"In addition to the last named increase, we may add an area of lands equal in size to the state of Illinois, which are beyond the reach of irrigating streams. We find these lands along the eastern foothills of the Rocky Mountains, and around the borders of the Great American desert. They may easily be restored to fertility, by the skillfully applied labor of a legion of co-operative farms. At varying depths beneath these lands, flow perennial streams of artesian water. By the spouting, life-giving waters of a vast number of artesian wells, a large proportion of these desert lands can be transformed to an agricultural paradise. The cost of these wells, would be but little more than the expense of the labor required to bore them.
"But, says the objector, are not these mostly alkali lands? Of course they are! And for that reason offer greater possibilities of value! Can they be made to grow wheat, and thus increase the bread supply? Is a question that comes from the mouths of the world's great army of bread eaters, six hundred million strong. Just think of it!
"For reasons which I shall state presently, I hope to be able to show why these alkali lands when properly irrigated, can be made to produce abundant crops of wheat.
"For the past twenty years, leading men of science, who, alive to the importance of increasing the world's supply of wheat; have given close attention to statistics which seemed to indicate that the yield per acre, of the wheat fields in all countries, is steadily decreasing. Decreasing to such an extent as to make it probable, that in the near future, the yield on a large proportion of these lands, will become too meagre to pay the cost of cultivation. A long series of carefully conducted experiments demonstrated the truth of these alarming statistics.
"This discovery led to a general search for some cheap, available, chemical, compound, which might restore these worn out wheat lands to their former productiveness.
"In an address, delivered at Bristol, England, near the close of the nineteenth century, by Professor William Crookes, president of the British Association for the advancement of science; he says; 'Wheat pre-eminently demands as a dominant manure, nitrogen fixed in the form of ammonia or nitric acid. Many years of experimentation with nitrate of soda, or Chili salt-petre, have proved it to be the most concentrated form of nitrogenous food demanded by growing wheat. This substance occurs native, over a narrow band of the plain of Tamarugal, in the northern province of Chili, between the Andes and the coast hills. In this rainless district for countless ages, the continuous fixation of atmospheric nitrogen by the soil, its conversion into nitrate by the slow transfiguration of billions of nitrifying organizations, its combination with soda, and the crystallization of the nitrate have been steadily proceeding, until the nitrate fields of Chili have become of vast importance, and promise to be of inestimably greater value in the future. The growing exports of nitrate from Chili at present, amount to about 1,200,000 tons annually.'
"In carefully analyzing this lesson from the lips of Professor Crookes, we discover that the same peculiar climatic conditions which made a Chilian desert so valuable, have been continuously at work in our great American desert for a great many thousands of years.
"For this reason, our uncounted acres of alkali lands, are so rich with stores of this valuable nitrogenous compound, that by proper treatment they may become the most valuable wheat-producing lands in the world. The desert shall become the source of abundance! Under the transforming influence of a generous water supply, forests shall spring up, and fields of waving grain shall flourish around the village homes of a happy, prosperous people! Altogether, we have an empire of these irrigable lands now worthless, awaiting the transforming labor of the homeless and landless, to restore them to productive fertility.
"When thus restored, these lands, at the lowest estimate, will be worth the enormous sum of two billion, eight hundred and eighty million dollars, which in due time may be transferred to the credit side of the wealth account of the nation! Long before this available domain of such vast possibilities has been conquered and reclaimed, the longing desires of all who wish for land, and for agricultural lives, for themselves and their children, will have been most abundantly satisfied.
"In looking over this broad field of possibilities spread so temptingly before us, we are able to discover the importance of the work of tree-planting, which now demands our attention. Strengthened by concerted action, encouraged by new ideas and better methods we become firm in our convictions, that it is an imperative duty for us to continue the good work. We must increase the number of our co-operative farms with their tree-planting schools, until, educated and moved by the force of so many demonstrations, a great majority of the people of this Republic shall demand, that the entire area of the range of the Rocky Mountains within our geographical limits, shall become a permanent, public park; with such a wealth of territory and variety of climate, such beauty of scenic grandeur and magnitude of picturesque proportions, as the world never saw before. This matchless reservation is to be devoted to the needs and uses of forestry, mining, the preservation of its great variety of natural curiosities, and of American Game.