one considered. All beneficial uses of these streams should be taken advantage of, and when they can be made available in connection with the improvements for navigation, it is worse than a blunder not to do so.
While I have not time to elaborate this thought, the slightest consideration will disclose the magnificent possibilities that await the proper improvement of the Columbia and Snake Rivers. When it is accomplished, as in the not distant day it will be, the Inland Empire will be an empire in fact as well as in name—an empire of industry, of commerce, of manufacture and agriculture; and the valleys of the Columbia and the Snake will have become one vast garden, full of happy homes and contented and industrious people.
It is hardly necessary for me to speak of the profound satisfaction I take in the completion of this great work, and the pride and honor I feel on having been called on to preside at this epoch-making occasion. Not only have we the gratification that comes from seeing the actual results of our labor, but our success thus far will but spur us on to further efforts. Already this particular achievement is in the past. Our faces are still set to the future, and we must never falter nor tire until from the, mountains to the sea our great river is as free as the air we breathe, and the land it waters and serves is giving forth in abundance all the fruits of the soil—until this country becomes indeed an empire, not only of productiveness, but of the highest type of American citizenship.
