hauls and attending heavy
freight expenses on building material,
and the large cities and thickly popu-
lated rural districts will simplify the
labor problem and reduce the cost of
maintaining a working force.
So practical and businesslike is
the scheme that the wonder is 1t was
not adopted long ago. When the den
sity of population in the humid region
had practically exhausted the available
farm lands, new arrivals followed the
line of least resistance and began push
ing over the great plains toward the
desert, all unmindful that some of the
richest soil on earth could be had al.
most for the asking in the region they
were leaving. With true American
courage these pioneers set up their
abode in an unfamiliar climate where
the crops and agricultural methods
they had known had to be abandoned
They succeeded. too. and all America
is proud of them, but it is difficult to
understand how the thrifty Yankee
came to overlook the fortunes lyine
,, latent in the swamp land areas of the
| east.
That rich rewards did await the till
er OF these tracts was long ago demon
, strated 1t is no experiment that Uncle
Sam is about to engage in. Thousand.
of acres have already been drained b,
individual effort. For many years plant
ers on the black land" farms of Ar
, kansas and Louisiana have been gath
I ering In the fortunes which Dame Ma
. ture has stored there. During all tn,
4 idle centuries of the past these land,
have been gathering richness in tn,