RECLAIMABLE SWAMP REGIONS

If only Dame Nature had distributed the rainfall of the United States a bit more evenly, land enough to feed about fifty millions of people would not have required an expenditure of half a century of time and several hundred millions of good, hard dollars. One must bear in mind, however, that if Dame Nature had done otherwise, it is just as likely that the same time and the same amount of money would have been required elsewhere for those same fifty millions of people.

The reclaimable swamp lands of the United States east of the Rocky Mountains aggregate about one hundred and twenty thousand square miles in extent—an area nearly equal to that of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois combined. Of this, Louisiana has about fifteen thousand square miles, a tract about as large as Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut combined, and Florida has about half her entire area in swamp land. West of the Rocky Mountains, California takes the lead, with enough swamp land to make a state of respectable size.

In the case of California, if the "forty-niners" could have waited about a thousand years they would have found the precious swamp lands all properly filled in for them and ready for use; for the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers long since have been working at the task of filling up the big hollow between the mountain ranges. But the rivers are a trifle slow, and Californians are always in a steaming hurry. So Uncle Sam's engineers are driving their reclamation schemes with railroad speed. A few years ago these lands were worth nothing; drain them and they are worth one hundred dollars per acre; improve them according to modern farming science and they are worth ten times as much.

The Everglades of Florida
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In many instances even the quick methods of the reclamation authorities are too slow for the California farmer, and so he takes matters into his own hands. First he acquires his land; then he mortgages all his worldly possessions to surround the land with a ditch deep enough and wide enough to make a dike high enough to keep out flood waters. His land after draining is full of the stuff for which he otherwise would pay thousands and thousands of dollars. Phosphates and lime form the coverings of minute swamp life and nitrogen compounds are a part of their bodies. The polders of Holland are not richer than this swamp land; indeed, they are not so rich. One or two crops will pretty nearly extinguish the mortgage and three or four more will put the owner on "Easy Street."

In the bottom-lands of the Sacramento River is an island that for fifty years went a-begging. Then a company with a shrewd head bought it, diked it, and drained it. Now the island has immense celery beds and the largest asparagus farm in the world. The celery and canned asparagus are shipped to the produce markets of New York City.

Another great swamp area covers a large part of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Arkansas. This swamp was made when the head of the Gulf of Mexico reached half-way up to St. Louis, for the delta of the Mississippi River has been travelling leisurely southward for several thousand years—so leisurely, in fact, that Iberville and Bienville opened the region to settlement fifteen hundred years or more too soon. But Uncle Sam is taking a hand here likewise, and in another fifty years a population half as large as that of New York may not only live comfortably but get rich on the reclaimed lands of this and adjacent coast swamps.