CHAPTER XII
The result of the adoption of the Homecroft Reserve System would be that this generation would bequeath to future generations a country freed forever from the menace of militarism or military despotism, and also freed from the burdens of military and naval establishments. At the same time, the United States would be safeguarded against internal dangers and made impregnable against attack or invasion by any foreign power. Every patriotic citizen of the United States should have that thought graven on his mind. No other plan can be devised that will accomplish those results.
The reasons why they will be accomplished by the Homecroft Reserve System may be briefly summarized.
From the standpoint of national defense, and regarding war as a possibility, the following are the advantages of the system:
First: The maintenance of a Homecroft Reserve of 5,000,000 trained soldiers would ultimately cost the government nothing. The entire investment required for the establishment of the Reserve would be repaid with interest by the revenues from the Homecroft rentals, and ultimately a revenue of $300,000,000 would be annually returned to the national government in excess of the entire expense of the maintenance of the Reserves.
Second: There would be no burden of a pension roll as the result of actual service by the Homecroft Reservists in the event of war. The Life Insurance System embodied in the general plan for a Homecroft Reserve would be substituted for a pension system.
Third: Every requirement of necessary military training for actual service in the field would be provided. Each Department of the Homecroft Reserve, embracing a million men, would be concentrated and fully organized, with annual field maneuvers.
Fourth: The whole body of the Homecroft Reserve would be men physically hardened and trained to every duty required of a soldier in actual warfare. They would be inured to long marches and to every hardship of a campaign in the field. They would at all times be mobilized and ready for instant service.
Fifth: The whole 5,000,000 men in the Homecroft Reserve could be sent into active service without calling a man from any industry or commercial employment where he might be needed. The United States could put an army of five million men in the field at a moment's notice, without the slightest interference with commerce, manufacturing, or any branch of industry.
Sixth: No length of actual field service would impose any hardship or privation on the families of any of the Homecroft Reservists. Each family would continue to occupy and get its living from the Homecroft during the absence of the soldier of the family. The routine of the family and community life would continue undisturbed.
For the first fifty year period the cost of maintaining our present standing army of less than 100,000 men will be five billion dollars.
During that same period the revenues from the Homecroft Reserve rentals would repay the entire investment required for the establishment and maintenance of the Reserve, and the ultimate cost to the government of the maintenance for fifty years of a reserve of five million men would be nothing.
For the second fifty year period, the net revenues from the Homecroft Reserve rentals, over and above the entire cost of the maintenance of the Reserve, would be fifteen billion dollars,—$300,000,000 a year every year for fifty years,—more than enough to cover the entire expense of our standing Army and Navy, as at present maintained.
In other words, the profit to the government from establishing a Military Reserve which would be at the same time a great Educational Institution for training Citizens as well as Soldiers, and a Peace Establishment for Food Production, would be large enough to cover the entire cost of the nation's regular Military and Naval Establishments. For all time thereafter, the country would be relieved from the heavy financial burdens of maintaining them. The revenues that the regular Military and Naval Establishments will otherwise absorb could be diverted to building internal improvements, highways, waterways, railways, reclaiming lands, safeguarding against floods, preventing forest fires, planting forests, and supporting a great national educational system that would make the Homecroft Slogan the heritage of every child born to citizenship in the United States of America:
Every child in a Garden,
Every mother in a Homecroft, and
Individual Industrial Independence
For every worker in a
Home of his own on the Land.
From the standpoint of peace, if there should never be another war, and as a means of national defense against the dangers that menace the country from within—civil conflict, class conflict, social upheaval, racial deterioration, and a degenerated citizenship—the advantages of the Homecroft Reserve System may be epitomized as follows:
First: Every Homecroft Reserve Rural Settlement of 100,000 acres—100,000 Reservists—100,000 families, created by the national government, will be a model for an industrial community which will demonstrate that the cure for city congestion is the Homecroft Life in the suburbs or in nearby Homecroft Villages.
Second: It will further demonstrate that the physical and mental deterioration, poverty, disease, crime, human degeneracy, and racial decay now being caused by the tenement life can be prevented by the Homecroft Life.
Third: Child labor and Woman labor in factories will be proved to be economic waste because of the larger value of that labor at home devoted to producing food for the family from garden and poultry yard, and preparing and preserving it for home consumption. It will be demonstrated that no child or woman can be spared from a Homecroft for work in a factory.
Fourth: The fact will be established that the remedy for unemployment is universal Homecroft Training in the public schools, the establishment of all wageworkers in Suburban Homecrofts or Homecroft Villages, and that every unemployed man or woman shall be set to work learning to be a Homecrofter.
Fifth: One million scientifically trained Homecrofters would be graduated annually from the National Homecroft Reserve System,—ten million every ten years,—with their families. These would scatter into every section of the United States and would leaven a large loaf. They would be a tremendous force to counteract the evil influences generated in the tenements. No Homecrofter's family would ever be content to live in a flat or a tenement. They would have learned the productive value of a Homecroft—a home with a piece of ground that will produce food for the family.
Sixth: The demonstration of the value of the Homecroft Life spread throughout the United States by the millions of Homecroft Reserve graduates would lead to a complete reconstruction of the Public School System of every State. The year would be divided into two terms—one, a six months' term from fall until spring, during which the courses of study now pursued would be continued; the other, a six months' term from spring until fall, covering the entire growing season, during which fruit-growing, truck-gardening, berry-culture, poultry raising, home making, home-keeping, and home-handicraft would be taught. In the cities these Summer Homecroft Schools would be in the suburbs and would give every city child a chance to spend its days in the sunshine and fresh air, among the trees, birds, fields, and flowers, for six months of every year.
Every great institution must have a gradual growth. The Homecroft Reserve System should be started on a comparatively small scale in places where the immediate need of the practical benefits it will accomplish are most manifest. Its enlargement will follow as a natural evolution. Once well under way, it will grow by leaps and bounds, like the rural mail service or the Agricultural Department of the national government.
When the electric light was first demonstrated to be a scientific success, few realized in how short a time electricity would light the world. The development of electric transportation and of the automobile are familiar illustrations. Only a few years have elapsed since Kipling wrote "Across the Atlantic with the Irish Mail." How many would then have believed possible the work of the Aëroplane Service in the present war? And yet, all that has so far been done is only a forecast of greater development in aërial navigation in the near future. The original inventor of the telephone has seen the evolution of its vast utilization and recently was the first to talk over a wire across the continent.
No one would for a moment question that the national government could establish an educational institution in which one thousand men with their families could be located in a cottage on an acre of ground, and the men trained in truck-gardening and poultry raising, and the women trained to cook the products of the garden and poultry yard for the family table. That is all there is to it; and to train a thousand men in that way is no more difficult than to take a thousand raw recruits and transform them into a regiment of trained soldiers. It is likewise beyond question that the same man can be trained for both vocations, and every Homecroft Reservist would be so trained. Gardeners make ideal soldiers. The Japanese proved that.
No one familiar with the multitude of cases where it has been done, would have any doubt that a man and woman who know how to intensively cultivate an acre can produce from it what that man and that woman need for their own family to eat, and a surplus product worth from five hundred to a thousand dollars a year or more. Neither would they doubt that a thousand could do the same thing. Nor, again, would they doubt that one thousand men and women of average intelligence and industry, who did not know how, could learn the way to do it from competent instructors.
If that can be done with one thousand it can be done with ten thousand; and if it can be done with ten thousand it can be done with one hundred thousand, or one million, or five million. It would indeed be strange if this nation could not train five million families so they would be competent truck-gardeners, when that vocation has been mastered by thirty million of Japan's rural population.
The militarists contend that the Standing Army should be increased to 200,000 men, an increase of 100,000, assuming that the present army were enlisted up to its full authorized strength of 100,000. A Homecroft Reserve of 100,000 men, properly established, organized, and trained, would be of vastly more value to the country for national defense than an increase of 100,000 men in the Standing Army; but there should be no such limit on the extension of the Homecroft Reserve. It should be steadily increased until the full quota of 5,000,000 has been established. But in order to draw comparisons between the respective advantages of the two systems, let it be assumed that the establishment of a Homecroft Reserve were to be first authorized by Congress for 100,000 men, the same number that it is contended should be added to the regular Standing Army. In that event the most immediate beneficial results would be secured by the establishment of Homecroft Reserve Rural Settlements of ten thousand acres each (from which they should be developed to a strength of not less than one hundred thousand each as rapidly as possible) in the following locations:
In California, ten thousand acres should be acquired by the national government in the vicinity of Redding in the upper Sacramento Valley, and settled with that number of Homecroft Reservists who would work on the Iron Canyon Reservoir and the system of diversion canals therefrom.
Ten thousand acres should be acquired on the west side of the Sacramento Valley, near Colusa, and 10,000 Homecroft Reservists located thereon, who would work on a great system to control the flood waters of the Sacramento River, and to save and utilize the silt for fertilization by building a series of large settling basins.
Ten thousand acres should be acquired near Stockton where 10,000 Homecroft Reservists would be located, who would work on the Calaveras Reservoir and an irrigation system to utilize the stored water therefrom, and also carry forward any further work necessary for the complete protection of Stockton and the delta of the San Joaquin River from floods.
Ten thousand acres should be acquired near Fresno, where 10,000 Homecroft Reservists would be located, who would work on a navigable channel to Fresno and a drainage canal through the center of the San Joaquin Valley.
Ten thousand acres should be acquired near Bakersfield, where 10,000 Homecroft Reservists would be located, who would work on the irrigation canals and systems necessary for the complete reclamation of the lands on which they were settled, and of other lands acquired by the national government in the San Joaquin Valley.
That would provide a force of 50,000 Homecroft Reservists in the one particular portion of the United States where they are most likely to be needed for actual military service.
In Louisiana, ten thousand acres should be acquired of the best garden land in the Bayou Teche Country, on which 10,000 Homecroft Reservists would be located, and set to work building the great Atchafalaya Controlled Outlet, and the western dike to form the Auxiliary Flood Water Channel from Old River to the Gulf of Mexico.
Ten thousand acres should be acquired in the vicinity of New Roads, where 10,000 Homecroft Reservists would be located, and set to work building the north and south dike forming the eastern bank of the auxiliary flood water channel from Old River to Morgan City and thence to the Gulf of Mexico, to protect the whole territory between the Atchafalaya River and the Mississippi River from overflow by backwater from the Atchafalaya.
That would establish 20,000 Homecroft Reservists at a point from which they could be quickly transported to any point where troops might be needed for the defense of the Gulf Coast or the Mexican Border.
In West Virginia, ten thousand acres should be acquired in the valley of the Monongahela River and its tributaries in that State for 10,000 Homecroft Reservists who would do the work of building the necessary reservoirs and works for the regulation of the flow of the Monongahela River and the prevention of floods thereon.
Ten thousand acres should be acquired in the valley of the Little Kanawha near Parkersburg, and between Parkersburg and Huntington, and 10,000 Homecrofters located thereon, who would labor on the works necessary for the development of all the water power capable of development in West Virginia and for the regulation of the flow of every river flowing out of West Virginia into the Ohio so there would be no more floods from those rivers.
This West Virginia Department of the Homecroft Reserve could be transported to any point on the Atlantic Seacoast in a very brief time. In a day troops for the defense of New York could be rushed from West Virginia to that city over the Pennsylvania, Baltimore and Ohio and Chesapeake and Ohio Railroads.
Ten thousand Homecrofters should be located in Northern Minnesota, in the Lake Region, where the Mississippi River has its sources. They should be set to work to enlarge the present National Reservoir System on the headwaters of the Mississippi River until the entire flow of the Mississippi River at Minneapolis and St. Paul had been completely equalized throughout the year, for the development of power at those cities, and for the improvement of navigation on the upper Mississippi.
The construction work indicated above, which should be done by the Homecroft Reserve in the locations named, should be carried forward simultaneously with the work of reclaiming or preparing for cultivation in acre tracts and building the cottage homes on the lands set apart for the establishment of the Homecroft Reserves thereon. A part of the men should be engaged in this work while others were engaged on the projects above specified for the construction of which their labor would be utilized.
The Reservists would be paid wages for all this work which would give them a start and enable them to establish themselves on their Homecrofts as soon as the houses were ready for occupancy. In many cases it would probably be found that families of Homecrofters would prefer to live on their homecroft while the work of completing its construction was being done, and would provide tents or inexpensive houses for such temporary occupancy, at their own expense.
The immediate establishment of these initial units of the Homecroft Reserve, aggregating only 100,000 men, would enlarge the military forces of the United States to the extent that it is now vigorously contended the standing army should be immediately enlarged.
Instead of being condemned to idleness in barracks, the soldiers comprising the increased forces would be doing useful and productive labor and would build enormously valuable internal improvements.
It would cost $100,000,000 a year to maintain, as a part of the present military system of the United States, the proposed increase of 100,000 men, which the Militarists contend should be added to the regular army for our national defense.
That $100,000,000 a year, divided among the projects above named, would provide the following amount for each project annually until completed:
| Iron Canyon Reservoir | $10,000,000 |
| Sacramento Flood Control | 10,000,000 |
| Calaveras Reservoir | 10,000,000 |
| San Joaquin River | 10,000,000 |
| Drainage Canal to Bakersfield | 10,000,000 |
| Atchafalaya Controlled Outlet | 10,000,000 |
| Atchafalaya Protection Levees | 10,000,000 |
| Monongahela Reservoirs | 10,000,000 |
| Ohio River Reservoirs | 10,000,000 |
| Mississippi River Reservoirs | 10,000,000 |
| —————— | |
| Total | $100,000,000 |
That amount of money for one year would complete most of the above projects.
Another $100,000,000—the amount an additional 100,000 men added to the regular army would cost for the second year—would provide $1000 for the improvement of every acre of the total 100,000 acres purchased or set apart by the government for subdivision into one acre Homecrofts for the Homecroft Reserves in California, Minnesota, Louisiana, and West Virginia. Of that $1000 an acre, $100 would more than cover its cost, $200 an acre would cover the investment for reclamation and preparation for occupation, and $500 an acre would cover the cost of the house and outbuildings, leaving a surplus to the government of $200 an acre on each of the 100,000 Homecrofts.
Every Homecroft would thereafter return to the government from the rental charge thereon, six per cent on a valuation of $1000 to cover interest and sinking fund, and an additional six per cent for all other expenses of instruction, operation, and maintenance. And perpetually thereafter, for all time, those 100,000 Homecrofts would provide a permanent force of 100,000 Reservists for the national defense, without any cost to the government for their maintenance.
The Homecroft Reserves should be established on the basis of an organization of 1000—ten companies of 100 each—in one organized and united community. These community organizations, which would each furnish a regiment in the Reserve, would be organized primarily as Educational Institutions, with Instructors to train the Homecrofters in every branch of scientific truck-gardening, fruit-growing, berry-culture, poultry raising, preparing products for market and for home consumption, coöperative purchase of supplies and distribution of products, home-handicraft and "housekeeping by the year." The officers of each company and of the regiment would be resident Homecrofters like the rest. They would have received their military training in military schools established and maintained by the War Department for that purpose. No better use could be made of the military posts now in existence and of their equipment and buildings than to use them as military schools for training officers under the exclusive control and management of the War Department. Every company in the Homecroft Reserve should be thoroughly drilled at least once every week for ten months of the year, leaving two months for a long march and an annual encampment and field maneuvers.
The number of regiments in the Homecroft Reserve could be increased just as fast as the necessary Educational and Military Instructors could be developed for the establishment of new Homecroft Reserve Rural Settlements. That would be very rapidly, after the first few years. Once the details had been worked out for one Homecroft Reserve Rural Settlement of 10,000 men, the duplication of the plan would be routine work.
There would be no possibility of enlarging the system fast enough to keep pace with the applications for enlistment. The benefits to the individual who served a five years' enlistment in the Homecroft Reserve would be obvious to the whole people. More than that, the opportunity to combine a soldier's patriotic service to his country with home life and educational instruction for the entire family would appeal to a multitude of industrious families without capital. They would see the opportunity through that channel to establish themselves in homes of their own on the land. That is the ambition and hope of millions of our fast multiplying population.
A charge of Ten Dollars a month as the rental value of each acre Homecroft would be a very low amount to be paid for the use and occupation of the Homecroft and the instruction and training going with it. That charge would provide an annual rental to the government of $120 from each and every Homecroft. That would cover, on a fixed valuation of $1000 on each Homecroft, four per cent interest and two per cent for a sinking fund, and would leave six per cent for cost of operation and maintenance, cost of educational instruction and schools, cost of life insurance, and cost of maintenance of military equipment and organization.
In return for this annual rental of $120, the Homecrofter would get a home that would yield him a comfortable income, instruction in everything he would need to know to produce the desired results from its intensive cultivation, schooling for his children,—in fact every advantage that comes within the compass of a wage earner's life,—and during the five year period of enlistment he would learn what would be to him the most valuable trade he could be taught—the trade of getting his own living by his own labor and that of his family from an acre of ground.
He would be able—and every enlisted Homecrofter would be trained with that end in view—to lay by enough from his sales of surplus products during the five years of his service to buy a Homecroft of his own, at the expiration of that term, in any part of the country where he desired to settle. He should save at least $2000 during the five years.
A life and accident insurance system would be worked out in all its details, and a sufficient part of the annual rental of $120 a year set apart for that purpose to provide both accident and life insurance for every Homecrofter during the five year period of service in the reserve. In the event of the death or permanent disability of any Homecrofter, either in time of peace or during actual warfare, the fee simple title to an acre Homecroft in lieu of a pension should vest in his heirs or in the person who would have been entitled to a pension if the general pension system had been applicable to the case. In this way the burden on the people of an enormous pension roll as the aftermath of a war would be obviated. The value of the Homecroft secured in lieu of a pension would be much more than $1000. It would not only furnish a permanent home for the survivors, but a home that would yield them a living and $500 or $1000 a year and over as the income from fruit, berries, vegetables, and poultry produced on the Homecroft.
The advantages to the family of the Reservist of this plan over the ordinary pension system is too manifest to need comment. Its advantage to the people can be appreciated when we bear in mind that the amount already paid out for pensions on account of the Civil War is $4,457,974,496.47 and $46,092,740.84 more on account of the Spanish-American and Philippine Wars.
The Homecrofts that would go to the families of Reservists under this plan would not be located in the same communities as those occupied by active Reservists, but in Homecroft Rural Settlements created and organized for the special purpose of Homecroft grants in lieu of pensions or life insurance or accident insurance. The right to a Homecroft in lieu of a pension should arise not only in case of death, but also in the event of any serious permanent injury disabling the Reservist from active service or from labor in ordinary commercial or industrial vocations.
That is what the Homecroft Reserve System would offer to the individual Homecrofter. Is there any doubt that it is a good proposition for him and his family?
The chief difficulty in bringing the public to a realization of the advantages of the Homecroft Reserve System, particularly its financial advantages, is to get away from the common idea that a thing can be done on a small scale, but not on a large scale. Many things can be done on a large scale better and more economically than on a small scale, and this is one of them.
The problem of providing adequately for the national defense of a country as big as the United States is a large problem and must be solved in a large way.
The total amount that it would be necessary for the United States to invest, in order to permanently establish a Homecroft Reserve of 5,000,000 trained soldiers, would be less than it has already paid out for pensions; and its whole investment in the Homecroft Reserve Establishment would be returned to the government with interest. The amount the United States has already paid for pensions amounts to $4,729,957,370.65. Within two years it will have exceeded five billion dollars.
Most people lose sight of the magnitude of the present appropriations, expenditures, and operations of the United States, as well as of their wastefulness under the present military system. We are spending over $100,000,000 a year on a standing army of less than 100,000 enlisted men. That amounts to a billion dollars in ten years. It is five billion dollars in fifty years. And we may be certain that five billion dollars will be spent, and probably much more, in the next fifty years on a standing army. When that has been spent it is absolutely gone, just as much as though it had been invested in fire crackers and they had all been set off and there was nothing left, not even noise.
It is not contended that this country should spend less than $100,000,000 a year on its army, but it is contended that it should not spend more. And for what it does spend it should get larger results. $100,000,000 a year ought to be enough to maintain an army enlisted to the full strength of 100,000 men to which the army is now limited by Act of Congress. In addition it should support the necessary organization and training schools to furnish all the officers required for the National Construction Reserve and for the National Homecroft Reserve. The officers of the Homecroft Reserve should be permanently located as residents of the community where their regiment is established.
The officers for the National Construction Reserve should be attached to the Regular Army except when detailed for the work of training those reserves during the period set apart for that work each year. At least one-half of the rank and file of a regular force of 100,000 men in the Standing Army should be composed of men trained for service as officers in the National Construction Reserve, and available for instant transformation into such officers. The training of those officers should be one of the most important functions of the Regular Army. The Army should forthwith take up that work and cease any further connection with the civil work of internal improvements.
If the Standing Army of the United States were increased to an actually enlisted strength of 200,000 men as is now being urged, it would mean the addition of another $100,000,000 a year to the military burdens of the people of the United States, and we would still be without any adequate national defense in case of war with a first-class power.
Now compare the plan for a Homecroft Reserve and its results, from the financial point of view, with this proposition to increase the Regular Army to a total strength of 200,000 men.
The annual cost of an increase of 100,000 men in the Regular Army would be $100,000,000 a year; or $5,000,000,000 in fifty years. Every dollar of that huge sum would be drawn from the people by taxation. When spent it would be gone, leaving nothing to show for its expenditure. The economic value of the labor of 100,000 men would be wasted. That would be another $5,000,000,000 in fifty years, estimating the potential labor value of each man at $1000 a year. That makes the stupendous total economic loss and waste of money and human labor of ten billion dollars in fifty years,—an amount ten times as large as the whole national debt of the United States,—an amount as large as the combined national debts of Great Britain and France, which an eminent authority has said are so large that they never can be paid.
Measure up against that proposition the Homecroft Reserve plan and compare results:
Every $1000 of capital invested in the establishment of the Homecroft Reserve will reclaim and fully equip an acre Homecroft with a Reservist and his family on it. There is no reason why the capital necessary for that should be provided from current revenues. In fact it should not be so provided, because it would be invested in property to be perpetually owned by the national government, from which future generations will derive an enormous annual revenue.
A fixed average valuation of one thousand dollars for each Homecroft would be more than enough to cover the cost of reclamation, preparation for occupancy, building roads, houses, and outbuildings, water systems, sanitation, institutes for instruction, schools, libraries,—in fact everything needed to be done to make each Homecroft ready for occupancy as a productive acre garden home, with a complete community organization. It would also cover the cost of the original military equipment of the Reservist who would occupy the Homecroft.
Each Reservist would pay for the use of the Homecroft and for educational instruction for himself and family, a net annual rental of $120, being twelve per cent on the fixed capitalized value of $1000 placed on each Homecroft. Of that rental of twelve per cent, four per cent would be apportioned to interest, and two per cent to create a sinking fund that would cover the entire principal in fifty years. The remaining six per cent would cover expenses of operation and maintenance, instruction, and all other expenses connected with the Homecroft Reserve Establishment, including military expenditures. The government would be under no expense whatsoever for the maintenance of this Homecroft Reserve Establishment that would have to be borne out of the general revenues, not even for field maneuvers. There would be no expenses of railway transportation to those maneuvers. Every regiment would march to and from its annual encampment.
One hundred and twenty dollars a year would be the revenue to the government from one Homecroft. After that it becomes merely a question of multiplying units. The revenue from 5,000,000 Homecrofts would be $600,000,000 a year. As fast as the capital was needed for investment in the creation and establishment of Homecroft Reserve Rural Settlements, it could be easily secured by the government. A plan that would insure this would be the adoption of a financial system to cover this branch of the operations of the Government which would be modeled after the French Rentes System. Instead of Government Bonds, as they are now called, Government Homecroft Certificates would be issued, bearing four per cent interest, in denominations of twenty-five dollars. The interest on each certificate would be one dollar a year. If such certificates were available, the purse strings of the people would be opened to take them as readily as those of the French people were opened to take the securities issued by the French Government to pay the war debt of a billion dollars to Germany after the Franco-Prussian War.
$500,000,000 a year of these certificates could be issued every year for ten years. That would complete the work of creating the entire Homecroft Reserve Establishment and provide the capital of $5,000,000,000 necessary for investment therein.
Starting from that point, in fifty years thereafter the entire investment of $5,000,000,000 would have been repaid with all current interest, and the government would own the 5,000,000 Homecrofts free and clear of all indebtedness or financial obligations relating thereto.
Now put the two propositions side by side and look at them.
An increase of 100,000 men in the Standing Army would mean in fifty years:
1. An expense of $5,000,000,000 for maintenance.
2. An economic waste of another $5,000,000,000, being the potential labor value of the 100,000 men who would be withdrawn from industry.
The Homecroft Reserve Establishment would provide a military force of 5,000,000 men instead of 100,000.
It would provide for the maintenance of this immense force during the fifty years without any ultimate cost to the government.
It would create and vest in the government in perpetual ownership property consisting of 5,000,000 acre Homecrofts worth $1000 apiece,—a total property value of $5,000,000,000 which would be acquired by the Government, and fully paid for from the Rental Revenues from the property during the fifty year period.
It would thereafter provide from those Rental Revenues an annual income to the government of six per cent on $5,000,000,000 amounting to $300,000,000 a year.
The potential labor value of the 100,000 men in each Homecroft Reserve Corps would be saved and transformed into an actual productive value of the $1000 which each would annually produce from his Homecroft. The productive labor value of each Corps of 100,000 Homecroft Reservists therefore would amount to $5,000,000 in fifty years. That is the same amount that would represent the economic waste during that same period, of the potential labor value of the additional force of 100,000 men which it is now proposed shall be added to the regular army.
The economic value of the productive labor of the entire Homecroft Reserve of 5,000,000 men in the fifty years would be fifty times $5,000,000,000.
And in order to save the enormous expense and waste that would result from increasing the standing army, and, in addition, to achieve the stupendous benefits that would result from the establishment of the Homecroft Reserve, it is only necessary that the same common sense business methods and principles should be applied to the operations of the government that any large corporation would adopt if it had the financial resources, of the United States.
Why should anyone be staggered at the proposition for the establishment of the Homecroft Reserve, or balk at it because it is big?
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 institutions to train Homecroft Reservists in Acreculture, if they pay for the cost of that instruction and all the expenses of maintaining the necessary educational institutions?
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 substituted 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 classified 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 establishing 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.
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 Washington, 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 title, "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.' There is something in the environment and in the rugged scenery of the State that gives its people the freedom loving spirit of the Swiss." The "strategic importance" of the State is shown in these words: "A circle with a radius of two hundred and fifty miles makes West Virginia the center of all the markets laved by the waters of the Atlantic and the great lakes on the north. Within this circle is located the capital of the nation and twelve of the world's greatest cities."
With these facts in mind, anyone who will look at a map of the eastern half of the United States will agree that West Virginia is the right State in which to rear and train and concentrate the Reserve Force required for the defense of the east and the Atlantic seaboard.
The northern half of the State of Minnesota affords perhaps the most perfect adaptability of any section of the United States to the plan for a Homecroft Reserve of one million men to be located there. The national government now owns more than a million acres of land that could be reclaimed for this purpose. The national government also owns national forests in the State of Minnesota aggregating close to a million acres. The land needed for the 1,000,000 Homecrofts could be selected from land already owned by the government, or other lands could be acquired. That country is the original Homecroft section in the United States. The people of Duluth have tried it out and found it good. Anyone who wants proof of the possibilities of acre production needs only to go to Duluth and make some investigations there. He will find unquestionable records of acreage production of vegetables, running all the way from $1000 to $4000 an acre in one year.
The population of the United States is out of balance—too many consumers in cities—too few producers in the country—with a steadily increasing food shortage and higher cost of living in consequence. The annual production of food from the 5,000,000 acres owned by the national government, and intensively cultivated by the Homecroft Reserve, would tend largely to reduce the cost of living. It would aggregate more than half the value of the entire annual production from all the farms of the United States to-day.
That would, however, be but a small part of the stupendous enlargement of the economic power of the United States that would result from the work that would be done by the National Construction Corps to increase the area available for food production, and enlarge the productiveness of lands already under cultivation. The great works that would be built by the Construction Corps of the Reclamation Service would accomplish:
(a) The utilization of the waters of eastern streams for increasing the annual production of between 150 and 200 million acres by supplemental irrigation in the humid and sub-humid sections of the country;
(b) The reclamation by irrigation of at least 75 million acres of land now desert in the western part of the United States;
(c) The reclamation by drainage or protection from overflow of 75 million acres of swamp and overflow lands situated largely in the eastern and southern states.
A total of 150 million acres of worthless deserts and swamps would be reclaimed and devoted to food production. That would be equivalent to the actual creation of an area of that enormous extent of new lands where none had been before, and these new lands would be the most fertile and highly productive of any lands in the United States. If the annual gross production of the 150 million acres of reclaimed deserts and swamps were put at only $60 an acre, which is a low estimate, it would amount to $9,000,000,000 a year, and the world needs the food. The value of all the wealth produced on farms in the United States in 1910 was estimated by the Secretary of Agriculture to have been $8,926,000,000.
The application of supplemental irrigation to lands in the United States already under cultivation by rainfall, as is done upon large areas in France, Spain and Italy, would double or treble the production of farm crops on such lands. And if 100,000,000 acres of those lands were intensively cultivated and fertilized, as is now done on much of the land devoted to truck-gardening on the Atlantic coast, the gross food production from every acre intensively tilled in that way can be increased more than $1,000 a year. That would mean an increase in the food supplies of the United States aggregating an annual total of one hundred billion dollars a year.
These figures look so large as to seem visionary to those who are uninformed as to the facts, but it is only a question of multiplying units of from one to five acres into which the land would be subdivided for tillage by Homecrofters. With a population of 100,000,000 to feed now, and the practical certainty that it will be 200,000,000 in another fifty years, and 400,000,000 within a century, shall we hesitate to train the Homecrofters who would each produce a gross yield of more than $1,000 from every acre to feed our multiplying millions?
If we do not train millions of our people to be Homecrofters and intensive soil-cultivators, how are we going to feed our population when it reaches 200,000,000 or 400,000,000?
All we need to do, to be sure of having at least 100,000,000 Homecrofters, each producing $1,000 worth of food from a one-acre-garden home or Homecroft, when our population has grown to 400,000,000 within a century, is to graduate 1,000,000 Homecrofters every year from the Homecroft Reserve Educational System as is in this book advocated and shown to be entirely practicable.
Forestry also should be borne in mind in measuring the enlargement of the nation's economic power through the work of the National Construction Reserve, not only the perpetuation of present forests, but the establishment of new forest plantations by planting trees. The forestry resources of the nation should be administered and developed on a business basis. Forests should be planted on every acre of land better adapted to forestry than to agriculture. Forest plantations should be established and maintained near every city or town that would coöperate by maintaining a Forestry and Homecroft School as an adjunct to the forest plantation established by the national government.
The value of matured forests should be carefully estimated, and the length of time required to bring them to maturity. Forestry Construction Bonds should be issued to cover the cost of the work of the Construction Corps of the Forest Service. They should be 100 year bonds, issued under a plan that would carefully estimate the income that would be derived from the forests after they had attained to maturity. The first fifty years should be allowed for the period of growth, during which only the interest on the bonds should be payable. The second fifty year period should be the period of liquidation, during which a sinking fund would be accumulated from sales of wood and timber sufficient to cover the entire principal of the bonds, in addition to the amount paid for interest thereon during the full term of one hundred years through which the bond would run. The generations of the future, who would derive the benefit from the work of this generation, would provide for the payment of the debt from the income from the forest resources which had been created for their benefit and bequeathed to them by this generation. A hundred years is none too far ahead to plan in formulating a great national forestry policy for such a nation as the United States. The adoption of the policy of developing this branch of the country's resources and economic power by a Forestry Bond Issue relieves the plan of any difficulty that might otherwise arise if the expenditures had to be met from current revenues. There is no right reason why this generation should bear the entire burden of planting what future generations will harvest. This generation would get a large benefit, but the benefits to future generations would be far greater. They would inherit the vast resources of wood and timber which would be created by the wise forethought of the present generation.
Whenever this country has put itself on the economic basis that will be established by the adoption of the National Construction Reserve and Homecroft Reserve System, and maintains without ultimate cost to the government a system that insures to the United States greater military strength than that of any other nation, the economic currents and manifest benefits to the people created by that condition will force all other nations to abandon their systems of enormously expensive standing armies and armaments.
The final power that must be relied on to ultimately make an end of war is the drift of economic forces—a power as irresistible as the onward flow of the Gulf Stream or the Japan Current. The universal adoption of the Homecroft System of Education and Life that would eventually be brought about by the establishment of the Homecroft Reserve would vest in the United States an economic power that no other nation could stand against, unless it adopted a similar system. We would have the economic strength that China has to-day, supplemented by all the advantages of national organization and modern science and machinery. After generations of following after false gods, we would have abandoned the fallacious teachings of Adam Smith and returned to the sound principles of national and human life laid down in "Fields, Factories and Workshops," by Prince Kropotkin.
Kropotkin calls attention to the fact that in Great Britain alone the area under cultivation was decreased in the last fifty years more than five million acres. That land was once cultivated by human labor. The hardy yeomanry who tilled it have been forced into the congested cities or have emigrated to other lands, and the five million citizen soldiers that England might have had on those five million acres were not there when the day of her great need came.
England is now paying the penalty of her adherence to the political economy of Adam Smith instead of to that of Kropotkin. She has pursued a national policy that counts national wealth in dollars instead of in men.
Let us learn a lesson from England's mistakes, the mistakes which have brought upon her such an appalling calamity.
If the 5,000,000 acres that have been thrown out of cultivation in England in the last fifty years were now settled with 5,000,000 Homecroft Reservists, under the plan proposed for adoption in the United States, those Homecrofters could pay off the national debt of Great Britain in just two years and live comfortably the meanwhile. A total net annual production of only $500 an acre, multiplied by the labor of 5,000,000 men for one year, would amount to $2,500,000,000. That would be enough to pay off the national debt of France in less than three years, and of Russia in less than two years. It would pay off the entire war debt of the world in twenty years. That gives some idea of the economic strength of a Homecroft nation, such as we must create in the United States of America. The possibilities of acreage production are steadily increasing as our scientific knowledge of the mysteries of plant growth and methods of fertilization advances.
The United States is now at the forks of the road. Certain destruction is our fate if we continue the drift away from the land into the congested cities. If, instead of that, we become a nation of Homecrofters, no dream can picture the future strength of this country or the human advancement that its people will accomplish, to say nothing of the production of national wealth so great as to be practically inconceivable.
In the future the power of the nations of the world will be in proportion to the wise use they make of their productive resources, and the extent to which they provide opportunities for acreculture and create Homecroft Rural Settlements instead of crowding humanity into congested cities where they become consumers and cease to be producers of food.
If the present war has proved anything it has proved that the one thing above all others which insures the national defense is trained and seasoned men,—and enough of them to overwhelm any invading enemy by the sheer force and weight of innumerable battalions. In all the future years the fundamental military strength of every nation is going to be measured by the number of such men that she has immediately available for instant service, with adequate arms and equipment.
The establishment of a Homecroft Reserve by the United States of America will make of this nation a living demonstration of the truth of those immortal words of Henry W. Grady:
"The citizen standing in the doorway of his home—contented on his threshold—his family gathered about his hearthstone—while the evening of a well spent day closes in scenes and sounds that are dearest—he shall save the republic when the drum tap is futile and the barracks are exhausted."