Coming back to the watershed of the Columbia River, which covers the greater part of the States of Oregon, Washington, Idaho and a part of Montana, it is increasingly important that we think of that region as a unit, and especially in terms of the whole population of that area as it is today and as we expect it will be fifty and even a hundred years from now.

I appreciate and I understand fully the desire of some who live close to some of the great sources of power in this watershed to seek the advantages which come from geographical proximity.

More than eight years ago, when I became Governor of the State of New York, we developed plans for the harnessing of the St. Lawrence River and the production of a vast amount of cheap power. The good people who lived within a few miles of the proposed dam were enthused by the prospect of building up a huge manufacturing center close to the source of the power, another Pittsburgh, a vast city of whirling machinery. It was a natural dream, but wiser counsels prevailed and the government of the State laid down a policy based on the distribution of the proposed power to as wide an area as the science of the transmission would permit.

We felt that the Governor and the Legislature of the State owed it to the people in the smaller communities for hundreds of miles around to give them the benefit of cheap electricity in their homes and their farms and their shops. And while the St. Lawrence project is, I am sorry to say, still on paper, I have no doubt of its ultimate development, and of the application of the policy of the widest possible use when the electric current starts to flow.

That is why in developing electricity from this Bonneville Dam, from the Grand Coulee Dam and from other dams to be built on the Columbia and its tributaries, the policy of the widest use ought to prevail. The transmission of electricity is making such scientific strides today that we can well visualize a date, not far distant, when every community in this great area will be wholly electrified.

It is because I am thinking of the Nation and the region fifty years from now that I venture the further prophecy that as time passes we will do everything in our power to encourage the building up of the smaller communities of the United States. Today many people are beginning to realize that there is inherent weakness in cities which become too large for the times and inherent strength in a wider geographical distribution of population.

An over-large city inevitably meets problems caused by oversize. Real estate values and rents become too high; the time consumed in going from one's home to one's work and back again becomes excessive; congestion of streets and other transportation problems arise; truck gardens become impossible because the backyard is too small; the cost of living of the average family rises far too high.

There is doubtless a reasonable balance in all of this and it is a balance which ought to be given more and more study. No one would suggest, for example, that the great cities of Portland, and Tacoma and Seattle and Spokane should stop their growth, but it is a fact that they could grow unhealthily at the expense of all the smaller communities of which they form logical centers. Their healthiest growth actually depends on a simultaneous healthy growth of every smaller community within a radius of hundreds of miles.

Your situation in the Northwest is in this respect no different from the situation in the other great regions of the Nation. That is why it has been proposed in the Congress that regional planning boards be set up for the purpose of coordinating the planning for the future in seven or eight natural geographical regions.

You will have read here as elsewhere many misleading and utterly untrue statements in some papers and by some politicians that this proposed legislation would set up all powerful authorities which would destroy State lines, take away local government and make what people call a totalitarian or authoritarian or some other kind of a dangerous national centralized control. Most people realize that the exact opposite is the truth - that regional commissions will be far more closely in touch with the needs of all the localities and all the people in their respective regions than a system of plans which originates in the Capital of the Nation. By decentralizing as I have proposed, the Chief Executive, the various government departments, and the Congress itself will be able to get from each region a carefully worked out plan each year, a plan based on future needs, a plan which will seek primarily to help all the people of the region without unduly favoring any one locality or discriminating against any other.

In other words, the responsibility of the Federal Government for the welfare of its citizens will not come from the top in the form of unplanned, hit or miss appropriations of money, but will progress to the National Capital from the ground up - from the communities and counties and states which lie within each of the logical geographical areas.

Another great advantage will be served by this process of planning from the bottom up. Under our laws the President submits to the Congress an Annual Budget - a budget which, by the way, we expect to have definitely balanced by the next fiscal year. In this budget we know how much can properly be expended for the development of our natural resources, the protection of our soil, the construction of our highways and buildings, the maintenance of our harbors and channels and all the other elements which fall under the general heading of public works. By regional planning it will be vastly easier for the Executive branch and the Congress to determine how the appropriations for the following year shall be fitted most fairly and equitably into the total amount which our national pocketbook allows us safely to spend.

To you who live thousands of miles away in other parts of the United States, I want to give two or three simple facts. This Bonneville Dam on the Columbia River, forty-two miles east of Portland, with Oregon on the south side of the river and Washington on the north, is one of the major power and navigation projects undertaken since 1933. It is 170 feet high and 1,250 feet long. It has been built by the Corps of Engineers of the War Department, and when fully completed, with part of its power installations, will cost $51,000,000. Its locks will enable shipping to use this great waterway much further inland than at present, and give an outlet to the enormously valuable agricultural and mineral products of Oregon and Washington and Idaho. Its generators ultimately will produce 580,000 horse power of electricity.