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Show IDE REPH1T BUTIE RESERVOIR Five Million Dollars Loaned by United States in a Most Excellent Cause. GREATEST STORAGE RES-ERVOIR RES-ERVOIR IN THE WORLD. Some Comparisons of Cost nnd Importance Im-portance of This Project With Wastes of "Preparedness." The big newspapers of the country have gone bo crady over "preparedness" "prepared-ness" -so called -that they cannot bear to bco Congress spend any money on anything that is of any earthly use to nny human being. All appropriations for peaceful pursuits pur-suits are now described in tho Washington Wash-ington dispatches as "pork!" Tho as. sumption is that there is something grensy and detestible about them. This is the reason why tho completion comple-tion of tho Elephant Butto Dam on May 13 by the Reclamation service of the United States government has been so systematically ignored by the groat dally papers. Apparently thoy do not want to remind the people of tho United States that Uncle Sam has just completed for $5,000,000 a dam which creates, in the languago of pres-Idcnt pres-Idcnt Wilson, "tho greatest storage reservoir, in tho world," capable of re-claiming re-claiming onough desert to Bupport millions of people. The Elophant Butte dam, Elephant Butte, New Mexico, on the Rio Grande is 318 feet high, 1074 feet long on tor-and tor-and weighs a million tons. It Btorc 866,000,000,000 gallons of water In p lake 45 miles long with an avcragp depth of sixty-fivo feet. When full i will contain enough wator to cover Delaw"arrfwoect"deep. '""' The American Union Against Mill-tarism Mill-tarism which, from headquarters in Munsey building, Washington, D. C. is fighting tho huge diversions of pub-He pub-He funds to army, navy and mutton uses, has issued a public statement reminding the public that tho Elephant uutto dam "cost only one-third np much as a dreadnnught and should last for a century, whereas tho drend-naught drend-naught it out of date in five years out of commission In ton and out of existence in fifteen. "There nro twenty-six reclamation projects now under way," continues tho Union in its statement, "and some of them are almost as significant np the great project just completed. But all of them are jcapordlzed by tho appalling ap-palling raid on the United State? treasury which tho newspapers and business Interests, backed by the administration ad-ministration itself, arc making in the name of 'preparedness.' "Although tho trensury reports n deficit of many millions, tho administration adminis-tration has so far yielded to tho clamor clam-or that it purposes to increase the army and navy budgets by ?114,000,-000,000 ?114,000,-000,000 over what it was last year Tho settlers of tho West, pay for the reclamation projects6out of their own pockets, but the United States could afford to make them a gift of them all out of tho mere increase in our war budget thiB year." Tho executlvo commlttoo of tho A-mcrican A-mcrican Union Against Militarism, which was formerly known as the Antl Preparednc88 Committee, is made up of Lillian D. Wald, Rabbi Stephen S.WiBo, John Haynes Holmes, Amos Finshot, and others of Now York City; William F. Cochran of Baltimore; Rudolph Speckles of San Francisco; John A. McSparran, legislative chairman chair-man of the National Grange; President Presi-dent James II. Maurer of the Pcnsyl-vanla Pcnsyl-vanla State Federation of Labor; Miss Jano Adams, Sophonisha P. Brecken-ridge Brecken-ridge and Charles T, Halllnan of Chicago; Chi-cago; and others. |