When the government has once passed the title the duty of conservation belongs to the states, and the states will discover that they have the power to conserve when the people become filled with the idea. So it is that when a man has title to a farm, it is not absolute title-he is a trustee and he must use it for the benefit of his fellows. I do not know how it is here in Nebraska but over in Iowa we don't allow thistles to grow along the roadside nor in a man's field, for thereby it becomes a menace to the neighborhood. On the same principle they don't allow a man in the city to build a wooden house in the business district. You can not build a wooden sidewalk, you must make it of brick or cement. And they are getting to the point where they don't want a man to spit on the street. [Applause.] Why? Because when consumptives spit on the street more damage is done to the people in the spread of tuberculosis, except it might be out in the country. So, the state has the power to conserve. It is just and it is right, gentlemen, whether we practice it or not. Every man is his brother's keeper. It is the old story of Cain and Abel. Cain denied that he was his brother's keeper. I will state to you, gentlemen of Nebraska, that Nebraska has two great assets, and I will now speak about these tonight, first the fertility of the soil, second, the efficiency of your men and women.

Farmers complain of the sins of the lumbermen; that they have gone into the woods and picked out the best timber, took the best part of the best trees and left the rest for the fire. You have done the same thing yourself. Bring no accusation against the lumbermen. You never bought a stick of lumber in your life in any lumber yard but what you paid far less for it than what it cost to grow it. You never will in all your life buy a stick of lumber but what you will get it for less than what it costs to grow it. Lumbermen have just gone in and selected the best trees and left the rest to go to waste, which waste is now considered very good lumber. You have done the same thing. Early in the nineteenth century came the soil robber. This land naturally came into the possession, first, of the pioneer, then the man who farmed it to make money and to live easy. He built a sod house, let his cattle run on the range. He took hay from the government land, and when the tiller of the soil came along the pioneer moved on farther west. After that the land fell into the hands of the soil miner, otherwise known as the soil robber, who farmed it for the unearned increment. Most of you made your money, not by farming, but by taking the unearned increment. My dear sir, your grandfather, with his old mold board plow or with his grain cradle, would have had to live to be as old as Methuselah to be able to do anything like the work on the farm to rob the soil as it is done today. The fertility of the soil has been mined and wasted. The greater the improvement in machinery the more rapidly we can mine the soil. You understand that this mining of the soil in the Mississippi valley has had world wide influence. We have simply sold corn and fed it to the cattle at the cost of mining

it and we enabled great cities to grow up in the old and new world. Our railroad friends have helped along in this matter because they have given us the benefit of the long haul. We can not blame them because we have prayed and plead for it. Every mother's son of you wanted it. So you built up these great centers to a point where they can not get even room for their business and have to locate their stockyards and car barns from fifteen to twenty miles out in the country. Whenever you get one of your stock cars in those stock yards you may not be able to get it out for a month. The long haul which was all right, enabled you to build up these large centers. The average rate of a common freight car is twenty-five miles a day, little faster than the old canal boat, a little faster than the old Canastota wagon hauling dry goods across the Allegheny mountains to build up these great cities. We mine the fertility of our soil too much. We will have to quit being miners of the soil, we of the soil robber breed, some of us thoroughbreds and some of a lower grade. We must get into our minds the idea that the soil of this great state of Nebraska, is given to us for our children and for our grandchildren down to the remotest generation. Further, that if we are to be a great nation we must be a people of great farmers. There was no nation of fools until the people began to move to town. That was that was the matter with Rome. Virgil himself, with all his poetry, did not succeed in bringing the people back to their estate. Then there began the greatness and decline of Rome.

for Rome fell not by the arm of the farmer.

We must, therefore, conserve our soil fertility as a most priceless possession. We are learning to do without timber. We can, in a pinch, get along with less iron and steel. If we don't have stone we can make it almost as good as nature made it but we can not live without agricultural products. We can not live without beef steak and pork. The greatness of our nation depends upon maintaining the fertility of our soil.

Another thing, and I am done, for I know you want to hear Mr. Blanchard. You cannot have a great soil without you have great men to till it. The virgin soil, rich with the fertility of ages, will not make a good governor. You must have a good man for governor. When I talk to men of the city they say the hardest man to get along with is the farmer. He will do such mean things that the merchant and the lawyer would never thing of doing. Farmers do a lot of little mean things. I know of a farmer who would fill his hogs with butter milk before he shipped them. I rejoice in my heart that we don't have to resort to things like that. We must seek to be square men, doing business on our honor, doing business in the sight of the Lord and not in the sight of men. And you professors in college should teach your students that anything won unfairly is dishonest; that the aim of life is not to get through it by hook or crook but to do things squarely and honestly.

The aim of conservation of the fertility of the soil and the conservation of manhood and womanhood are matters of education. "Just as the

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twig is bent so is the tree inclined," and we need the use of everything that will tend to build up character. You know in some respects we are about as mean a people as live on the earth. We starve our preachers, giving them a half of what they ought to have; we make martyrs of their wives. I don't know of any greater martyrdom than going on a country circuit in the west. We starve our school teachers, we exact of them the impossible. You cannot build up splendid manhood, you can't build up intelligent farmers without education. We are now beginning to understand that education is not the heritage of the few but that it belongs to all men everywhere. Of course, you can't get along without agricultural education, and you must consider the means by which the development of our nation is brought home to the people in the language that they can understand, and the great point that we have now before us is to educate our farmers. You can not restore the wasted fertility of the soil without education. You can't ever build up Nebraska as a great state without educating the farmer. You can't build up the fertility of the soil without brains. Some one asked a painter how he mixed his paints and he replied, "With brains, sir." Not altogether the knowledge of the class room, but with common sense, that power of observation, that ability to turn to account what we see and hear. That is what makes men great farmers. Of course, there are many things to be considered. You can't build up land by selling everything off it and thus retain its fertility. I receive many letters every week in the year asking what they can do to restore wornout soil. I have never yet had one of those letters from a country where they produced dairy products, or where it was a stock farm. Everything that tends to build up a large stock interest tends to build up a better soil as well as a better manhood. In this country one of the great branches of farming is dairying. No man can succeed in dairying unless he is a gentleman. It is said that you must speak to a cow as you would speak to a lady, and that means with kindness and sympathy.

Our great hopes are first for the boys. There are a lot of old fellows too old to learn. "They are joined to their idols; let them alone." You may as well let them alone because you can't pound anything into them for the reason that they know more than you. Our great hope in Nebraska and Iowa, in the matter of conservation, is in the boys and girls. Let us see that the next generation shall be wiser than we, more intelligent than we, more efficient than we. You can't have great boys unless you have great girls. You can't have educated men without educated women no matter what that education costs. There is not a township in Nebraska that cannot afford to spend $200 a year for every quarter section to have the right kind of schools. [Applause.] You will never build up this state until you are willing to put your money into it. The time has gone by for cheap skates.

Now, gentlemen, the next twenty years will determine whether this state and Iowa are to be states of strong, able men or not. The time

has come when there will be a contest as to whether the great organized interests are going to put halters on us and have us eat out of their hands, or whether we are to be great, strong, brave, and true American citizens, worthy of the heritage which we have received from our fathers. The boy-crop and the girl-crop are the crops from which all other crops are grown. [Applause.] I pity the old bachelor who don't have a share in growing this great crop and the old maid, who don't have the opportunity. [Laughter.] Look at everything in the light of the children that are to bear our names either in honor or in dishonor, that are to make your land a garden or make it a desert. You can't put too much education into your schools; you can't put too much power into your church; you can't spend too much money in building up a great institution like the University of Nebraska. [Applause.]

THE NORTH PLATTE IRRIGATION PROJECT-SOME FACTS ABOUT RECLAMATION WORK THERE.

BY C. J. BLANCHARD OF THE DEPARTMENT OF INTERIOR.

In his illustrated lecture before the Conservation Congress C. J. Blanchard of the reclamation service of the United States Department of the Interior gave especial attention to a discussion of the North Platte irrigation project. Illustrating his lecture with splendid views of the large dams, reservoirs, and the beautiful country that is to be watered by the canal, he spoke as follows:

"Nebraska has a profound interest in the North Platte irrigation project. Its full development will add to the crop producing acreage of the state and area greater than the total cultivated area of Rhode Island., It insures the permanent settlement and growth of a region heretofore regarded as of little value, and which, by reason of its uncertain rainfall has remained almost undeveloped. A new and brighter era is dawning on this section of the state, an era of assured and abundant crops, of continued and increasing prosperity.

"No other river in America, and but few others in the world, is of more importance in irrigation than the Platte river. Its sources are in northern Colorado where the Rockies attain their highest elevation. It drains an area of 90,000 square miles in three states, and upon its perennial flow approximately 2,000,000 acres are dependent for crops. It offers insurance against drouth for 14,000 farms, and with 12,000 miles of main canals and ditches it is guaranteeing crops valued at more than $80,000,000 annually. A conservative estimate of the total value of the irrigated farms in this drainage basin is not less than $200,000,000. Without irrigation the value would not exceed 10 per cent of this amount.

"Within the drainage basin of the Platte is found the largest area irrigated by one stream on the continent. The average value of the

agricultural land is probably as high as that of any other section of the United States with the possible exception of the fruit belts of California, Washington and Oregon.

"All of the natural flow of the Platte river has long since been appropriated. Private capital has overlooked no feasible opportunity for developing the water supply, and an enormous outlay of money has been made for great reservoirs and many miles of canals. The field remaining belongs peculiarly to the government because further extension of irrigation involves enormous expenditure and offers little in the way of ultimate profit to the capitalist. Wanting no profit, and owning large tracts of undeveloped land, the government, which asks no interest, is alone qualified to carry out the broad and expensive plans required for the complete utilization of the floods of this somewhat turbulent stream. "These apparent facts had much to do with the coming of the federal government into the field. The passage of the reclamation law in 1902 found the reclamation service quite well equipped with data relating to the discharge of the Platte river, and also with relation to possible reservoir sites. Plans were quickly prepared, surveys were made, and in as short a time as possible actual construction was begun. First a contract was let for the Pathfinder dam, the principal and most important engineering work connected with the project. This structure, which is one of the great dams of the world, is located three miles below the junction of the Sweetwater and North Platte rivers, in a narrow canyon varying in width from 60 to 100 feet on the bottom. The vertical walls of granite rise several hundred feet above the river. The site is forty-five miles from Casper, the nearest railway station, a fact which naturally added greatly to the difficulities of construction and to the cost. All machinery, supplies, cement, etc., had to be transported by wagons across a forbidding desert, waterless, dusty and with poor roads.

"The contractor's power plant was set up on the cliffs above the dam site, and the work of exposing the river bed was commenced. Bed rock was found at twelve feet. Cable ways were swung across the canyon. Giant cranes were set up in the bottom and along the sides of the canyon. A huge tunnel was excavated in the wall around the dam to carry the normal flow of the stream.

"By day and by night the desert stillness was broken by the dull roar of dynamite, and huge mases of granite were blasted and fell into the river bed. The heavy cranes lifted and placed them in their beds of cement in the dam. Slowly a beautiful arch of masonry began to rise from the river bed, regular in its courses and graceful in its outlines, as such a monument should be. Floods came, and with mighty force swept over it, but left it unharmed. The contractors simply waited for them to subside, and then took up the work again. On May 2, 1909, the Pathfinder dam was completed.

"This structure is 218 feet in height, and 500 feet long on top. Its cubical contents are 60,400 cubic yards. It cost approximately $1,200,000.