The government should go over onto the west side of the Sacramento Valley and buy another 100,000 acres, and subdivide it into one acre Homecrofts and enlist another corps of 100,000 Homecroft Reservists and put them on that land. Then it should set them to work to build a great wasteway, to temporarily carry off the flood waters of the Sacramento River—one that will not split the Sacramento River but that will safeguard Sacramento from that catastrophe. That work should be continued until it is finished.
Another 100,000 acres in the neighborhood of Fresno should be likewise bought and another 100,000 Homecroft Reservists enlisted and located on it. They should be set to work to open a navigable waterway to Fresno and dig a great drainage canal that would also be a navigable canal, from Suisun Bay to Tulare Lake.
Another 100,000 acres in the upper end of the west side of the Sacramento Valley should be acquired and settled with 100,000 Homecrofters who would work on the construction of the Iron Canyon Reservoir and other reservoirs on the Sacramento River and its tributaries, and on a great main line West Side Canal from the Sacramento River to the Straits of Carquinez.
Another 100,000 acres on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley should be acquired and settled with 100,000 Homecrofters who would work on the construction of the lower section of the West Side Canal from the Straits of Carquinez to the lower end of the San Joaquin Valley.
The government should not stop there. It should, as soon as the necessary legislative machinery can be evolved, go into the extreme southern end of the San Joaquin Valley and acquire 500,000 acres of land for a Homecroft Reserve of 500,000 families. It should build the works necessary to bring the water to irrigate this land from the Sacramento River by the great main-line canal from the river to the straits of Carquinez. Those straits should be crossed on a viaduct and the canal carried on down the west side of the valley, starting at an elevation high enough to cover the land to be irrigated in the lower valley. The increased value of the million acres would cover the entire cost of the works. Additional revenue could be earned by the furnishing of water to other lands under the canal in the Sacramento and also in the San Joaquin Valley.
The coöperation of the State of California would be gladly extended and complete plans carried out for the reclamation of the San Joaquin Valley by a great canal on the east side of the valley heading in the Sacramento River near Redding, or at the Iron Canyon, and extending to the extreme southern end of the valley, as recommended by the Commission appointed by General Grant when President of the United States. That Commission was composed of General Alexander, Colonel Mendel, and Professor Davidson, three of the most eminent engineers and scientists of those days.
An aggregate area of 12,500,000 acres would, as the result of this policy, be reclaimed and settled in the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys. Having created a dense population ourselves in that country there would be no unoccupied land to tempt the Japanese. And with 1,000,000 Homecroft Reservists ready at any time to meet and repel an invasion, our occupancy of the country would be assured forever.
There would not be room left for many Japanese immigrants, and if some of them did come they would be in such a hopeless minority that no danger would result from their being here. No condition could then be imagined in the future that would create a possibility of Japan, even with all the countless millions of China combined with her, being able to land on the Pacific Coast an army large enough to stand a moment against a Homecroft Reserve of a million soldiers from the Colorado River Valley and another million from the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys.
Whether it would be advisable to establish other Homecroft Reserves in Oregon and Washington would depend largely on the attitude of mind of the people of those States. If a few connecting railroad lines were built, troops could be transported by railroads running north across Southern California and Nevada to a connection with the railroads running down the Columbia River to Portland. These railroads would all be east of the mountains until they connected with the Columbia River Railroad and would be free from danger of being destroyed by the blowing up of tunnels.
Of course it is a remote contingency that such a thing should ever become necessary, but if it ever did, the Canadian border could be defended with troops brought north through Nevada and Utah from the Colorado River Valley to great concentration camps at Chehalis and Spokane, in Washington, Havre in Montana, and Williston in North Dakota. As a matter of military precaution, the necessary connecting links should be built as military railroads, if nothing else,—such links as from Yuma to Cadiz, Pioche to Ely, Tonopah to Austin, Indian Springs to Eureka, and from Battle Mountain or Winnemucca as well as from Cobre on the Central Pacific line north to a connection with the Oregon Short Line. The ease with which these connections could be made, and the facility, in that event, with which troops from the Colorado River Valley could be transported to any point in North Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Washington, or Oregon, as well as their