Part 16 (1/2)
Public interest would grow and the popular demand would force the rapid expansion of the plan as soon as its benefits in the field of the education of the people were realized--just as happened in the case of the rural free mail delivery.
Whenever the nation starts, as is advocated in this book, to immediately establish a Homecroft Reserve of 100,000 in the Colorado River Country near Yuma; 100,000 in the San Joaquin Valley in California; 100,000 in Louisiana; 100,000 in West Virginia; and 100,000 in Minnesota,--500,000 in all,--and gets that part of its work for national defense done, each 100,000 will be rapidly extended to 1,000,000. That will mean that there will be 5,000,000 enlisted Homecroft Reservists being trained as soldiers of peace as well as soldiers for war--being trained to produce food for man with a hoe as well as to defend their country, if need arises, with a gun.
Every Homecrofter and his entire family will be _students_, learning to be Homecrofters, all of them, and taking a five years' course. One fifth of the total 5,000,000 would be enlisted and the same number graduated every year.
_What would be the result?_
Every year, year after year, 1,000,000 trained, scientific Homecrofters--trained in home-handicraft, and in fruit-culture, truck-gardening, berry-growing, poultry-raising, and in putting all their products in shape for marketing, whether in their own stomachs or in the markets of the world--would be graduated from these Homecroft villages comprising the Homecroft Reserves. Each would have had a five years' course in that training--a year longer than required for an ordinary college course and of infinitely more practical value to them than a college course.
They would pay for the use and occupancy of the Homecroft, and for the instruction they would receive, a sum sufficient to cover all the cost of providing the instruction, and six per cent on the value of the Homecroft, four per cent interest and two per cent to go to a sinking fund that would equal the value of the Homecroft in fifty years. The government would get back every dollar it invested, with interest, and make the profit between the cost of the Homecroft and its fixed ultimate value of $1,000. That value would be from twenty to thirty per cent profit on the original investment by the government.
Every one of the 1,000,000 Homecroft families that would be graduated every year would go out into the great field of our national life and activity, looking first for a Homecroft and second for employment in some industrial vocation.
_Now how many of our people are there who can be induced to sit down and hold their heads in their hands until they have stopped the whirl in which most of their minds are involved, long enough to seriously weigh the difference in value to the country and to every industrial and commercial interest of 1,000,000 such trained homecrofters, compared with the 1,000,000 untrained and ignorant foreign immigrants whom we have been swallowing up every year for so many years in the maw of our congested cities?_
One million trained Homecrofters, with their families, coming each year into the social and industrial life of the whole people, scattering into every community where labor was needed, would in a comparatively few years solve every social problem and rescue the nation from its danger of eventual destruction by human congestion, the tenement life, and racial degeneracy. The graduated Homecrofters could never be induced to go into the congested tenement districts. They would insist on living in Homecrofts in the suburbs of the cities.
The nation ought to adopt immediately the whole system of establis.h.i.+ng Homecroft communities as training schools for 5,000,000 Homecrofters, from which 1,000,000 would be graduated every year, without any regard to the value of the plan for a Reserve for national defense. It should be done, if for nothing else, to check the congestion of humanity in cities, create individual industrial independence, end unemployment, end woman labor in factories, end child labor, and insure social stability and the perpetuity of the nation.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE NEW EMPIRE OF THE WEST IN THE DRAINAGE BASIN OF THE COLORADO RIVER--THE NILE OF AMERICA
Map showing the Drainage Basin of the Colorado River and the Corrected Boundary Line and Neutral Zone between the United States and Mexico.
The area of the Drainage Basin of the Colorado River is 265,000 square miles. j.a.pan has an area of 147,655 square miles. That is a territory smaller than the area of the Colorado River Drainage Basin in Arizona and New Mexico.]
CHAPTER IX
_In the Colorado River Valley in Arizona and California, and in the State of Nevada, the national government already owns large tracts of land and controls the locations required for power development. The work that could be done immediately in establis.h.i.+ng Homecroft Reserves on those public lands, would reclaim vast areas of arid lands and develop water power that would have a value far beyond the cost of the work. The financial advantages to the government would be strikingly demonstrated by the work done in those places. The danger of the occupation of California, Oregon, and Was.h.i.+ngton by a j.a.panese invading force, before we could mobilize an army on the Pacific Coast, would be entirely removed at a large and steadily increasing profit to our government._
That may seem incredible to the average reader but it is none the less true. Its truth arises from the fact that the enormous values in productive land and in water power that can be created have as yet no existence. They must be brought into existence by human labor, and large initial expenditures. Those expenditures are too large to be possible through the investment of private capital. When done by the national government, the profits would be large in proportion to the large original investment.
The national government should, without any delay, declare its policy to reserve to itself all water rights and water power resources in the Colorado River Canyon. It should reserve for its own operations all public land in the main valley of the Colorado River below the Canyon. It should resume owners.h.i.+p of every acre of land in that territory that has been heretofore located and is as yet unreclaimed or unsettled. That land should be acquired under a system similar to the Australian system, by purchase under an agreement as to price. If the acquisition of any of the land in that way proves impracticable, private rights in the land should be condemned exactly as would private rights in land needed for forts or fortifications.
The rapid development and settlement of the Colorado River Valley along the lines herein advocated is a measure of national defense and urgently so.
Every year's delay brings the converging lines of possible friction between the United States and j.a.pan closer together. Whatever system we may adopt for national defense in that direction should be so quickly adopted that the safeguards developed by it will be of rapid growth. This is more particularly important if we look at the matter from the right standpoint, and appreciate that what we do is done rather _to prevent war_ than to insure victory in case of war. We will never have a war with j.a.pan unless it is the result of our own heedless indifference, apathetic neglect, and inexcusable unpreparedness.
Immense tracts of land in the Colorado River Valley are still owned by the national government which are capable of reclamation. Having resumed owners.h.i.+p of all unsettled or unreclaimed lands in the valley now in private owners.h.i.+p, the Government should lay out a great system for the storage of the flood waters of the Colorado River in the canyon of the river. The water should be utilized to reclaim at least five million acres in California and Arizona.
The works necessary for the reclamation of at least a million acres of this land should be carried to completion with all possible expedition. This one million acres should be brought to the highest stage of reclamation and cultivation, subdivided into Homecrofts of one acre each, and as rapidly as possible settled by men with families who either already know or are willing to learn how to get a comfortable living for a family from one acre of land in the Colorado River Valley.
The Australian system of land reclamation and settlement should be applied to the colonization of these acre-garden farms or Homecrofts. On every one of them a house and outbuildings adapted to the climate should be built, costing not over $500. That is all that would be necessary in the way of buildings. Shade rather than shelter is needed and it is more important to provide ways to keep cool than ways to keep out the cold. Life is lived practically out-of-doors all the year round.
These Homecroft settlements should be organized in communities of not less than one thousand each and, in advance of settlement, schoolhouses adapted to the climate and all necessary roads and transportation facilities should be brought into existence. The price to be paid for the right of occupancy of each acre Homecroft during the five year period of enlistment in the Educational System of the Homecroft Reserve Service, should be based, not on the cost, but on _the full value of the reclaimed land and its appurtenant water right plus the entire investment for house and community improvements and the overhead expense of its development_.
No cash payment should be required from the settler. He should only pay the fixed annual rental for use and occupation from year to year. The test of his acceptability as an applicant would be his physical fitness for the labor required in the development of that country, as well as for possible military service in the event of war. The most important question would be his ability, with the help of his family, and with the instruction that would be given to all, to so cultivate and manage his acre Homecroft as to produce from it all the food needed by the family throughout the year. The first consideration in putting such a settler on the land would be the willingness of himself and family to do that one thing above all others and thereby demonstrate the practicability of the plan.
There would thus be brought into existence something rare among American inst.i.tutions--an independent and self-sustaining community of a million men of military age with families from whom the mainstay of every family would be available for military service without interference with complex commercial or industrial conditions, and without in the slightest degree subjecting the family to possible privation from lack of food, shelter, or raiment. The question of raiment in the Colorado River Valley involves, if necessity exists for economy, an expense so small as to be negligible. If the men from such a community were absent for five years in military service, the sale of surplus products and poultry in excess of the family needs for food, that could be produced from the acre, would amply supply the need of the family for clothes, and all their other necessary requirements.