The Congress had as its object, "...to promote the drainage of the 75,000,000 acres of wet lands in the United States, and the building of homes thereon as a means of benefitting the national health, of expanding the national food supply and lowering the cost of living, of supplying productive homes for those people who desire to move back to the farms, of checking emigration to Canada, of building a great and prosperous empire out of lands which have long been regarded as waste lands." The Congress met in New Orleans from April 10-13, 1912.