New-York tribune., 1918-12-16
Our Unused Riches i'm Land


This country is very proud of the fact
that this year over fifty million acres
were sown in wheat. 1t went far toward
winning the war. There were also forty
millions in oats, ten millions more in bar
ley and rye and over hundred millions
more in corn. In brief, our vast cereal
crop, running this year to value of six
or seven billions, is produced from an
area of little over 2000O0,O0O acres
In his report to Congress Secretary
Lane, in discussing the problem of the re-
turning soldier, again draws attention to
the fact that we have in the United
States "a full 200 900 900 acres which
might be converted into farms either by
irrigation, drainage or clearing" The
richest and most promising part of this
is in mere acreage much the smallest.
That is the land available for irrigation
Secretary Lane says that, although no
complete survey has ever been made of
our land resources,
at is estimated that there are from
100000 to 100000 additional acres
of at present arid land in the West for
which water is available if properly con-
served. There are, for example, half
million acres in the Colorado River basin
which need only irrigation to make them
fertile as the far-famed Valley of the
Nile"
These fifteen millions or more of acres
still remain in the governments hands.
They are, as the Secretary says, "the
great remaining storehouse of govern
ment land for reclamation" AS is we'll
known, the moment water is provided
these lands possess an extraordinary fer
tility, so that ten we'll titled acres are
often more than the producing equivalent
of q Quarter-section farm in the Middle
West. This means that if this land could
be brought under cultivation it might
easily support a population of a million
or more farmers alone. This would
mean roughly, under present conditions,
the basis of an added three millions of
population. For the most part these
lands are available only through govern
mental action. Private irrigation prof.
ects have never been overly successful
But by far the greater portion of our
unused and unproductive lands are not in
the Far West, but in the eastern half of
the United States. These are the unre-
claimed swamp lands, estimated at some
thing like seventy or eighty million
acres, and the cut-over and logged-off
timber lands, which run over 200 600 900
acres. Of the swamp area one-quarter
is in Florida, with 100000 acres in
Louisiana and other large areas in
Mississippi, Minnesota and Arkansas
Small areas of this swamp land, when
they have been reclaimed, have revealed
the wonderful productivity of their soil
The cut-over timber lands lie largely
in the South and in Michigan, Wisconsin,
Minnesota and Texas. Of these the Sec
h retary says:
3I I'm their present state they are a pict-
~ ure of desolation. Only vast area of
stumps remains to mark the former for
est As good an idea as any of this waste
land may be obtained from photographs
of former forests which have been shat
tered by artillery fire Yet when this
land is cleared and brought under the
plough its soil, rich with the accumula-
ton of humus of hundreds of years, pos
sesses extraordinary agricultural possi-
blites."
Secretary Lane remarks that under
present conditions the problem of re-
claiming these vast areas could never
be solved in its entirety by private enter
prise. The items of labor and capital in
volved dwarf into insignfcance anv
work of a similar character ever before
undertaken. That would make even the
Panama project, which ten years ago
1oomed SO large, of minor Importance.
But in the last year and half this coun-
try has learned that it can raise by taxa
ton and loans more than twenty billions
if it has a mind. Probably tenth of
this twenty billions would make available
for cultivation an area equal to that
which now produces more than five
billion bushels of cereals and equal to
nearly one-half of the entire area of i'm
proved farm land in the United States.
Here is great work for the immediate
future The mere beginning of it could
solve almost any labor surplus that could
possibly threaten If it could be planned
with sllch vision and Dractical wisdom as