We have covered in a way the "easy" farming regions. But in the end, all the country will be needed for productive uses; and the best civilization will come only when we conquer the difficult places as well as utilize the easy ones. We shall develop greater skill in farming than we have yet dreamed of. The raw and ragged open country that we see everywhere from trolley-lines and railway-trains is not at all a necessary condition; it is only a phase of a transition period between the original conquest of the country and the growing utilization of our resources. The more completely we conquer and utilize it, the more resourceful and hopeful our people should be. Country life will become more differentiated and complex. Speaking broadly, we are now in the rough and crude stage of our agricultural development; but the situation will develop only as it pays and satisfies persons to live in the country. To meet the economic, social, educational, religious, and other needs of these great open regions will require the very best efforts that our people can put forth; and our institutions are not now sufficiently developed to meet the situation adequately. RECLAMATION IN RELATION TO COUNTRY LIFE; AND THE RESERVE LANDS All forms of reclamation, by which lands are made available for agricultural use, profoundly affect society and institutions; and any person who is interested in rural civilization must necessarily, therefore, be interested in these means and their results. Because reclamation by irrigation has progressed farther than other means, and has become a national policy, I shall confine my remarks to it chiefly. The best rural civilization will develop out of native rural conditions rather than be imposed from without. Irrigation makes a rural condition: it provides the possibility for a community to develop; and it must, therefore, color the entire life of the community. Irrigation communities are compact. As all the people depend on a single utility, so must the community life tend to be solidified and tense. Probably no other rural communities will be so unified and so intent on local social problems. We shall look, therefore, for a very distinct and definite welfare to arise in these communities; and they will make a peculiar contribution to rural civilization. The life of the irrigation community will be expressed not only in institutions of its own, but in a literature of its own. Much of the world's literature does not have significance to country-life conditions, and very little of it has significance to an irrigation civilization. I look for poetry to come directly out of the irrigation ditch and to express the outlook of the people who depend for their existence on the canal and the flood-gate. _The interests of society in the work._