Excerpt from Addresses of James J. Hill to the Illinois Manufactures Association Chicago: June 4, 1902

Today we have about reached the limit of our public domain which can be made to furnish homes for an intelligent and enterprising population.

"In many of the Western States are enormous areas of the best land which, with irrigation, can be made productive in the highest degree. One hundred and sixty acres of land, with a certain supply of water, which will insure to the husbandman a bountiful harvest, is equal to twice that area where the land is subject to the natural conditions of either too much or too little rainfall.

"One-half of the population of the United States is occupied directly or indirectly in the cultivation of the land, and I think fully one-half of the entire capital of the country is invested in farms and their belongings, and when we come to the questions of intelligence, patriotism and good citizenship, the agricultural population stands out today, as it has in the past, as the great sheet anchor of the nation.

"The wealth of the world comes from the farm, the forest, the mine and the sea. While our country has been blessed with wonderful mines of coal, iron, gold, silver and all the other valuable mineral productions, with magnificent forests of useful timber, still the farm has, from the beginning, been the foundation of our growing wealth and greatness.

"During the last three years the balance of our trade with other nations, that is the amount we have sold in excess of what we have bought, has averaged about $700, 000, 000 annually, and two-thirds of this has come to us through the export of the produce of the soil.

"I do not wish in any manner to belittle the importance of our growing manufactures or their relative value in the commerce of the country. The security of their foundations has always rested upon the agricultural growth of the nation, and in the future it must continue to rest there. Every manufacturer, every merchant, every business man throughout the land, is most deeply interested in maintaining the growth and development of our agricultural resources.

"In the past we have been in the habit of feeling that 'Uncle Sam was rich enough to give us all a farm, ' but today, as I said before, the arable land suitable for agriculture without an artificial supply of moisture is practically all occupied.

Federal Control Of Irrigation.

"In a few limited communities of the West irrigation has been commenced by what may be called 'individual effort.' Owing to diverse laws, made to suit particular interests, the irrigation of large areas is attended by greater difficulties than can be well surmounted by individual effort.

"The policy of a broad, comprehensive, national plan of irrigation has been urged upon Congress with but little success in the past.

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