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Show SECRETARY ICKES, CENTER WASHINGTON COXTROVERSY Secretary of the Interior, .Harold .Har-old L. Ickes is the center of some very heated Washington controversies. Sparks are flying in several important directions, rararaiwirarirara!wirrara!SifiiirHisl(HlKiKirl mainly concerned with which side of various fences are to be featured in the spending of large sums of government money, or even whether both sides ot a fence can be used. One of the latest rumpuses has to do with Mr. Ickes' vast power - conservation-reclamation spendings. Collier's Weekly recently re-cently pointed out rather acidly the apparent folly of withdrawing land from agriculture with one hand, while at the same time appropriating millions for irrigation irri-gation in order to bring new land under cultivation. Advocates of reclamation urged urg-ed Secretary Ickes to reply to his critics, which he has just done in the same magazine which attacked him. His reply is that restriction of farm surpluses by withdrawing land is just an emergency emer-gency measure, while creation of new farm lands by reclamation and irrigation is preparation for the future. Moreover, Mr. Ickes pointed out, the reclamation plans have many objects besides merely creating cre-ating new farm land.' "We are preparing," he says, "for the day when a larger and more urgent population will require re-quire new acres of 'food supply and more power for industrial output on a mightier scale. To do otherwise would be to confess con-fess that we have lost heart and hope in the future." The Roosevelt Administration, Mr. Ickes boasts, is the first to catch this "vision." The vision' involves expenditures already authorized au-thorized of $108,000,000, for projects that will eventually cost an estimated $225,000,000 v of these projects are 1 ' ' "evolving tund scahre "d.J |