The plans of the Reclamation Service for the present and for the immediate future are centered upon the completion of twenty-six projects, embracing a total of 3,118,000 acres. To date, engineering works have made available an adequate water supply for approximately 1,800,000 acres. In 1917, water was applied to about 1,200,000 acres, and the gross value of crops was nearly $60,000,000. It is conservative to state that with the irrigation of all the lands included in these projects, 50,000 families will have been established on individual farms. The taxable wealth will be augmented by $300,000,000, and our annual returns from crops increased by $100,000,000. The area included in these projects exceeds the total cropped acreage of Connecticut, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Delaware, and the estimated value of crops after reclamation is $20,000,000 greater than the total returns per annum of these states. In these estimates no account is taken of the important increment to our national wealth in the resulting growth of cities and towns, in the building of railroads, and in manufacturing and commercial institutions, which in aggregate usually equals that of land values. [Illustration: THE NEW HOME ON THE DESERT] In fulfilling its manifest destiny, the West has undertaken the greatest and most splendid enterprise in the world--the upbuilding of Man. It is doing for the world what the world needs most. It is producing a great people. The sentiment of it has been expressed in eloquent terms by the late Henry Grady, “A citizen,” he said, “standing in the doorway of his home, contented on his own threshold, his family gathered about him, while the evening of a well-spent day closes in scenes that are dearest,--he shall save the republic when the drum tap is futile and the barracks are deserted.” This pregnant sentence epitomizes the final chapter of our Romance of the Desert, as it is now being written in the arid West. [Illustration: PRODUCTS OF THE DESERT] * * * * * _SUPPLEMENTARY READING_ RECLAIMING THE ARID WEST _By George Wharton James_ UNCLE SAM’S OUTDOOR MAGIC _By P. K. Fitzhugh_ DOCUMENTS ISSUED BY THE U. S. RECLAMATION SERVICE AND DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. ⁂ Information concerning the above books may be had on application to the Editor of The Mentor. THE OPEN LETTER