Show I LEASING ARID LANDS The San Francisco Call makes the suggestion which some of the Eastern press Is approving that the arid ranges owned by the Government be leased and the rental applied to the distribution available water and one learned journal says the stock grazer can well afford to pay for the use of the public property which his herds are pastured free of expense the more especially n he comes into direct I di-rect competltlon n with stockgrowers who own land and who are heavily taxed on their investment for tho support of the Government Most of the lands are already leased but it takes from sixteen to thirty acres of this arid land to support l big steer through the summer he taking tak-ing his chances of dying of exposure and starvation in the winter How much do our Eastern friends think the stockgrower could afford to pay per acre on a I lease of that kind and how many acres would It take to get money enough to turn a stream or build a reservoir If the Government would turn the streams and build the reservoirs then it might ask a rental for land that would pay something I seems impossible for our Eastern friends to realize that lands In the arid West are not Just as valuable as were the bottom lands In Illinois Those were given away or sold to the settlers for L25 an acre but our economical nomical friends In the East are awfully afraid that tho Government will not realize from G to 1250 for its desert At the same time they Insist that lor the Government to spend a million Collars on a stream In the East that would not float n swan is entirely legltlmatebut to use water to convert the desert Into fruitful fields Is Imply < wholesale robbery of the entire East When It comes to generosity our Eat crn friends nrol ready to repeat the words 9f the great novelist We Is all poor crilcr J |