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Congress

By Hon. Monte B. Gwinn

Chairman Executive Committee

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ments has been created, consisting of ten of the most prominent citizens of Boise. To this organization has been assigned the work of providing the entertainment of the visiting delegates, and arranging the features which are to comprise the entertainment. When the date for the Congress arrives, it will be found that this work has been well done. The citizens of Boise and the people of Idaho will be ready with their glad hands and glad hearts to welcome the arriving guests with open-hearted, free-handed hospitality.

There are many reasons for saying the

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One of the beautiful regions which will be shown the delegates to the National Irrigation Convention.

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Idaho session will be the largest and greatest in the history of the National Irrigation Congress: Irrigation as practical science is understood and appreciated by more people than ever before; this Congress will be held in the midst of the greatest public and private enterprises in the world; object lessons in irrigation will greet the delegates on every hand, affording the best opportunity for acquiring further information; the work under the National Reclamation Act has demonstrated its absolute success from a business and economic standpoint; Idaho has more irrigation enterprises under construction, embracing a larger area of lands to be reclaimed, with a larger volume of water with which to do it than any other state; these will furnish homes for many thousands of families and cause cities to be built that are yet unnamed; immigration societies, railroad and transportation companies, capitalists, manufacturers, and wholesale institutions have recognized the opportunities offered for a vast amount of new business.

The Fourteenth National Irrigation

Congress has been exploited in more than 500 newspapers, periodicals and magazines, published in every state in the Union; the official call has been mailed to more than 6,000 individual addresses, and responses indicate that fully 2,000 delegates are coming to take part in the work of the Congress.

The personnel of the Congress will comprise a larger number of Senators and members of Congress, Governors of states, National and State Engineers, immigration bureaus and industrial organizations, railroad managers, capitalists, manufacturers, homeseekers and investors, agriculturalists and horticulturalists, noted Government and other foresters, miners and livestock growers than were brought together at a civic meeting-all interested in the up-building of the arid and semi-arid lands of the Western states.

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The work of the Congress will consist in a general review of past accomplishments and outlining plans for future developments; the highest duty of water in producing certain crops, and the duty of those applying water to beneficial use; the

forest reserves of the United States, their relation to the storage of water for irrigation, and the policy in force for their management and control; lumbering, mining, stockraising and agricultural settlement within the reserves; immigration, rural settlement and the best means of making homes on the lands reclaimed for those who need homes. These are but a few of the important questions to be discussed and definite action taken upon by this Congress.

The three years in which the National Reclamation Act has been in operation has demonstrated that the loan made by the government of approximately $35,000,000 for the reclamation of arid lands is a sound business investment, and that the security for the loan is more than three times the amount advanced. The slogan of the Boise Congress will be an additional loan of "one hundred million dollars for further reclamation." The object of the Reclamation Act was to "cause great fields of vegetation to grow where nothing was grown before." The object of the advanced movement is to accom

plish in five years what would require fifty years under the present law.

During the session of the Congress the board of control will hold an exposition of the products of irrigation, in which each of the sixteen States and Territories comprising the irrigated area will make comprehensive exhibits, showing what has been accomplished through this method of agriculture, being practical object lessons for the benefit of delegates and visiting citizens to the Congress. After the sessions of the Congress have closed special excursion trains will be run to the different irrigation districts, in order that practical demonstrations may be shown in the practice of irrigation. The excursions will include visits to the great fruit-producing regions, sugar beet factories and fields, alfalfa and grain farms, irrigation projects from the first season of cultivation to fifty years of agriculture. Many places of noted scenic interest will be shown, and the visitors of Idaho made acquainted with the general resources of the state, its climate, and its citizenship.

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