REPORT FROM NEW MEXICO
Colonel W. A. Fleming Jones
I come from a Territory that for sixty years has been knocking at the doors of Congress, seeking admission to the sisterhood of States. The treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo provided that our Territory should be admitted to Statehood "at the proper time" (which was to be judged by the Congress of the United States), and to the enjoyment of all the rights of citizens of the United States according to the principles of the Constitution. The implied requisites for admission are population, taxable wealth, and the desire of Statehood. All of these we have in abundance, including a population that exceeds by far that of any of the States at the time of their admission, with the single exception of Oklahoma, and something that is by no means generally known is the fact that our Territory has fewer foreign-born citizens per thousand than any State in the Union. However, the present Congress has enacted legislation under which we may be admitted, and our Constitutional Convention is now in session, framing a fundamental law that I am sure will meet with the approval of Congress and the President. But for the fact that the best brains of our Commonwealth are engaged in the work of framing this Constitution, a much larger representation would have been present here.
New Mexico is proud of what she has done in the cause of Conservation. The Act of the Thirty-eighth Legislative Assembly creating our Conservation Commission is broad in its scope and is a model for those States which have not enacted any such legislation.
I hope to attend the Third National Conservation Congress, not from a Territory whose people are wards of the Government and not considered capable of the management of their own affairs, but as the representative of the Great State of New Mexico, the forty-seventh star in our flag.