The remarkable features of the structure as a conserver of water will be made clear by comparison with other storage dams of this country. The Pathfinder will control absolutely the greatest flood ever known in the North Platte. Its reservoir capacity is 1,025,000 acre feet, or considerably more than enough to cover Rhode Island a foot deep. The new Croton dam of New York, which cost $7,631,000, or nearly six times as much as the Pathfinder, stores less than one-tenth of the water. The Wachusett, New Croton and Ashokan reservoirs in the east, cost $22,557,000, or nearly nineteen times more than the Pathfinder, yet their total storage capacity is only a trifle more than half of the reservoir on the North Platte.

"At the present time the stored water is utilized only on the lower section of the project. A comparatively narrow strip of land in eastern Wyoming is served. The area broadens as the canals pass into Nebraska. Later a very large acreage in Wyoming will be supplied. All this region for years has been given over to the cowmen. It is rich in historical incident, occupying as it does more than 250 miles of the old overland trail made by the gold seekers in the mad rush for the gold diggings of California.

"Winds and rains have worked capriciously with the buttes and bluffs, carving them into grotesque and freakishly shaped forms. These natural monuments are rich in pioneer associations, and their names are interwoven with the early history of the region.

"The irrigable lands are typical of the 'great plains region. Slightly rolling upland and prairie, with long strips of level valley. For a generation this has been the free common for the stockman whose herds and flocks have had access to it and have overgrazed it. Its population was small, the lonely ranch homes isolated and devoid of homelike attractions were always far apart. In those days the stockman wanted no neighbors, and as a rule opposed the cultivation of the land.

"To bring the water to the land it was necessary to construct a diversion dam in the river about 150 miles below the Pathfinder. This is known as the Whalen dam, and diverts the stream into a large canal having a total length of nearly 100 miles. For many miles the canal passes through difficult country, with shifting sand hills around which canal construction was expensive. In places the canal passes through rock formation, and in others it was necessary to line the canal with cement to avoid loss by seepage. Across the deep couless the water is carried in underground siphon or overhead flumes of concrete. Substantial bridges have been built with concrete abutments. All structures of importance are of concrete to insure permanence and efficiency. From the main canals and laterals the farmers' ditches lead the water to the irrigated lands. A remarkable transformation has taken place in the last three years. In 1904 one could count the houses within the radius of vision on the fingers of two hands. Today this same section looks like an old settled country. More than a thousand homes now dot the prairie.

"Fifty thousand acres have been plowed, leveled and made ready for crops. Last summer many thousands of acres were in grain, and the change from a vast expanse of desert to a well established agricultural country seemed well nigh miraculous. Here was a picture to content the eye, to gratify our pride in the achievements of our fellow man.

"The landless man has come into his own, and one of the chief purposes of national reclamation has been accomplished. In this golden harvest which was being garnered there was promise of future comfort and the blessings of contentment.

"Nor was prosperity alone reflected from the farm. In the numerous towns and villages in the valley there were numerous evidences of the same well being. Artistic and beautiful homes attested the coming of good times. Wide streets shaded with fine trees, broad lawns and flowering plants spoke of civic pride and fine ideals.

"The economic value of a work like this cannot be measured in dollars and cents. The desert made fruitful offers a home and independence to the homeless. Our nation's greatness has its foundations in the home of the man whose feet are firmly planted on his own land. Creating additional opportunities for our citizens to own their own land is a national duty too obvious to require argument. In every home thus established there will be a yeoman ready to answer his country's call in time of war, or to take his part in the councils of the nation. In these homes there will be born citizens who will constitute a bulwark against oppression, and who will impress upon our national thought the fine sense of personal honor, the higher ideals, and the lofty purposes which are developed in the land where every man has his heritage, a home and the opportunity to make himself independent.

"I say to you that the day is not far distant when the nation, yea, the whole world, will be glad to listen to the exultant voice that comes from out the conquered desert. We have only to mark the trend of human events during the past ten years. to realize that the west is becoming more and more dominant in national affairs. Conservation, the commission form of municipal government, the broad, progressive policies, the cleansing of political machines, these are all western, and they threaten to sweep the whole country.

"When the vast expanses of our treeless plains and the vacant and voiceless valleys of the mountain region shall have been reclaimed; when ten million families shall have been provided with homes of their own; when blossoming orchards and fields of golden grain replace the wastes of sand and sage-brush; when the stirring sounds of a thousand industries break the age-long silence of the desert, who is there here whose vision is so clouded he may not look behind the veil of the future and see a civilization better, higher and nobler than the world has ever known?"

At the general sessions of the second day a set of conservation principles was adopted and addresses were made by Hon. Chas. Sloan, Mr. D. A. Brodie, Hon. Henry Wallace and Hon. W. J. Bryan. Failure to secure Mr. Sloan's manuscript prevents its publication in this connection.

CO-OPERATION IN AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION.

BY D. A. BRODIE, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION.

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen:

In the co-operation branch of the Department of Agritulture we have sent out different men in conjunction with state experiment stations. An example of how we work, making the money go twice as far, is to enter into an agreement with the experiment stations to put up half the money, and we the other half. In that way we can get good men. In Missouri we have such a contract and our man spends half of the time at the experiment station and the other half in the field. He goes out among the farmers, selects some topic and finds out where the farmer is making a success and where he is making a failure. After studying with a certain number of farmers, say 100, the expert is able to select the most successful one and can say why he is making more of a success than others. A man who does nothing else but study a state in this manner is bound to make himself an authority on agriculture in that state. When he gets the farmers going in good style and many things rounded out nicely he holds institutes on the farms. We held several of this kind in Missouri last year. They were larger than had ever been held in that state.

Another method of carrying on co-operation with the farmers is through farm organizations. In California the citrus growers are organized for mutual protection and profit. The department sent a man out there at their urgent request. He is helping to solve their problems for them. One problem is how to prepare fruit for market; another, How to prepare fruit to ship to any part of the world without waste or loss? The department sent two men to California to study this problem. They looked the situation over and after studying it in detail found how to help in the best possible way. Fruit pickers, I think 100 in all, were selected and trained. Then when the picking season began the proper methods were followed. This method was extended throughout the state by demonstrations. The experiment was successful and showed how to save many thousands of dollars to the growers and to the organization.

In Pennsylvania we put a man in the field at our own expense at the request of the farmers of a certain section. Mr. Ross went there with the farmers teaching them how to pick apples, and then he went to

Philadelphia and showed how to market the apples; he is still in Philadelphia selling apples for the farmers.

Mr. Hunter, a native of Iowa, was sent in the early days to Oregon. to study the settlement of irrigation lands. Then, when a new project was opened for settlers from many states, Mr. Hunter was ready to assist in the solution of their problems. An urgent request came for the department to help solve these problems. Hunter had found where settlers had made a success and where they had made a failure. He put the facts in the form of a bulletin which cannot be printed fast enough to meet the present demands.

In New York they once had a lot of land that was very unproductive. Those people were in hard luck. They sent an organized effort down to Washington, and made an appeal to the Secretary of Agriculture, to send them help to see if something could not be done. The request was granted and Munroe was put in charge of the work. He knew a good farmer as well as a bad one. He was like Hunter of the West, he knew from long training what the success of farmers was due to. He also knew why so many failed. In two or three counties he got the farmers growing crops according to new methods. He advised in regard to certain rotations. He introduced new seed corn, new potatoes and in three years he had made such a success that last year Colonel Roosevelt went with him and visited those sections and saw what the government was doing to help the farmers of New York.

In South Carolina we have a man who is co-operating with the state department of agriculture. He has an office in the commissioner's office; he is co-operating with the state college and the experiment station. He is co-operating with every organization in the state and he is producing results. Last year he went down near the coast where an appeal came for help. Their lands were worn out and they could not grow crops. Our man took in the situation and being an Illinois man and familiar with drainage he gave the farmers a practical application of what tile draining would do, and the next year a great crop of cotton was raised on the experiment field. Today hundreds of farmers in that county who have not yet done so, will put in tile drainage. In another county, near Columbia, the same man was sent out to help a farmer who wanted a dairy. The problem was to grow a crop to feed dairy cattle on land that had for a hundred years been cropped to cotton. Our man planned a system to meet the demands of the dairy. I was out there myself three years afterwards and I found alfalfa growing-something that I didn't think could be done. There were fields of oats and wheat. A little further out on the red clay of that state a man asked for help in the matter of producing a crop for hogs. He was a city man and didn't know anything about hogs or a crop system. (Once in a while it is a good thing for a city man to go out into a section of the country where they have lost the art of farming.) Our man went out there and planned a rotation of crops for the city man who wanted to

raise hogs. He looked around to see where he would get leguminous soil with which to inoculate the field. He found an old worn out peach orchard in which were legumes. This was dug up and spread on a few acres. The city man was so impressed with the proposition that he sowed forty acres, contrary to Mr. Smith's advice. He carted out five wagon loads of this soil, spread it on every acre that he sowed. "Now," he said, "I am going to see whether that soil has anything in it or not." I saw the farm afterwards, and it proved the theory. It was

a success.

Now, how is this service of the Agricultural Department secured? First the problem for investigation must be one of importance. Next, KO matter how important it is, money enters into the proposition that is why we co-operate with the Experiment Stations. Where the problem is important enough we put up part of the money and you put up part of it.. The way the department looks at it is, "here is something to be done for all farmers and if possible we will do it." The plan calls for a willingness on the part of the co-operators and half of the money. An organized band of farmers can do far more, not only with your own Experiment Station but with the Department of Agriculture, under organization, than you can individually. Consequently, if the farmers organize and make a request for these things, if there is a possible way of putting a man in the field to solve the problem, it will be done.

I was in Dr. Bailey's office at Cornell University in conference with him and a representative of the Lackawanna Railroad for the special purpose of devising a plan to put men in the field in the vicinity of Binghamton to help the individual farmers. The railroads were interested, of course, for obvious reasons, in the upbuilding of Binghamton. The university was interested for the state of New York; and we were interested from the standpoint of the nation. During that conference Dr. Failey introduced to us a fellowship organization he had worked out in order to get at a certain problem. The organization was composed of fruit growers and farmers. They came to Dr. Bailey's office and said, we need the men for investigation, and so the arrangements were made for co-operation between the college and the people. That was only the beginning of what proved to be a good work.

Another illustration is one that has interested me during the last year not only because it is rather new but because it has such wide bearing on certain communities. It is in Texas on a section of country known as the Black land. For forty years those farmers have been growing crops on that land, all the time without leguminous crops at all. It is rather unusual to find such a condition where farmers grow cotton, wheat, oats and corn in rotation without legumes. Our man, Mr. Youngblood, went in there. He had been raised on black dirt and did not think it needed any leguminous crop, and it was unusual to think of a section of country that had been farmed that long without leguminous