This board proposed the following program of action:

(1) To secure the removal of all discriminations to the end that our nationals may enjoy in other countries all the privileges now enjoyed by other nationals in ours:

(a) By appropriate diplomatic and trade measures.

(b) By securing equal rights to our nationals in countries newly organized as mandatories.

(2) To encourage our nationals to acquire, develop, and market oil in foreign countries:

(a) By assured adequate protection of our citizens engaged in securing and developing foreign oil fields.

(b) By promotion of syndication of our nationals engaged in foreign business, in order to effectually conduct oil development and distribution of petroleum and its products abroad.

(3) Governmental action-through special agency or board:

(a) Through the organization of a subsidiary governmental corporation with power to produce, purchase, refine, transport, store, and market oil and oil products.

(b) Through the formation of a permanent petroleum administration. (4) To assure to our nationals the exclusive opportunity to explore, develop, and market the oil resources of the Philippine Islands, provided discriminatory policies of other nations against our nationals are not abandoned or satisfactorily modified.

I have given much thought during the past year to this problem of adding to our petroleum supply, and it has seemed to me but fair that we should first make every effort to increase the domestic supply through the methods that have been indicated

(1) The saving of that which is now wasted, below ground and above ground.

(2) The more intensive use, through new machinery and devices, of the supply which we have.

(3) The development of oil fields on our withdrawn territory and in new areas such as the Philippines.

In addition, we must look abroad for a supplemental supply, and this may be secured through American enterprise if we do these things:

(1) Assure American capital that if it goes into a foreign country and secures the right to drill for oil on a legal and fair basis (all of which must be shown to the State Department) that it will be protected against confiscation or discrimination. This should be a known, published policy.

(2) Require every American corporation producing oil in a foreign country to take out a Federal charter for such enterprise under which whatever oil it produces should be subject to a preferential right on the part of this Government to take all of its supply or a percentage thereof at any time on payment of the market price.

(3) Sell no oil to a vessel carrying a charter from any foreign government either at an American port or at any American bunker

when that government does not sell oil at a nondiscriminatory price to our vessels at its bunkers or ports.

The oil industry is more distinctively American than any other of the great basic industries. It has been the creation of no one class or group but of many men of many kinds-the hardy, keen-eyed prospector with a "nose for oil" who spent his months upon the deserts and in the mountains searching for seepages and tracing them to their source; the rough and two-fisted driller, a man generally of unusual physical strength, who handled the great tools of his trade; the venturesome "wildcatter," part prospector, part promoter, part operator, the "marine" of the industry, "soldier and sailor too "; the geologist who through his study of the anatomy of the earth crust could map the pools and sands almost as if he saw them; the inventor; the chemist with still and furnace; the genius who found that oil would run in a pipe-these and many more, in most of the sciences and in nearly all of the crafts, have created this American industry. If they are permitted they will reveal the world supply of oil. And upon that supply the industries of our country will come to be increasingly dependent year by year.

BY WAY OF SUMMARY.

It would seem to be our plain duty to discover how little coal we need to use. To do this we must dignify coal by grading it in terms not merely of convenience as to size, but in terms of service as to its power. We should save it, if for no better reason than that we may sell it to a coal-hungry world. We should develop water power as an inexhaustible substitute for coal and if necessary compel the coordination of all power plants which serve a common territory. New petroleum supplies have become a national necessity, so quickly have we adapted ourselves to this new fuel and so extravagantly have we given ourselves over to its adaptability. To save that we may use abundantly, to develop that we may never be weak, to bring together into greater effectiveness all power possibilities--these would seem to be national duties, dictated by a large self-interest.

I have gone only sufficiently far into this whole question to realize that it is as fundamental and of as deep public concern as the railroad question and that it is even more complex. No one, so far as I can learn, has mastered all of its various phases; in fact, there are few who know even one sector of the great battle front of power. A Foch is needed, one in whom would center a knowledge of all the activities and the inactivities of these three great industries, which in reality are but a single industry. We should know more than we do, far more about the ways and means by which our unequaled wealth in all three divisions can be used and made interdependent, and the moral and the legal strength of the Nation should be behind a studied, fact-based, long-viewed plan to make America the

home of the cheapest and the most abundant and the most immediately and intimately serviceable power supply in the world. If we do this, we can release labor and lighten nearly every task. We will not need to send the call to other countries for men, and we can distribute our industries in parts of the country where labor is less abundant and where homes will take the place of tenements. One could expand upon the benefits that would come to this land if a rounded program such as has been but skeletonized here could be carried out. I am convinced that within a generation it will be effected, because it will be necessary.

The simple steps now obviously needed are to pass those primary bills which are already before Congress or are here suggested. But beyond this there is imperative need that some one man (an assistant secretary in this department would serve)-some one man with a competent staff and commanding all the resources of this and other departments of the Government shall be given the task of taking a world view as well as a national view of this whole involved and growing problem, that he may recommend policies and induce activities and promote cooperative relationships which will effect the most economical production of light, heat, and power, which is more than the first among the immediate practical problems of science, as Sir William Crookes said, for it is foremost among the immediate practical problems of national and international statesmanship.

LAND DEVELOPMENT.

I wish now to ask consideration for another matter of home concern to which I gave attention in my last report and as to which the intervening year has strengthened and perhaps broadened my ideas-the development of our unused lands.

It was never more vital to the welfare of our people that a creative and out-reaching plan of developing and utilizing our natural resources should go bravely forward than it is to-day. Ours is a growing country, and as its social and industrial superstructure expands its agricultural foundation must be broadened in proportion. The normal growth of the United States now requires an addition of 6,300,000 acres to its cultivable area each year, which means an average increase of 17,000 acres a day.

Fortunately, the opportunity for this essential expansion exists not only in the West, where much of the public domain is yet unoccupied, but in every part of the Republic. We have a great fund of natural resources in the very oldest States, from Maine to Louisiana, which invite and would richly reward the constructive genius of the Nation. It is claimed by those who have specialized for years on the subject of reclamation that the control and utilization of flood waters now wasted would produce within the next 10 years more

wealth than the entire cost to the United States of the war with Germany.

After every other war in our history the work of internal development has gone forward by leaps and bounds, and our people have thus quickly made good the economic wastes of the conflict. The needs of to-day are different from those of the past and require different treatment, but they are by no means beyond the reach of enlightened thought and action.

More than a year ago we began an earnest discussion of reconstruction policies, particularly with respect to the land. But nothing has been done. Not one line of legislation, not one dollar of money has been provided except in the way of preliminary investigation. We stand voiceless in the presence of opportunity and idle in the face of urgent national need.

A PROGRAM OF PROGRESS.

The great work of material development accomplished in the past has been done very largely by private capital and enterprise. Doubtless this must be the chief reliance for progress in the future. We should realize, however, that this method has involved losses as well as gains, for the Nation has sometimes been too prodigal in offering its natural resources as an inducement to private effort. Not only so, but with the exhaustion of the free public lands in our great central valleys-the most remarkable natural heritage that ever fell into the lap of a young nation-conditions of home making and settlement have radically changed.

There can be do doubt that there is an important sphere of action which the Government must occupy if we are to go steadily forward with the work of continental conquest, and all it implies to the future of the Nation, but in suggesting practicable steps of progress at this time I do not forget the burden of taxation which confronts our people nor the delicate and difficult task which Congress is called upon to perform in trying to keep the national outgo within the national income. Hence, I am now suggesting such constructive things as the Government may be able to do through the exercise of its powers of supervision and direction and with the smallest possible outlay of money.

Under this head I put, first, the matter of suburban homes for wage earners; second, reclamation of desert, overflow, and cut-over areas, together with improvement of abandoned farms, under a system of district organization which may be made to finance itself; third, cooperation with various States in the work of internal development.

GARDEN HOMES FOR THE PEOPLE.

There is no more baffling problem than that presented by the continued growth of great cities, but it is a problem with which we must

sometime deal. It bears directly on the high cost of living and is, indeed, largely responsible for it. Rent is based on land values. Land values rise with increasing population. The price of food is closely related to the growing disproportion between consumers and producers, resulting from urban congestion.

Here is Washington, a city of some 400,000 people, doubtless destined steadily to grow until-a Member of Congress predictsit may touch 2,000,000 twenty years hence. Already the housing problem is acute, as it is in almost every other large American city. It would be a pitiful thing if the provision of more housing facilities to meet the needs of growing population meant merely more congestion and higher rents, with an ever-decreasing degree of landed proprietorship and true individual independence. Such conditions, it seems to me, undermine the American hearthstone and carry a deep menace to the future of our institutions. I believe there must be a better way, and that the time has come when we should make an earnest effort to find it.

Within a 10-mile circle drawn around the Capitol dome are thousands of acres of good agricultural land, of which the merest fraction has been reduced to intensive cultivation. Much of it is wastefully used, and much of it is not used at all. Conditions of soil, climate, and water supply are good and represent a fair average for the United States. Suburban transportation is a serious problem in some localities and less so in others, but tends to become more simple with the extension of good roads and increasing use of motor vehicles, including the auto bus.

Somewhere and sometime, it seems to me, a new system must be devised to disperse the people of great cities on the vacant lands surrounding them, to give the masses a real hold upon the soil, and to replace the apartment house with the home in a garden. Such a system should enable the ambitious and thrifty family not only to save the entire cost of rent, but possibly half the cost of food, while at the same time enhancing its standard of living socially and spiritually, as well as economically.

It has been suggested that there is no better place to demonstrate a new form of suburban life than here at the National Capital, where we may freely draw upon all the resources of the governmental departments for expert knowledge and advice and where the demonstration can readily command wide publicity and come under the observation of the Nation's lawmakers. And I am expecting that this experiment will be made. Such a plan of town or community life, rather than city life, should be extended to every other large city in the Nation. A simple act of legislation, accompanied by a moderate appropriation for organization and educational work, would enable the department to put its facilities at the service of local communities and of the industries throughout the United