land, and there is no place on God's green earth where society and civilization can reach a higher plane and a better one than upon the great plain of Illinois and Michigan, Missouri, Kansas, and all these great states. But let the young men realize that they can learn something from the green leaves of the field, as well as from the yellow leaves of the library. When we get to doing business, and we are doing it now, we want you all to help us get the legislation that is necessary, so that we can provide abundant and cheap food supply for the country, and have plenty to ship abroad, without impairing one single dollar of the farmer's income, but make it twice what it is today. (Applause)

Chairman CONDRA—I wonder if you really believe what this gentleman has said? (Sure we do. Yes.)

In the course of my work I have run on a few individuals who have an idea that it is not necessary for the state to be concerned with the materials of conservation, or with the conditions that obtain in those states. I hope that the time will come when the people on the farm, in the factory, all the citizens in the state will realize that an American state that does not have a full survey of its climate, its topography, its structure, its drainage, its resources, is behind the times. I want you people to pledge me, though not orally, that you will go home, return to your places, and stand by the men like Professor Holden, like Dr. Hawarth, like Dr. DeWolf, and those men who are farmer boys who have gone to the land to study the real value that they may give of their knowledge of farm management. Do you believe that? (Sure. Yes, sir. You bet.) Well, suppose as delegates we might bring in a resolution which says that conservation in these states must be based on that basis, on the material, on the conditions, would you vote it down? Would you believe that these men are sincere? Would you think those men are put in a glass case, that they represent a museum curiosity, or would you think that those men that are huskies, those men of brawn, would you think that those men are your friends, that they mean what they say and they know what they are talking about? They are the ones who have seen this thing from the practical side, and they must work with you. Let me sound this note: I make the plea that you may, in the conservation of the various states, stand for conservation based on fact, not on conservation based on dogma without foundation. Will you stand for that? (Applause) I wish to assure all now I am not now making an argument for the man who does the geological survey, the agricultural survey, the nursery survey, the industrial survey; I am making an argument to the people for the people who ought to have the truth of the situation, the benefit of those surveys. We have seen too many concerns floated without basis. We have seen altogether too much promotion without basis. The time is when our agriculture will flourish according to the conditions that obtain. We will not misrepresent for the purpose of drawing a population from one section of our great country to an unfavorable place in another section. We are going to take the land

as it is. We will take the climate as it is. We will take the resources through and through as they are. And the state will place its stamp of approval, based on the fruits, and the people can go here and there according to the light that is found. And we condemn any concern in the state that goes into another state and misrepresents things to the people, taking them to a place for which they are not fitted, and to land which they do not understand. I do not want to discourage you, and here let me clear up a thought. We stand as conservationists for reclamation. We intend to make more of these dry lands, those sandy lands, those wet lands, and the various other kinds, and we want to get more out of these trees, out of that coal, out of that gold, out of that iron.

Let us stand on the basis of truth. Let us stand against misrepresentation. May I sound another warning? There never was a state that misrepresented industrial facts and attracted factories to those unfavorable places, or attracted people to an unfavorable locality, which they did not understand, there never was a state that permitted that but suffered for the same sooner or later. We must take truth as it is. We must abide by the facts. We must, as people of the state, loyal to our state and our country, put our forces against all kinds of misrepresentation, because they end up badly. (Applause) Now you don't understand that, all of you. The farmer gets occasionally into some one of these concerns that ends badly. Then he objects to all kinds of business, and he objects to the railroads, and he objects to the men in the factory, and he thinks all business is illegitimate. We have reached a time in the conservation of our states when we will base our industry on investigation and reliable report, made by one who will not pad the facts.

I ask Mr. Baker to tell us a little about the Panama Canal.

Mr. BAKER-Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen: The subject is not one as Prof. Condra said, that covers the subject of conservation to most people, but to me it means a great deal. It means that your government, your people are spending today some four hundred millions of dollars for the purpose of conserving the interests of transportation between the east and the west coast of the United States of all this great country, the enormous commerce that has been absolutely and almost entirely in the control of the railroads for so many years. So serious has this control been that for nineteen years the transcontinental railway pool paid to the owners of the Panama Railroad Company $1,080,000 a year for nineteen years to induce them not to do business. Think what that means. Not only that, but for many years they paid the United States of Colombia, which formerly and originally was under the Republic of Panama before it seceded, $10,000 a year to prevent the extension of that line, to deepwater, so as they could utilize that route to develop the commerce of the United States. Your Government, you people, are paying for that. I am going to tell you a little, while we are waiting

for the President. I have just had the honor of being with him at dinner. He was unfortunately detained, but I expect him every moment, and it is not necessary for me to say that when he appears I shall retire.

They started out with that wonderful enterprise-the Panama Canal -by meeting the opposition of all the railroad interests that were determined that it should not be completed. Many, many times able articles, which many of you have read in the magazines, were written and paid for by the most eminent engineers to prove how totally impracticable the building of the Panama Canal was. It was a dream. A long dream, they used to say. It began in the early days of Spain when Columbus came to the Panama Canal. He was the first one to visit it. There was located on the west side of the canal what is known as the Treasure House of Spain. When our Government took hold of it, and employed the engineers to make a thorough survey, the question came up of building an open waterway free right down to sea level. When it was suggested that they build lock canals-and as many of you farmers to whom I am speaking may not understand that, I take a few minutes to explain exactly how they work. You come in on the level of the Caribbean sea, and the ship is elevated about thirty feet by sliding into a lock, the water pouring from the upper lock, sixty feet above, into this lower lock, thirty feet, and on this the ship rises. That occurs three times, until they bring the ship up to a level of eighty feet above the Caribbean sea. There is very little rise or fall in the tide of the Caribbean sea, only about eighteen inches, maximum and minimum. Then it enters into what is going to be—and now when I was there in November, had about twenty-eight to forty feet of water in it—a most beautiful fresh water lake some twenty-nine miles wide and some thirty long, bordered with the most beautiful mountain ranges. The ship will sail through that lake and will come into what you have all heard about, the wonderful Culebra cut, a cut straight through the mountains. One of the greatest difficulties, one that you have heard so much of, is the slides, the land constantly sliding down into that cut, was due to the character of the soil, it being a volcanic ash.

Now, the most wonderful thing has happened, due to modern invention, which has brought to work what is known as the cement gun, a gun that will fire cement into those banks and make them practically solid and prevent sliding. So they can go on and dig the canal without further interruption. There is no question whatever that the waterway will be opened to the people of the United States by the shortest possible route, saving 7,000 miles of water distance between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, all the way around the Straits of Magellan, by June, 1913. (Applause) Not only have they made the cement gun, but they have made the cement boat. I am an old steamship man of many years' experience. I can remember some years ago when they talked about iron boxes floating as being impossible. Then they came to a steel box floating. Now, ladies and gentlemen, they are floating a stone box there,

and putting on this stone box the gun which will fire the cement. It is made of cement. The steamer will proceed through that large cut, which is covered with the most wonderful vegetation that ever was written about, right in the tropics, within eight degrees of the equator. The ladies here-all ought to go to Panama and see the wonderful flowers, blooms-things that we see here in our greenhouses-there growing as trees-magnificent, wonderful-and the parrots playing through the woods. If you go a little way off you can also see the monkeys playing in the woods. All those things will be open to travel, and there will be the big fine passenger steamers going through there.

When you get over to the other side of the canal you meet first what is called the Piedro Miguel Locks. Peter McGill was an Irishman, but they called him, in Spanish, Piedro Miguel. A number of things down there are named after him. A short distance below you come to two more locks, lowering you to the level of the Pacific Ocean, which has a rise and fall of nearly eighteen feet. That is known as the Miraflores Lock, or many flowers. Now you have reached the Pacific Ocean. I want to go back just a moment, however, and tell you why it was necessary to make this lock canal. An old steamship man's ideal way is simply to sail through without any destination whatever, but there is a river down there, you know, the Chagres river. Up to the time I was last down there they never had yet found the source of the river. The vegetation was so rank it was almost impossible to get through. That river has been known to rise sixty feet in forty-eight hours, and yet I have seen it when you could almost walk across the river bed. Imagine that kind of a flood being taken care of in an open waterway constituting a ship canal. I would not like to be on the ship that undertook to go through a canal that might possibly meet that condition of floods in Panama. I want to tell you another thing that to me is the most wonderful work I have ever seen, and that is the way everything is managed and controlled by one man, Col. Gilfos. He is a wonder. You can go among the engineers, the laboring men, constituting all the nationalities of that part of the country, a great many of them Jamaicans and West Indians, Spaniards, and everywhere you will hear, "We are working for Col. Gilfos." No mistakes of any importance have been made. They all live there in the most perfect socialism, if I may call it in the true idea of socialism, the brotherhood of man, having everything in common.

When a lady wishes to give a dinner, she asks by telephone-Government telephone-for a carriage to be sent. It is a mule wagon generally, by the way. But now they are getting some automobiles. It takes her down to the commissary headquarters. She picks out what she wants to entertain her friends with, and she uses no money. It all comes up promptly just at the hour, and many times at prices which it would be impossible today to duplicate in some of our Western and Eastern cities. When the baby is sick she sends for the Government doctor. Everything is done in that way by the United States Government. Why,

they even run the most wonderful hotel in the most wonderful way, the Hotel Tivoli. It is a beautiful place, a marvelous place, and a remarkable arrangement they have there. If you stay one week it is a fixed price per week. If you stay two weeks it is at proportionate reduction, and three weeks again a reduction, so as to encourage people to come there and stay in the hotel. They are now adding to the Tivoli a very large $500,000 addition, just to accommodate travelers, and everything is run by the Government. You never hear a word of complaint, never any differences. There seem to be no social bickerings or differences among the people. One goes everywhere and finds absolute social enjoyment. I neyer in my life have seen such a marvelous community. There is where we ought to raise our children. Little figures running about with very little on them, there is so much bright sunshine and beautiful weather they do not need clothes, and they seem to be perfectly healthy. When you think of it, an old saying used to be that when they built the railroad across there every tie cost a human life. Disease was terrible. For five years there has never been a case of fever-yellow fever and it is the statistical record that it is one of the healthiest places today in the United States.

Of course it is not in the United States, but compared with any place in the United States. There was, by the way, one death, I understand, in Panama that was due to the curiosity of one of our dear women. She came down as a nurse, a trained nurse from New York, and did not believe that the mosquito could possibly convey fever. In the physical laboratory of the hospital at Ancon were a number of them in a glass case for experimental purposes. Talking to some of the other nurses when the doctors were not about, she put her finger in and allowed one of the mosquitoes to bite her. She was bitten all right. In five days she died of fever, proving beyond any question that the mosquito was the one thing that made all this unhealthfulness in the past. But not satisfied with that, the Government has drained in the most effectual way all the entire canal zone of some fifty miles long and ten miles wide. At the head of every small stream where there is any possibility of drainage or stagnant water producing mosquitoes, they place a small barrel of oil, with a drip. That drip is regulated just in proportion to the flow of water. Now today it is one of the most pleasant places in fair weather I ever saw. There are few or no flies on account of this strict sanitation, which includes also the removal of garbage. Everything of that kind is done by the Government in the most sanitary and most effective way. All the houses belong to the Government-they have single men's apartments, and married men's apartments, and houses for the different officers. There is provided a special can for the removal of all the garbage and refuse from the houses. If anyone leaves that open they are fined very promptly. No one does. An inspection officer is going about. So today I know of no more pleasant place in the world to spend a month or so than at the Hotel Tivoli, Panama.