During the two and a half years that have elapsed since the passage of the reclamation act rapid progress has been made in the surveys and examinations of the opportunities for reclamation in the thirteen States and three Territories of the arid West.  Construction has already been begun on the largest and most important of the irrigation works, and plans are being completed for works which will utilize the funds now available.  The operations are being carried on by the Reclamation Service, a corps of engineers selected through competitive civil-service examinations.  This corps includes experienced consulting and constructing engineers as well as various experts in mechanical and legal matters, and is composed largely of men who have spent most of their lives in practical affairs connected with irrigation.  The larger problems have been solved and it now remains to execute with care, economy, and thoroughness the work which has been laid out.  All important details are being carefully considered by boards of consulting engineers, selected for their thorough knowledge and practical experience.  Each project is taken up on the ground by competent men and viewed from the standpoint of the creation of prosperous homes, and of promptly refunding to the Treasury the cost of construction.  The reclamation act has been found to be remarkably complete and effective, and so broad in its provisions that a wide range of undertakings has been possible under it.  At the same time, economy is guaranteed by the fact that the funds must ultimately be returned to be used over again.

It is the cardinal principle of the forest-reserve policy of this Administration that the reserves are for use.  Whatever interferes with the use of their resources is to be avoided by every possible means.  But these resources must be used in such a way as to make them permanent.

The forest policy of the Government is just now a subject of vivid public interest throughout the West and to the people of the United States in general.  The forest reserves themselves are of extreme value to the present as well as to the future welfare of all the western public-land States.  They powerfully affect the use and disposal of the public lands.  They are of special importance because they preserve the water supply and the supply of timber for domestic purposes, and so promote settlement under the reclamation act.  Indeed, they are essential to the welfare of every one of the great interests of the West.

Forest reserves are created for two principal purposes.  The first is to preserve the water supply.  This is their most important use.  The principal users of the water thus preserved are irrigation ranchers and settlers, cities and towns to whom their municipal water supplies are of the very first importance, users and furnishers of water power, and the users of water for domestic, manufacturing, mining, and other purposes.  All these are directly dependent upon the forest reserves.