The Japanese problem would then be transferred from across the Pacific to across the Rio Grande, and Japanese cotton mills at Guaymas would get their cotton from the cotton fields of the Colorado River Valley. They would transport it by water down the Colorado River and across the Gulf of California and develop a great ocean commerce from the territory that is tributary to the Gulf of California. That includes the whole valley of the Colorado River if its transportation facilities were adequately and comprehensively developed, as the Japanese would develop it, by lines of Japanese steamers running up the Colorado River at least as far as Yuma. The American Railroads could not strangle Japanese competition.
CHAPTER VII
The potential economic strength and creative power of the people of Japan may be illustrated by what they would do with the Colorado River Valley and watershed if it were to become Japanese territory, and what we must do with it if we are to hold our ground against their economic competition in the eternal racial struggle for the survival of the fittest.
The Colorado River has been aptly called the Nile of America. There is a most remarkable resemblance. In the valley of this American Nile another Egypt could be created. All the fertility, wealth, population, products, art, and romance of the Land of the Pharaohs could be reproduced in the valley of this great American river. A city as large as Alexandria at Yuma, and another as large as Cairo at Parker, are quite within reasonable expectations whenever the resources of the Colorado River country are comprehensively developed.
But even that comparison of possibilities gives no adequate conception of what might be accomplished by the Japanese in the way of creative development in the drainage basin of the Colorado River.
Another Japanese Empire could be made there, with all the vast productive power, population, and national wealth of the present Land of Nippon. That is what the Japanese would do with it if they had the country to develop according to Japanese economic ideals and their methods of soil cultivation and production. They know full well the possibilities of the Colorado River country. Already the Japanese cultivators of the soil are at the Gateway to this great valley, just below the international boundary line in Mexico. They are now doing there the manual labor necessary to develop and produce crops from Mexican lands owned by Americans in the lower delta of the Colorado River.
The Japanese, if they had the opportunity, would give the same careful study to every minute detail of conquesting the Colorado River Valley from the Desert that they gave to defeating Russia in the war they fought to save their national existence against the sea power and land power of the Russian Empire.
They would measure the water that runs to waste, as we have done. They would select and plat the land it should be used to irrigate, which we have not done. They would survey every reservoir site in the Colorado Canyon and test the foundations, which we have not done. They would calculate the aggregate volume of electric power that could be generated by a series of reservoirs in the Colorado Canyon, which we have not done.