Remarks in Sterling, Colorado

It is a great pleasure to have the chance of saying a word or two to you this morning. For over three weeks I have been in your beautiful State, and I cannot sufficiently admire the diversification of its industries and wonder at its great future. Here in the eastern part of the state we come to the ranch country, not only the cow business, with which I was acquainted myself once, but here where you are starting this great sugar beet industry, that being peculiarly an industry that does well under irrigation. The eastern part of Colorado, which fifteen years ago was considered as only a country for sage brush and jack rabbits, has now come up so that it has relatively as great a future as any other part of the state, one of the great factors in accomplishing the result being irrigation, and no community more than Colorado appreciates the need of irrigation.

So, gentlemen and ladies, I congratulate you upon the material future of your State, but most of all upon your type of citizenship. You who fought in the late war know that what counted was average men, who went into the ranks, and it is the average man and woman and child of Colorado that makes its future.