mento and San Joaquin Valleys alone. The harnessing of the Colorado would add other millions to the productive resources of the State and Nation. Ten million prosperous people added to the Nation's reserve beats the construction of battleships as a means of national power and defense. (Los Angeles Express.)

[From the Los Angeles (Cal.) Cultivator, Nov. 21, 1912.]

STORE THE FLOODS.

The Newlands bill has such vast possibilities that many people are almost staggered in contemplating it, but almost the entire West favors it, and the East will favor it more and more as its real worth is understood. The Cultivator gives much more space to it this week. The question, Will the Newlands bill favor California? is answered by Mr. George Maxwell, known to irrigators the world over as one of the greatest flood conservation enthusiasts. For $5,000,000 per year can be put into the San Joaquin and Sacramento Valleys flood-storage works and a like amount along the headwaters of the Colorado, and it will mean wonderful advancement in material things for this State. Mr. Maxwell touches upon some of the benefits to California of the North. The Colorado River work is only incidentally referred to, but there are said to be over 5,000,000 acres of lands along the Colorado, a liberal portion of them being in Arizona, and some below the Mexican line which would be directly benefited by the operation of this bill. We need not be concerned with that below the line except that under existing treaties Mexico is now entitled to onehalf the normal flow of the river. The Imperial Valley asserts that she is entitled to all the waters now flowing during the drier season in the Colorado River. The Chucawalla Valley, the Palo Verde Valley, and the lands in Arizona which can be supplied from the Colorado must go dry unless the floods are stored. The Government can invest its money no more profitably.

A great convention is to be held in Los Angeles this week to discuss this matter, and already vigorous action is being taken to arouse enthusiasm which will lead to action.

[From the Los Angeles Express, Nov. 22, 1912.]

SOUTHWEST'S OPPORTUNITY.

If the Newlands river-regulation bill is enacted into law in form to include the conservation of the waste storm waters of the Colorado, the Sacramento, San Joaquin, San Gabriel, and other streams, the multiplication of the productive resources of the Southwest would so far surpass anything heretofore experienced in land development as to be scarcely conceivable.

Anyone who has seen the transformation worked through irrigation development in various parts of the country knows something of what it would mean to reclaim 10,000,000 acres of the richest virgin soil on the continent through the application of water under climatic conditions that are destined to convert a vast empire into a veritable paradise. The plan is absolutely feasible. All that is needed is men of vision and business courage to take up the work of public education, money with which to carry forward an aggressive and successful campaign, and a public opinion that is alive to a great opportunity.

[From the Statesman, Austin, Tex.]

FOR FLOOD PREVENTION.

The cause of river regulation through source stream control, the use of now wasted flood waters, and the prevention of floods and overflows has been given great impetus through the consolidation of the National Irrigation Association and the National Reclamation Association, under the name of the latter, with C. B. Boothe, of Los Angeles, as president, and George H. Maxwell, of New Orleans, as executive director, and the announcement that a national conference will be held at New Orleans January 6 and 7, 1913, for the purpose of

finally deciding upon the details of the campaign to secure the enactment of the Newlands-Bartholdt river regulation and flood prevention bill by the Federal Congress.

This conference will be held by the National Reclamation Association, under the auspices of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce. The New Orleans Progressive Union, the Pittsburgh Flood Commission, the Louisiana Bankers' Association, the Stockton (Cal.) River Regulation Association, the Arizona and California River Regulation Commission, the Louisiana Reclamation Club, and other organizations and delegates representing the commercial organizations of every State in the Union are expected to attend.

The primary object of the conference will be the consideration of the Newlands-Bartholdt bill as it affects the interests and needs of the several sections of the country.

This bill provides a continuing appropriation of $50,000,000 annually for 10 years and the organization necessary to enable the Federal Government to harness the source streams of the great rivers in such manner as is necessary to permit the use for irrigation, for power, and for dry weather navigation of the flood waters that now go to waste in destructive torrents, for the building and maintenance of necessary levees, and for other works of a protective nature. Its application is general, and all of the great rivers come within the scope of its operations.

[From the Republican, Phoenix, Ariz., Nov. 23, 1912.]

PROOF AGAINST HARD TIMES.

One of the assigned causes for the financial disturbance of 1907 was the San Francisco fire and earthquake. That was undoubtedly a contributory cause, for when such a vast volume of property is utterly annihilated the loss of it must be felt in all parts of the country.

Yet all the property destroyed at San Francisco was of small volume compared with the annual waste by floods in this country. This great loss does not disturb the country for the reason that it is regarded as a matter of fact, something that can not be avoided, an overhead expense, incident to carrying on our business.

But this annual loss, great as it is, is small in dollars and cents compared with what we lose by neglect—neglect to avail ourselves of the means of creating wealth, neglect to reclaim wealth-creating lands, neglect to conserve and make use of other natural resources.

No attention whatever had been given this matter until it began to be hammered upon the country by Mr. Roosevelt; but before we were fairly awake he passed out of office, since when we have been conserving things in a most leisurely and haphazard way, hardly at all.

A nice thing about a genuine, thorough conservation policy is that when properly executed its benefits will the threefold. For the prevention of the great annual devastating floods (the first benefit), control must be established over the headwaters of our streams. Thus we will have means for developing power and electrical energy and for the irrigation of arid lands, these results being grouped under the head of the second benefit.

With the waters thus controlled at all times, there will be preserved a steady flow in the lower rivers for navigation, but never enough for floods, thus lessening the swamp area of the country and making easier the drainage of swamps not directly caused by the floods. Here we have the group of the third benefit. Now, if this country, in all its breadth and length, could be disastrously affected by such a loss as that caused by the San Francisco earthquake and fire, how would it be affected by the prevention of the waste by floods, and how would it be affected if we were to make use of the great natural resources which we are neglecting?

Senator Francis G. Newlands, to whom we of the West owe so much for what has been accomplished in the way of reclamation, has already taken up this still greater matter for the benefit of not only the West but the entire country. We wish him God speed in this new undertaking and hope that the same degree of success will crown his efforts as that which followed his movement for the reclamation of arid lands.

[From the Picayune, New Orleans, La., Dec. 26, 1912.]

THE CONVENTION FOR PROTECTION FROM FLOODS.

Early in January there will be held in this city a convention representing many States of the River Regulation and Flood Prevention Association.

This is a very important body, and, while it will devote its energies to dealing with Mississippi River and its great tributaries, it must not be confounded with the Deep Waterways Association that has held annual conventions in the cities along the river, several of which were in New Orleans,

The object of the first-named convention is to arrest and store up flood water in the great tributaries of the Mississippi River so as to prevent any and all floods in the lowlands of the southern tier States, while the subject of river navigation is a secondary consideration, although not neglected. The object of the deep-waterway advocates is to provide first of all for the uses of navigation, while the measures necessary to obtain deep water in the channel are considerations of chief importance, while protection from floods is to follow as a necessary consequence.

The regulation of the river as the main factor in flood prevention is urged in the interest of the draining and reclamation of the lowlands of Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, and other States, while the deep-water advocates are working in the interest of such river improvements as will clear out and maintain a channel for a great river commerce and, as a necessary consequence, keep the river within its banks and thereby put an end to floods. It is necessary to distinguish between the two bodies so that all the objects and interests concerned may be understood without confusion or misapprehension, because all are important to the people of this city, the people of the lowlands, and the owners of the swamp region.

The movement for river regulation is in aid of a bill already before Congress which embraces among its chief provisions that, since the destructive floods in the great continental river are caused by the waters that are brought down by the main tributaries, and since protection from these floods is a public duty, and since all the natural interstate waterways in the Nation are necessarily under the direct jurisdiction of the National Government, it is the duty of the National Government to prevent these floods.

This prevention, according to the terms of Senator Newlands's bill, is to be accomplished by constructing great dams on all the chief tributaries and store up the superfluous waters of each tributary so that no flood can occur in the main river, and in seasons of low water the contents of the lakes or reservoirs formed by the dams are to be drained out by degrees, so that there can be no flood, while the water in the channel will be reenforced when needed for navigation. In the absence of flood waters in the Mississippi River the operation of draining the lowlands swamps can go on undisturbed by any fears of future inundation.

But in order to carry out this plan of keeping the flood waters away from the southern lowlands, they will have to be stored up on the lands of Northern States. For every square mile of southern land protected by the proposed process a corresponding area of northern lands must be covered by the water stored up in lakes created for the purpose, and as these artificial inundations will necessarily be in the valleys of the tributary rivers they will cover up a large extent of valuable lands nearly equal in area to those it is designed to protect in the South.

The great tributaries on the east side of the Mississippi are the Ohio, the Tennessee, and the Cumberland. The Ohio takes water from the States of New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, Ohio, Indiana. Illinois, Tennessee, and Kentucky. This is an immense area, with an annual rainfall of 40 to 50 inches. Many reservoirs or artificial lakes will be required to store up the excess of waters, and much of this land is of large value, much of it underlain, with coal, oil, and iron ore.

Then there is the Tennessee River, as long and draining as great an area as the Ohio and taking water from Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Alabama, carrying off as great a rainfall and requiring large spaces in which to store its surplus waters.

On the west side of the Mississippi is the Missouri, not less than 3,000 miles long and taking water from British America and a vast region of the United States, equaling a half million square miles of area. It is true the rainfall is not so great as on the east side of the Mississippi, but for all that the Missouri floods must be caught and stored up in great lakes.

Then there is the Arkansas River, taking water from Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, and Arkansas. It will require large reservoir capacity to hold its floods.

It is to be remembered that the land upon which these mighty waters are to be arrested and imprisoned will have to be bought and a vast work of construction required, and the lands so covered up will be lost to agriculture and every other productive use.

On the other hand, experience in this country and for many centuries in Holland proves that the river floods can be fenced out from the lands, and in this country it has been done for years in the past to a large degree. There is no question of the efficiency of the levee system, provided the stability of the banks on which they are built can be assured, and that they can be has been demonstrated.

The Mississippi River Commission, a national body charged with the improvement of the river for navigation, worked out to a certainty that the current of the river would clear out its channel and maintain it for every purpose of commerce and navigation if the swiftly moving waters could be prevented from corroding and undermining the rich alluvial lands which formed the river's shores. Not having the funds to devote to bank protection, that sort of work was only done in short stretches and not in a connected systematic way as is required. There are localities in which the ordinary work of revetment has not proved efficient, but there is no trouble in meeting every local condition and difficulty.

The entire work, since it devolves largely on the National Government, should be left as to the methods to be employed to the United States engineers, since no more uniformed, impractical theorist is competent to decide on it. It is a matter of experience and not of theory that levees properly built on properly protected banks will fulfill every demand for protection from floods, and the operation of draining and reclaiming the swamps of Louisiana and Mississippi can be carried on with as much security as that enjoyed by the people who live and have lived for centuries behind the dikes and embankments that keep out the high tides of the North Sea and the floods of the River Rhine. What is of the greates importance is that the entire subject of protection shall be fully discussed and made fully intelligible to all concerned and an agreement arrived at to leave the decision as to measures and methods to the United States Army engineers. The grand success made by those engineers in the construction of the Panama Canal has established universal confidence in their sound professional judgment as well as their scientific knowledge, and the final decision can be left to them with the assurance that the work will be faithfully and efficiently done.

[From the Stockton Daily Evening Record, Stockton, Cal., Tuesday, Nov. 26, 1912.]

MEN WITH A VISION.

The man with a "vision" is no longer championed by Y. M. C. A. orators alone. Like the man who was once considered soft-headed because he "stood for principle," the man with a vision is being called into the public service. In a hard-headed, practical age, society is turning for relief and hope to the dreamer of great dreams.

One was reminded of the fact last evening in listening to the closing words of Senator Newland's address on our country's river problems.

Sentiment is not indigenous to levees. Landscape art is hardly expected to Esthetic conceptions are not gather its inspiration from larms and ditches. searched for in the reclamation of swamps. The figures that tell of the devastation wrought by floods do not sing in poetic strain. The possibilities of water conservation and distribution have never been the inspiration of epic or flowery prose.

But the human mind is breaking from the thongs of purely utilitarian conceptions of values. Senator Newlands, in his plea for his bill, urged it at once as a business measure and as one that would lead the people into easier, His call was for men happier, and fuller enjoyment of the bounties of nature.

of vision, for men whose perspective could sweep far beyond the half billion dollars the Government is asked to spend for irrigation, flood protection, and navigation. He asked that man fix his mind not on piles of profits counted in shimmering gold, but on the desert that would be made to bloom as the rose,

on the river running free and clean in the interests of peaceful commerce, on the mountain water storage lakes from which the thirsty valleys could drink deep and long for their nourishment.

It was a pleasure to hear the Nevada Senator extol a noble, humanitarian sentiment; it was a pleasure to learn that he bases his plea for his magnificent project on the good it would do mankind rather than the profits it would bring to business." It was even more interesting to note that such sentiments found ready response in an audience composed largely of business men. Our citizenship seems to be far more receptive to great visions than it was a few years ago. The dull, dreary grind of the business man and the laboring man has not lessened, but both of them-equally victims of the system evolved by the sordid past-are looking forward to the day when the peace and plenty spread in the lap of nature by the Creator shall be the common, free, and full heritage of all mankind.

[From the Stockton Daily Independent, Nov. 26, 1912.]

NEWLANDS DOING GOOD WORK.

There is a growing interest being manifested by all classes of people in water problems, and throughout the country there is a general awakening to the fact that the land's greatest heritage has been negligently left to go to waste in its flow to the ocean and too frequently doing untold devastation and enormous damage to property in its path. That every ounce of water that flows to the sea should be made to serve a useful purpose is now dawning upon the people as sound business policy, and throughout the Nation conservation schemes are being given more attention than ever before. Stockton has been among the foremost in its efforts to harness the waters, and the progress made here in effecting an organization to that end and the public-spirited interest taken in the conservation movement bids fair to win for this section much earlier relief than may be gained in other parts of the country. Conservation of flood waters is now recognized as one of the most crying needs of the Nation, and until the waters have been made to serve all, with damage to none, the country's development will be held in check and the people deprived of the fruits of their greatest asset.

Senator Newlands's plan of Federal recognition of the waterways problem is most logical, viewed in a general sense. How it may work out in detail may be debatable, but the general plan to have the Government, through appropriations, enable localities to deal directly with their waterway problems offers the greatest hope of any plan yet submitted to the people, and the educational work the Senator is doing throughout the country in the interests of the waterways, flood-water control, navigability of streams, and the conservation of all waters is accomplishing a great deal of good, and his efforts will stamp him among the foremost of conservationists and the author of one of the most important bills ever presented to Congress.

[From the Los Angeles (Cal.) Times, Nov. 27, 1912.]

CHECK THEM.

The workers of the Arizona and California River Regulation Commission have a great work before them at Washington in aiding, by their presentation of facts and arguments to the committees of Congress, to obtain the passage of a bill appropriating $10,000,000 per annum for reservoirs and aqueducts in California and Arizona. In this work they will have able allies, or, to speak more accurately, they will ably aid those who are already allied for the work. There is Senator Frank Newlands, of Nevada, who is the father and mother and uncle and aunt of the policy of Federal aid to irrigation. There is the poetical young Senator, Henry T. Ashurst, of Arizona, who in one term has leaped to the front as the blue-sky orator of the Senate. There is Senator Smith, of Arizona-good old Mark-who always knows what he wants and usually gets what he goes for. When the Secretary of the Treasury sees Mark coming with a demand for an appropriation for Arizona he places the key of the Government strong box on a desk and crawls under the office lounge. There are Senators Smoot and Sutherland, of Utah, who will leave their dinners at