| Show WATER SUPPLY AND ITS USES At the closing of the old century and the beginning of the new the fact ought to be impressed upon the public and published In every paper that I about the most essential thing for the cople of the United States to consider is the disposition to be made of the I waters In the streams We have seen during the past fifteen or twenty years in the East tremendous floods followed So y droughts the one overwhelming the fields and the Porks l the other causing the flocks to perish because of the want of moisture on the fields I Is true that around the Mediterranean there are leagues and leagues of barren sand I where In ancient times there were fertile fer-tile fields The reason of the change was because the people who led there I were Just as foolish as our own people they cleared off the forests and let their flocks and herds eat off the herbage her-bage until at thc sources of the streams the shade could no longer retain the snows The result was tremendous I spring floods where there should not I have been and In the autumn such droughts that the people retreated back I farther each year from the arid wastes until finally It was given up to the i sands Our own people ought to have the sagacity to note that history and to provide against a repetition of It on our soil Around the sources of all the great streams of the East there ought to be a concerted effort to restore the ancient woods because they are n blessing In many ways They not only hold tho snows and produce the grateful I grate-ful shade when the heat comes in the summer but lessen the Intensity of the winds regulate In a measure heat and cold and make It possible l to avoid tho terrible extremes of heat nnd cold which now are felt In the old States In the Vest the soil unaided is unable to yield bread for man In this arid belt from the eastern baso of the Sierras to the eastern base of the Rockies is an empire in extent and It possesses land enough to raise food for a nation and as fertile land ns there Is on the earth But It has not within itself any more than Eastern mil the property of producing pro-ducing vegetation until It Is quickened by moisure The moisture does not fall in sufficient quantities to make the soil unaided productive Hence artl ficIal means have to be resorted to The land convenient to streams is already appropriated and cultivated and the result Is wonderful but all the time full rivers arc running to waste because be-cause their waters cannot be caught and impounded That is a gigantic work and it Is particularly the province prov-ince of the general Government to make a gift but it could make a loan sl or letter i still it could guarantee its credit to carry on such work and It could draw back Its interest and Its principal in rentals from the new created gardens This is n matter which the statesmen and the rrrcat journals of tho East ought to investigate not with t thought that perhaps some State or some individual will be getting n little the beat of It but from a broad national standpoint something broad and great enough for the Nation to bend down to consider for water is the life of the soil and the waters of the East need attending to almost as much as those of the West The general Government Gov-ernment should begin the work or it should make such an adjustment that the States of the West themselves can do the work I is pitiful thing to see a man play the dog in themalSrI is Infinitely more pitiful to see n Nation Na-tion do the same thing |
