But it needs no argument to prove that this comparatively small area will be insufficient to meet the demand which is now exhausting an area four times as great, or to prevent the suffering I have described.
Measures of greater vigor are imperatively required.
The conception that water is, on the whole, the most important natural resource has gained firm hold in the irrigated West, and is making rapid progress in the humid East.

Water, not land, is the primary value in the Western country, and its conservation and use to irrigate land is the first condition of prosperity.

The use of our streams for irrigation and for domestic and manufacturing uses is comparatively well developed.
Their use for power is less developed, while their use for transportation has only begun.

The conservation of the inland waterways of the United States for these great purposes constitutes, perhaps, the largest single task which now confronts the Nation.

The maintenance and increase of agriculture, the supply of clear water for domestic and manufacturing uses, the development of electrical power, transportation, and lighting, and the creation of a system of inland transportation by water whereby to regulate freight-rates by rail and to move the bulkier commodities cheaply from place to place, is a task upon the successful accomplishment of which the future of the Nation depends in a peculiar degree.