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Show ' ECONOMY AND BIG DEMANDS. During the session of congress that convenes next month, there will undoubtedly be presented many great and worthy enterprises for the consideration consid-eration of the legislators enterprises which will require re-quire vast expenditures of the public funds. The great reclamation projects of the west will be pressed, and funds will be asked to complete those that have been started, and still more money to inaugurate new irrigation projects which will reclaim re-claim thousands of acres and make productive a vast area of land that now lies useless in many western west-ern states. The advocates of the. drainage of swampy territory in the east and south will also be on hand with a demand that this work receive the financial support of the federal government. Inland waterways water-ways will also demand attention and the advocates of a general system of canals and the deepening or river channels will press their claims to recognition recog-nition with all the fervor that the merits of their enterprises demand. In addition to these projects, which have the endorsement of everybody who. hopes to profit by the favorable 'action of the congress, con-gress, and which in themselves have many points of merit, there will be advocated the adoption of an enterprise which has for its object the connecting connect-ing of the bays, sounds and rivers along the Atlantic At-lantic seaboard from Massachusetts to Florida, thus furnishing a safe and convenient means of transporting trans-porting freight along that coast. The demands of these internal improvements will probably exceed a billion -dollars, without taking tak-ing into account the usual running expenses of the government, the army and navy appropriations, the pensions bill and the ever-increasing expenses of the civil departments of the government. Of course some of the enterprises will be put off until some future time. . It is impossible for the government to take up all the good things which are urged upon it. The west is of course most vitally interested in the irrigation enterprises and the reclamation of the arid regions of this section. The fact that the-government entered into this work forms one of the strongest appeals of the advocates of other enterprises that they should be given the assistance which only the federal government is in position to give, i President Taft has repeatedly declared that econ- - omy will be the dominating feature of hi3 administration, admin-istration, and in this he ha3 the moral support of the entire country. In spite of his declaration?, however, it seems that the demands upon th national na-tional treasury will be greater than ever. While it is practically settled that internal improvements have become one of the legitimate activities of the national government, the rapid growth of the demands de-mands upon the national treasury are such as to give rise to the old-time opposition to internal im- provement3 in any form. In one of his addresses ( on his present tour of the country, President Taft is reported to have declared his intention to ask 1 the congress for an authorization of a bond issue of $10,000,000 to furnish funds to complete the re c-lamation c-lamation now under way, and this has furnished the advocates of other improvements with the needed need-ed incentive to urge their claims. The fact that the president will urge the completion of the reclamation recla-mation projects is taken as an indication that th economy of his administration will be confined to a reduction of the extravagant expenditures in the ordinary conduct of the government rather than to a curtailing of expenditures for improvements from which future generations will draw the greatest great-est benefits. At the same time, opponents of the many schemes to gain the support of the government govern-ment will no doubt use the president'3 expressed desire for economy to defeat them. It will be a difficult dif-ficult problem of the administration to be economical economi-cal and yet satisfy the demands to be made for money at the next session. |