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 Japanese would do with it if they possessed it as a part of the territory of the Empire of Japan.
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 Japanese 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 Japanese 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 Japanese 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.