Rear-Platform Remarks at North Platte, Nebr., during a Drought Inspection Trip.

I wish very much that I could have arranged a schedule so that I could have driven out to see the second largest dirt dam in the United States.

I am very familiar with the blueprints of the Sutherland project and I saw some of the dirt farther up the line, where they are carrying the water under the waters of the South Platte. I am delighted to know that this project is 95 percent complete.

This project and the other two large projects in this State splendidly illustrate what can be accomplished by cooperation between different governmental agencies. As you know, most of its cost is being raised by you people who are interested in the project itself. I think I am right in saying that the contribution of the Federal Government is only 30 percent of the entire cost of the project. That 30 percent has meant giving work to somewhere around 3,000 people; it has served two good purposes.

When I was up in one of the New England States, where they have the somewhat different problem of flood control, I saw another great earth dam which was constructed to hold back the waters of one of the rivers in Vermont which, only a few years ago in one cloudburst, did six million dollars' worth of damage. The total cost of that dam was only about a million and a half dollars. This spring there was another cloudburst there, with just as much rain as they had had in 1927; but that dam was enough to hold back all the waters resulting from that cloudburst, and there was not one dollar's worth of damage.

Our problem here is just the opposite; but I can say to you what I said to the Governor of Vermont when he was sitting beside me in the automobile on the top of that dam. I said, "Governor, it seems to me that this is a pretty good example of cooperative boondoggling between your State and the Federal Government."

This is another example of fine cooperative boondoggling, which is going to make its influence felt not only upon you who are here today but also upon the coming generations who will in' habit this part of the United States.

You are doing a splendid piece of work. In this drought area trip I have been impressed, as some of you know, by the splendid attitude of the people in all of these States. And we do not want to depopulate these States; we want to make them a better and safer place in which to live.