The Nespelem tribune. [volume] (Nespelem, Wash.) 1934-1936, 1936-01-30

state, the Army, and the Bureau OF
Reclamation, we are starting on a
program of construction that takes
its power place in a well-considered
comprehensive plan for a long
time, progressive development of a
most valuable, natural resource in
land and water, constituting the
Columbia Basin project.
Now what may we say of the ben
efits that may accrue from pro-
ject of this kind?
From the standpoint of the pres
ent, employment is given to about
1000 men, who with their families
const tute population of about TO-
900 people living at the dam site,
while thousands of others are
working throughout the state in ce-
ment mills, in lumber mills, in steel
fabricating plants, in various fac
tories, for the public utilities and
on the farms producing, marketing
and transporting the material used
in construction and the food, cloth
ing, and other necessities for the
Workmen and their families, while
back east of the Mississippi, where
so much opposition has been ex-
pressed toward reclamation as a
natural policy, practically so per
cent of the money so far spent has
gone for steel sheet piling, rubber
belt conveyors, power shovels, trac-
tors, buggies, sand and gravel plant,
concrete plant, trucks, automobiles,
tools, and other untold items of
plant and equipment, materials and
;upplies, and transportation of
same-money directed into the reg
liar, established channels of indus
try and supplying work for thou
sands of persons at employment of
their own choosing and at prevail
ing wages.
Attract Industries
For the future, low power rates
should reduce the burden of the
heavy users of power, particularly
those engaged in pumping for irri-
cation and should attract new in-
dustr.es, particularly those requir-
ing large blocks of power. AS the
irrigable lands are reclaimed, thou
sands of small farms should be es-
tablished not for the purpose OF
one crop farming to raise products
of which there may already be a
large surplus; but for the purpose
of establishing farm homes with
such surroundings that families
may live there in comfort, largely
from the products of their own
farms under diversified farming
methods that will also permit the
marketing of sufficient amount
of products to meet the running
expenses.
1t has been the experience in the
past that for every family on an
irrigated farm there is also one in
the towns that are developed on
the project to serve the farming
districts and still another in the
more distant cities and towns en-
gagged in the manufacturing and
transportation of things that the
farmer must buy. Thus we begin
to have some alzation of the far
reaching benefits that flow from
the construction of an irrigation
project.
Isn't the nation wide employment
created by the construction of thl
project; isn't the self-respect of
those of our citizens, who have been
kept off the relief rolls; isn't the
additional wealth produced by the
project; isn't the rehabilitation OF
those tillers of the soil, who move
from submarginal land to the irri-
gated farm home, all worth to the
nation, the subsidy that it grants
in the way of interest on the cost
of developing the irrigation features
of this project? That is the ques-
ton in which we of the West are
vitality interested and which we as
a nation must answer affirmatlvely
/ if reclamation as a national policy
is to endure.
q. E. COMPANY HIRES
THREE w. S. G. STUDENTS