Part 21 (2/2)

When the national government owns 29,600,000 acres of national forests in the drainage basin of the Colorado River, is there any reason why it cannot reclaim and settle in one-acre garden homes, the comparatively small area of 1,000,000 acres which is only a part of what it owns in the main valley of the Colorado River between Needles and Yuma?

If it can do that in the Colorado River Country is there any reason why it should not take a million acres of land in northern Minnesota, which it now owns, and reclaim it and settle it in one-acre garden homes? The government now owns, in addition to that land, 987,000 acres of national forest in Minnesota.

If the government can acquire by purchase, as is now being done, another million acres of forest lands in the Appalachian Mountains under the Appalachian National Forest Act, is there any reason why it should not acquire a million acres of land in West Virginia and irrigate it and subdivide it into one-acre garden homes, and put Homecrofters on it to intensively cultivate the land?

If it can do that in West Virginia, is there any reason why it should not be done in Louisiana or in the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valley in California?

In the case of the establishment of the Homecroft Reserve Rural Settlements the government will see to it, itself, that its work does in fact result in actual home making, whereas speculators get the ultimate benefit of much of the other work that it does.

If the government can maintain a Department of Agriculture at an expense of $20,000,000 in one year, for the instruction of farmers in _agriculture_, who get the benefit of that service without paying for it, is there any reason why it should not maintain educational inst.i.tutions to train Homecroft Reservists in _Acreculture_, if they pay for the cost of that instruction and all the expenses of maintaining the necessary educational inst.i.tutions?

If the government can enlist men in the regular army for national defense and put them in camps and barracks in time of peace to waste their time in idleness, is there any reason why it should not enlist men in a Reserve and put them in Homecrofts, where their labor will be utilized in production, and the elevating influence of family and community life be subst.i.tuted for the demoralizing influences of the life of the camp or barracks?

There is no more reason why the government should not build and perpetually own the Homecrofts used for this national purpose of education and defense than there is that it should not own the Military Academy at West Point or the Naval Academy at Annapolis, or any land used by the Agricultural Department for any of its work, which is educational, or by the War Department, which is for national defense. The Homecrofts used to train and maintain in the service the Homecroft Reserves would be used for a combination of both purposes, and their cost would be just as properly cla.s.sified as an expenditure for national defense as the cost of any existing camp, barracks, or army post now owned by the government.

The burden of the Standing Army of less than 100,000 men now maintained by the United States could be very considerably reduced by establis.h.i.+ng as large a portion of it as possible in the Homecroft System, were it not for the false ideals as to human values that are apparently so deeply imbedded in the minds of the military caste.

_The entire Homecroft Reserve System should be organized as a separate department of the National government like the Forest Service or Reclamation Service, and should be known as the Homecroft Service._

The Homecroft Reserve in Minnesota should be known as the Department of the Reserves of the North; the Reserve in Louisiana as the Department of the Reserves of the South; the Reserve in West Virginia as the Department of the Reserves of the East; the Reserve in the Colorado Valley and Nevada as the Department of the Reserves of the West; and the Reserve in the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys in California as the Department of the Reserves of the Pacific.

The Louisiana Reservists would be trained as Homecrofters and sailors; the West Virginia and Minnesota Reservists would be trained as Homecrofters and Foresters; the Colorado River and California Reservists would be trained as Homecrofters and Irrigators--Conquerors of the Desert; the Nevada Reservists would be trained as Homecrofters and Cavalrymen,--the Cossack Cavalry of America,--and all would be good soldiers, as well as the very highest type of good citizens.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Map showing Territorial Divisions and Locations of the Departments of the National Homecroft Reserves. Also showing the Corrected Mexican Boundary Line and Neutral Zone between the United States and Mexico, and the New State of South California.]

During the entire two months devoted to the regular annual march, encampment, and field maneuvers, the members of the Homecroft Reserve would be under the military control and direction of the War Department, exactly as they would be in times of actual warfare. During the remaining ten months they would be under the civil jurisdiction of the Homecroft Service.

One of the insuperable obstacles in the way of efficient national defense by State Militia is the impossibility of rapid mobilization, and the practical certainty that in case of actual war none of the States on the coast of the Atlantic or the Gulf of Mexico would permit their State Militia to be diverted from the protection of their own State. This would leave the great seaboard cities like Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, or cities located near the Atlantic Coast like Baltimore and Was.h.i.+ngton, without an adequate force for their protection in case of war.

One of the chief reasons for concentrating a million of the Homecroft Reserves in one State would be to facilitate the establishment of a perfect military organization on a large scale as is required by modern warfare; and to avoid delay in mobilization and expense for transportation to annual encampments and field maneuvers. The Homecroft Reserve plan contemplates that there shall be no expenditure for railroad transportation except in the event of actual warfare. The Reserves in California and in the Colorado River Valley would be marched with their full equipment to one great concentration camp in Nevada for their annual encampment and for field maneuvers. The whole military organization, officers, auxiliaries, and military machinery, for an army of two million men would thus be given actual training every year in the complicated work of handling a great army in the field. That would not be possible if they were scattered over the United States from Dan to Beersheba, in little bunches of a company here and another there.

Annual encampments for field maneuvers for the other sections of the reserve should be established at least 400 miles distant from their regular permanent Homecroft Reserve Rural Settlements.

The Roman soldiers were trained to march twenty miles in six hours and carry their heavy equipment. The Emperor Septimius Severus marched at the head of his army on foot and in complete armor for eight hundred miles from the Danube to Rome in forty days--twenty miles a day. Such a march, once every year, should be a part of the training of every soldier in the Homecroft Reserve.

There would be no difficulty in finding places in Texas adapted for the field maneuvers of the 1,000,000 men comprising the Homecroft Reserve in Louisiana, and the annual encampment of those in Minnesota could be located in Montana.

In West Virginia the country is mountainous and smaller units of organization would be more easily adapted to that State, as in Switzerland.

In West Virginia the government would not acquire its entire million acres in one body. It would be scattered into many different sections of the State, in practically every valley, but more particularly in the rolling country lying between the mountains and the Ohio River, which stretches all the way from Wheeling to Huntington in West Virginia. If it were desirable to concentrate the entire million men in one annual concentration camp, the best location for it would be in the northern part of the peninsula of Michigan.

There are many reasons why West Virginia should be chosen for the establishment of the Homecroft Reserve for the eastern section of the United States. Its chief advantage is its central location, almost equi-distant between Maine and Florida and within marching distance from any point on the Atlantic seaboard, the Mississippi River, or the Great Lakes.

Switzerland could be reproduced in West Virginia, with the climatic and physical conditions of the two countries so much alike. The Swiss Military System could be applied to the entire State. With a million regularly enlisted Homecroft Reservists at all times ready for service, there would then be in addition a large unorganized reserve composed of graduates from the Homecroft Reserves or who had received a military training in the public schools. It would be entirely practicable to engraft the entire Swiss system of universal military training in the public schools on the school system of the State of West Virginia.

Switzerland has a total area of 15,975 square miles with a population of 3,741,971. West Virginia has an area of 24,170 square miles and a population of 1,221,119. The addition of 1,000,000 Homecroft Reservists to its population with their families, would bring the total population up to nearly twice that of Switzerland. The marvelous adaptability of West Virginia to the Homecroft idea and its possibilities as a fruit and vegetable and poultry producing country were fully set forth in an article in the ”National Magazine” for December, 1913, which has been reprinted under its t.i.tle, ”West Virginia, the Land Overlooked,” in a pamphlet issued by the Department of Agriculture of the State of West Virginia.

The following pertinent statements are made in that article: ”Fifty years of amazing progress in West Virginia gives a new significance to her motto, 'Montani semper liberi,' meaning 'Mountaineers always freemen.'

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