Part 13 (2/2)

In ”The Great Illusion,” Norman Angell argues that war must cease because it does not pay. Would that argument apply in case of a war between the United States and j.a.pan, with reference to the Colorado River Country and the rest of the territory now lying in the United States between the Rocky Mountains on the east and the Pacific Ocean on the west?

In the Colorado River Valley alone the j.a.panese would get 5,000,000 acres capable of being made to produce by their system of cultivation a net profit of $1,000 an acre, over and above a living for its cultivators. That would make a total of five billion dollars a year.

In addition they would get 12,500,000 acres in the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys in California which if they produced from it only a net profit of $500 an acre every year--would yield a total of two and a half billion dollars annually. Oregon, Was.h.i.+ngton and Idaho would add as much more land, making another two and a half billion dollars a year.

That is a total annual production to which the j.a.panese would develop this land within a generation of Ten billion dollars a year--and very little of the land is to-day cultivated. Most of it is unreclaimed desert.

In addition to this the mineral output of the states lying entirely within that territory for 1913 was as follows:

Arizona $71,000,000 California 100,700,000 Idaho 24,500,000 Nevada 37,800,000 Oregon 3,500,000 Utah 53,000,000 Was.h.i.+ngton 17,500,000

Total $308,000,000

In addition, a considerable portion of the states of Colorado, New Mexico and Wyoming lies within the territory under consideration. The mineral output of these states for 1913 was as follows:

Colorado $54,000,000 New Mexico 17,800,000 Wyoming 12,500,000

Total $84,300,000

The total mineral production of all the above named States, and including Montana, for the ten years ending with 1913 was $3,322,003,895.

The lands in the delta of the Colorado River where the j.a.panese are now settling comprise more than a million acres of the most marvelously fertile land in all the world.

The j.a.panese who are now going into the delta country of the Colorado River are not going where they are unwelcome. The American who wants to use their labor to cultivate his land, in order that he may get a profit from it without working the land himself, is busy starting the Asiatic invasion that will eventually sweep over that Land of Promise. It is an invasion that will ultimately transfer that country from American to Asiatic control, unless the American people wake up and decide without delay to do _the one and only thing_ that can possibly prevent this from happening.

What is that ”one and only thing” that they must do to save the Colorado River Valley for our own people?

_Why it is to occupy, cultivate, use, and possess it ourselves, and do with it exactly what the j.a.panese would do with it if they possessed it as a part of the territory of the Empire of j.a.pan._

What would have to be done to accomplish that has already been told.

_How is it to be done?_

By thrusting to one side the speculators and exploiters and demanding from Congress the necessary legislative machinery and money to conquest the Colorado River Valley from the desert, with exactly the same inexorable insistence with which the money would be demanded if it were needed for defense against an invading German force that had landed in New England and was marching on New York; with exactly the same irresistible popular cyclone that will roar about the ears of Congress in the future, if their supine neglect now does some day actually lead to a j.a.panese invasion of the United States.

If the people of the United States can get their feet out of the quicksands of land-speculation, water-speculation, power-speculation, and the operations of water-power syndicates, they can create a country as populous and powerful as the j.a.panese Empire in the Drainage Basin of the Colorado River. If we will eliminate that one great obstacle, we can do it ourselves, just as well as the j.a.panese could do it. Our subserviency to the Spirit of Speculation is the only thing that stands in the way of it.

Every problem involved has been solved by some other country and partly solved by our own. There is no reason why the United States cannot adopt the Australian and New Zealand Systems for the acquisition, reclamation, subdivision, and settlement of land.

There is no reason why the United States should not control its water power resources on such a stream as the Colorado River; and, when advisable, build, own, and operate power plants and distribute power.

_Shall we admit that we cannot do what Australia, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland have done?_

Under the United States Reclamation Act we have already undertaken to reclaim land for settlement, and to build power plants, but we have failed to safeguard the land or the power against speculative acquisition.

However, what we have already accomplished has made for progress, and makes it easier to do what remains to be done.

When we come to the qualifications of colonists, and the necessity that they should be Homecrofters, the question becomes more difficult, because the majority of the people of the United States have no conception of the possibilities of acreproduction or acreculture by a skilled and scientifically trained truck-gardener and fruit-grower and poultry-raiser.

There are innumerable instances where truck gardens along the Atlantic Coast, on Long Island, and in New Jersey, Virginia, and Florida, are producing more than a thousand dollars worth of vegetables every year. It is a most common thing for berry-growers to realize that acreage product from an acre of berries in Louisiana or Was.h.i.+ngton. Celery, asparagus, lettuce, onions, and many other crops will yield as much when properly fertilized and cultivated. Anyone who doubts this can find ample proof of it at Duluth, Minnesota, or in California or Texas. Another thing should be borne in mind. One acre of land in the Colorado River Valley is the equivalent of five acres in a cold climate. Crops may be planted and matured so rapidly in that hot climate that plant growth more resembles hothouse forcing than ordinary out-of-door truck gardening. Another important fact is that all the tropical and semi-tropical fruits grow to perfection in that valley.

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