“When I was a boy and helped in my father’s mine at Black Canyon, I was urged to greater labor by the great plan my father had conceived in his long labor at the placer claims. He would save his gold until he had enough and more than enough. Then, when he had gold enough, he would dam the flow of the Colorado River and get the gold that lies in the river bed, washed down through the ages. “That plan became the splendid dream of my life, Gentlemen of the Commission. The stupendousness of the idea took root in my very soul. I would stand and watch the river hurrying past, and I would think how best it might be done, and I would picture the river held back, halted in its headlong course to the sea. “When I was fifteen I was studying, in a small, groping way, the engineering feat of damming the river at Black Canyon. I knew that I had a tremendous problem before me. I knew that the problem was doubled by the need of secrecy, which had been impressed upon me from the time I was a child. No one had thought of getting the gold from the river bed. The river was too swift, its currents too treacherous. I used to watch the steamboats warp up against the sweep of that current, to make the landing at El Dorado. That gave me an idea of the giant strength we should have to combat, to conquer. No one ever suspected the purpose that grew within the minds of the ‘squaw man’ Cramer and his breed boys, mining at Black Canyon. Deliberately we fostered the belief in our commonplace lives, our lack of ambition, our ignorance. That belief, gentlemen, was a necessary factor in our ultimate success. “Studying alone--for my younger brother avoids thinking when possible, and my father gave himself up wholly to the thought of getting the gold--I felt the need of help from our great engineers. I could not take the time for college, for studying in the schools that turn out engineers. I am a man of the desert, as you see me. What I know I have learned by reading when others slept. I could not give my working hours to study, for they were sold to the need of getting gold to build the dam in order to get more gold! I alone realized the magnitude of the undertaking; to me they looked for the wit to accomplish their desire. And I remembered, gentlemen, the engineering problem solved by half-savage peoples; their power is gone, but their engineering feats remain to testify for them. I remembered the pyramids, some of the wonderful old cathedrals of Europe, the marvelous ruined cities of the Incas, the Aztecs,--I counted myself a savage who must think for himself, and I went at the problem of making the splendid dream a reality.