The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1918-12-03
President Wilson's
 Address to Congress
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(Continued from Page Six)
 have hitherto lacked stimulation to undertake. ,
 I particularly direct your attention to the very practical plans which the Secretary of the Interior has develop ed in his annual report and before your committees for the reclamation of arid, swamp and cut over lands, which might, if the States were will ing and able to cooperate, redeem some three hundred million acres of land for cultivation. There are said to be fifteen or twenty million acres of land In the West at present arid. for whose reclamation water is avail able, if properly conserved. There are about two hundred and thirty million acres from which the forests have been cut but which have never yet been cleared for the plough and which lie waste and desolate. These { lie scattered all over the Union. And there are nearly eighty million acres of land that lie under swamps or subject to periodical overflow or too wet for anything but grazing, which 1t is perfectly feasible to drain and protect and redeem. The Congress can at once direct thousands of the returning soldiers to the reclamation of the arid lands, which 1t has already . undertaken, if 1t will but enlarge the : plans and the appropriations which It | has entrusted to the Department of ] the Interior. It Is possible in deal ing witR our unused land to effect q great rural and agricultural devel- { opment which will afford the best sort of opportunity to men who want t. help themselves, and the Secretary of the Interior has thought the pos sible methods out In g. way which ia worthy of your most friendly atten- ton.
 Aid for France and Belgium.
 I have spoken of the control which must yet for a while, perhaps for a long while, be exercised over shipping because of the priority of service to which our forces overseas are entitled and which should also be accorded the shipments which ara to save recently liberated peoples from starvation and many devast- ated regions from permanent ruin May l not say special word about the needs of Belgium and northern France? No sums of money paiC by way of indemnity will serve o1 themselves to save them from hope less disadvantage for years to come Something more must be done thar merely find the money. If they hat money and raw materials In abund ance tomorrow they could not re sume their place in the industry O the world tomorrow-the very i'm portant place they held before thu flame of war swept across them Many of their factories are razed t' the ground. Much of their machin cry is destroyed or has been take! away. Their people are scatteret and many of their best workmen ar dead. Their markets will be take1 by others, if they are not in som' special way assisted to rebuild thei factories and replace their lost In struments of manufacture. The! should not be left to the vicissitude of the sharp competition for mater tals and for industrial facillte which is now to set In. l hope therefore, that the Congress will no be unwilling, if It should becom necessary, to grant to some sucl agency as the War Trade Board tn right to establish priorides of ex port and supply for the benefit 0 these people whom, we have been s happy to assist in saving from tn German terror and whom we mus not now thoughtlessIy leave to shif for themselves in a pitiless competl tive market