OCR Text |
Show Reclaim the Desert. The building of jetties and the throwing throw-ing up of high banks along the Mississippi Mis-sissippi are not more strictly within the scope and province of the national government than is a comprehensive system of water storage for the West. And the former are not so far-reaching or so sure in their beneficial results, for the building of levees is only a oal- liative measure against floods, whereas the building of great storage reservoirs at the head waters of the rivers, would, according to official engineering reports, re-ports, prevent the floods. Then during- the growing season, the water could be drawn off for the irrigation of millions of acres. Such a system of reservoir building ought to be the steady, systematic work of practical government for the next quarter of a century, until every available acre of the desert shall have been reclaimed into fertile fields. |