start at once to try, by the methods that have been outlined, to prepare this land for farms as long as the demand may grow. Nothing would do more towards turning the tide of immigration to this Southern country than the knowledge that these vast alluvial deposits were to be made available for cultivation.

Now we are, I say, in the same condition that the West was when it demanded irrigation. We need this land in the normal processes of our development as a State and as a section of this great country of ours. Why should not the Government respond to this demand of ours? There is no difference between the proposition of irrigation and the proposition of reclamation. It is the same principle reversed; that is all there is in it. The lands of the West were worthless because of a lack of sufficient water. The swamp lands of the South are worthless for agricultural purposes because of too much water. One is a proposition which the Government is now working out, upon which it is spending millions to make the land profitable, to put water on it; the other reclamation proposition is to take off water which now makes the land unavailable for farming purposes. The principle is the same and yet there is a vast difference, not in principle but in the thing sought after, in the thing accomplished. When you drain an acre of arid land in the West, Mr. Chairman, you do nothing except make another acre of farm land, for it was a barren waste before the Government went out there to reclaim it; but in the reclamation of the swamp lands, much more is accomplished.

Along every swamp and every morass in the South there are settlers living on the rims or borders of the swamps, populous communities that are as effectively separated by the swamp in many instances as they would be by a wall one hundred feet high. It, therefore, interferes to a most. serious extent with the construction of good roads and intercourse between people which goes to build up the material and the social status of communities; but, worse than that, they are the greatest menace to the health of the people of the South that they have to encounter. Sanitary conditions have been improved enormously throughout the South by sinking deep wells so as to get below these swamps' surface waters, but you can never hope to make the South as healthy and invigorating and as bracing as it otherwise would be as long as these swamps and overflowed places are permitted to remain in their present condition.

It is, therefore, a proposition of drainage, Mr. Chairman, of reclamation by drainage. It is not only a question of adding more acres of farming land to the country, but it is an immensely important sanitary question. It is an important question in regard to good roads, and it is also a forestry problem, but I do not want to go into that now.

Now, what have we got here in North Carolina? I believe they say we have got over 4,000 square miles of these swamp areas in North Carolina. That is about three million acres that might be added to the agricultural land of the State. It is better than any three million acres that you have got now, and it can be reclaimed at the expenditure by the individual, by the State and by the Government of a trifling sum of money compared with the increased enhancement it would make to the value of that land. I believe there is enough of this land within a radius of thirty miles of Newbern to furnish homes, if it were put in condition for cultivation, for at least 25,000 people. What good is it now serving, this broad expanse within that radius of thirty miles? It is nothing less, it is nothing short now of a nuisance, a breeding ground for mosquitoes, a pestilence serving no good purpose to the private individual who owns it and in many instances worthless as an asset to the county and State, and a menace to the health of the whole community. They are as great impassable walls separating and segregating the people of eastern North Carolina so that they are seriously hampered in social and business intercourse and trade that would be possible to them if these obstacles were removed, permitting the construction of good roads. It is possible to remove these obstacles and thus give to our people the same blessings that other communities enjoy.^

Mr. Chairman, I ask pardon of the convention for having spoken so long and so disconnectedly. To tell the truth about it, I had a certain line of thought which my good friends took away from me, and during the dinner hour I had to sit down and revise my remarks and proceed. upon different lines, which accounts for the rather disconnected way in which I have discussed the subject.

At the morning session, September 10, the first address was by Hon. Chas. R. Thomas, Congressman from the Third District.

ADDRESS BY CONGRESSMAN CHARLES R. THOMAS.

Every citizen of the State, as Mr. Small stated on yesterday, should co-operate in the improvement of our highways, good roads, also the waterways and public education, and also in this great drainage movement, because we have got a citizenship that in this day and time is progressing, that is making as rapid progress as any State in the United States. There were some fellows that used to say that North Carolina was a strip of land between Virginia and South Carolina, and it used to be called the State of tar, pitch and turpentine. It would be asked, what are North Carolina's principal products, and the answer would be tar, pitch and

turpentine. It is no longer a strip of land between Virginia and South Carolina. According to these figures taken from the Census Office report, it is one of the most progressive States in this entire Southland of ours, in which we were born and reared, and to which we are attached by the tenderest and dearest ties, and it is one of the most progressive States in the United States. Our people are getting more wealth, they are getting more refinement, and everything that goes to make a great State. Along all these lines of development North Carolina is making vast progress. With many industries yet undeveloped in the past decade in agriculture, in manufacturing and in everything that makes a State good and great. Let us in the next decade go still further forward until North Carolina beyond all question, having solved other problems, has become among the foremost States of the South, and of the American Union.

Now Mr. President, this convention is to inaugurate. We do not expect to do it in a day, a month, or a year, or maybe ten years. It took ten years to get the inland waterway. We are going to co-operate, the representatives in Congress, the citizens, and the Legislature, we are all going to co-operate in this movement. Of course there may be objections, and it finally rests with the Legislature, and with Congress and with the people. We understand that we are going to start this movement for the progress and the development of the great good of the whole commonwealth of North Carolina.

What is our object here to-day, on which we are concentrating our attention? It is well enough, as old Daniel Webster stated in one of his speeches, to state the object of this meeting. I have been talking about North Carolina. What is the object of this particular meeting here today? It is stated in this call issued by the State Geologist:

"At this convention plans will be considered for draining the swamp lands of North Carolina that will make it practicable for all owners of land suitably located for draining to carry out the drainage plans without any immediate outlay of money. In other words, the drainage of the swamp lands can be accomplished without its costing the owner any money except what he is able to derive directly from the land itself and due to drainage. It will represent money that it would be impossible for him to obtain out of the land under normal conditions."

As Mr. Wright stated yesterday, the State would lend the money to drain the swamp lands, and that in three years that you would raise on one acre alone enough to pay your drainage assessment. That is the object of the convention, stated in that call. It is not a gold brick, as it has been tested and tried for twenty years, in Illinois, Indiana and in another State, Iowa, Mr. Wright mentioned. He mentioned those three States in particular. He stated that in Indiana there were cess pools, and

they had what they called hog sloughs. There is not a single acre of undrained, undeveloped land in the State of Indiana to-day. It took twenty years to do it, but the whole State has been reclaimed, and he stated that he had never known any drainage loss, except in the case of non-resident owners to pay the drainage tax where the land was forfeited for the non-payment of the drainage tax. Here and now begins a movement in North Carolina to reclaim the swamp lands of the State, which will be by means of State and National laws, backed we hope and believe by public sentiment. We do not expect to do all of this at once. Rome was not built in a day, and in North Carolina as in other States, we are going to start and day by day and month by month we are going to try to develop this plan for the betterment of the conditions, especially as to waterways and good roads in North Carolina and the South. It is certainly worth the experiment. I met sometime ago Dr. Hannis Taylor, who has had conferred upon him the degree of Doctor of Laws. He was Minister to Spain under Mr. Cleveland. He was born in this State, and he lived, I think he told me, in the same brick house in this town in which the now live, next to my house; that is where Hannis. Taylor lived for a while, and he told me in a conversation that a Spanish diplomat had said that whenever Romero was asked to do anything that was difficult, he would say, this Spanish official, it is very difficult, but I will try, and when it was a thing that was almost impossible to accomplish, he would say, it is impossible to accomplish, but we will do it anyhow. That is the correct principle. I found out early in my career as a public man that the great thing in life was to try, if a thing is difficult, yes, if it is impossible, the thing is to try to accomplish it, and if you try, nine times out of ten you succeed. Even if the drainage of the swamp lands in eastern North Carolina seems impossible we can accomplish it; we can accomplish it by co-operation. My friends there is no great movement that the world has ever seen that has been carried to perfection, unless there was an effort made, unless you tried.

When I ran for Congress, the first campaign I made helped to win in the election, and this illustrates my purpose, otherwise I would not say it. I said to my opponent: "John, here is your record in Congress, here is what you have accomplished." And he said: "Well, it is a Republican administration and I could not do things." "Well," I said, "John, why didn't you try, why didn't you try"; and I said "if you did not succeed, try, try again," and the people took it up with a shout, and I have heard it in that county ever since. I go back there now, and they say, you told him to try, and that is the correct principle on which to proceed. That is the principle upon which we are going to proceed in this Drainage Convention. We are going to try to secure an adequate State law, and

we must have a National law to co-operate with the State law. Our idea has been to secure this legislation, and then it is up to the people to put the law in force. We are simply trying to inaugurate the movement. We are not insisting that it should be carried out, we will simply try to obtain the laws, and it is up to the people. We must have their co-operation to enforce the laws. The best experts say that drainage is entirely practicable, that the drainage of the lands of North Carolina would increase the permanent value enormously, from lands that are worth almost nothing now to lands that would be worth $100 per acre and upwards. My friends, you remember the old Hines farm out here. I went out there one day, and I remember that it was out there that I smoked my first cigar, and it was impressed on my memory, and that land was worth then $5 per acre, and now you cannot buy it at any price. It is now Oaks Farm, and on the early truck crops they make thousands of dollars every year.

I want to say here before I pass on, that I have no sympathy for a man who criticises experts. What we are spending for the army and navy, what we are spending for other government objects is a mere drop in the bucket. Experts' advice upon all matters affecting public interests is of the greatest importance in my humble opinion. There are some who depreciate expert advice; there are some who say it is extravagant. See what the United States is doing through that great Department of Agriculture, see what it is doing for the people through these experts. In my opinion it is one of the most valuable works of State and United Government.

Now we are not going to have anything but what you call a tentative law, that is the Legislature has to pass it. The Legislature represents the people, and they know what is needed, and in addition to the law passed by the State Legislature it would be advisable to have Mr. Small, Mr. Godwin, Senator Simmons and myself, and probably twenty-five representatives of the different States, go to Washington and advise with the Secretary of the Interior about what kind of a National law we should. have. We thought that inasmuch as the United States was applying proceeds to irrigate the dry lands of the West, we thought we should have something applied to the drainage of the eastern lands.

One of the first bills that was introduced in Congress on that subject, and I have it here before me, was to drain the Dismal Swamp. They reported favorably on that bill, but they kicked terribly on it. (Bill is quoted.)

Now our whole aim and purpose in framing that bill was to frame a bill that would benefit the individual landowner. The irrigation law of 1902 provides to take the funds from the sale of public lands in certain States