| Show ROOM AT HOME FdR GROWTH FoR Looking ever the last reDort4 the secretary of the Interior there Is found an additional reason why it Is possIble for the United States to worry along for many years without the Philippines They are not needed for our surplus population The money and IaJor and time expended in developing them would reclaim billions of acres of fer tile land within the borders of the United States And a more Important problem might be solved with the aid of the time and means devoted to the cause of outside hUmanlt to the neglect neg-lect of humanity at home We find in the Unite State exrlu shc of Alaska ii9368274 acres of un ppropriated anti unreserved public londs This is a territory equal in extent ex-tent to France Germany Italy England Eng-land Scotland Wales Ireland Austria Hungarytend Greece combined Of this ana iWUOtai acres or more than 94 per cent are In the states and terito rice of Arizona California Colorado Idaho Montana Nevada New Mexico Mex-ico North Dakota Oregon South Dakota Da-kota Utah Washington and Wyoming Omelal the government looks upon 3321i6OOO acre as desert This is an area more than twice the size of France and about four and onehalf times the size of the United ingdom These 50 called desert lands of the United States are lands that do not prodUce native grass in sufcient quantity to make an ordinary crop of hay in usual seasons and lands which without irrigation do I not contain sufficient moisture to produce I pro-duce a natural growth of trees or make a agricultural crop of any ltnd in amount to make thecultv to thereof there-of reasonably renluqerative Undoubtedly ilays the report a very lare percentage of these lands do at some poitiop of the year produce gaseS and herbs of somP value for grazing but with inconsiderable excep tiods they are valueless for other purposes pur-poses without Irrigation make these lands All that is needed to valuable far lads Is Irrigation There Is a water supplY available for that purpose whIch will be sufficient to ir rlgate 71500000 acres and with these acres Irrigated the rest of the land will be suitable for gazing So it is not such a bad desert after aUTo aU-To be sure there are vast tracts of land lathe United States which arc real deserts But the government does not cal them so It calls them barren of this irreclaimable wR5tes The area real desert amounts to 69O00I0 acres or about 100000 square miles an area about half the size of Frnce and lacking lack-ing only about 20000 square miles of beIng the size of the United Kingdom Nevada heads the list with barren and irreclaimable lands having 20000000 acreS CalifOrnia come next with 19 000000 acres and Arizona is third with 15000000 acres Utah has 10000000 acres of waste and Wyoming 500000G acres This 69OOOOOacre desert will probably prob-ably nee be of am use but the 332 176000 acres of land which is officially denominated as desert or grazing will ultimately all be taken up and will be turned into ars or grazing lads Probably the most valuable of these lands have been selected by the several state under hand grants fOr educational and other purposes But there are mi lions of acres yet unclaimed upon which future generations will Bye and flourish flour-Ish There is plenty of room at home for growth plenty of elbow room for our population an immense field for enterprise and undeveloped resources and undiscovered treasure world without with-out end Ye can use the Philippines to advantage ad-vantage possibly but we can manage to get along without them |
