The cantonments originally were all built upon leased ground. It was evident that, if the Government were forced to vacate the ground to the owners, the cantonments, salvaged for their building materials, would bring no greater recovery percentage of their cost than did the tentage camps. The Government’s loss, in such an event, on each cantonment would be twice or three times what it proved to be on the national guard camps. Before the end of the war was in sight the Construction Division had anticipated demobilization by presenting a plan to the Secretary of War for the purchase of the sites of the cantonments. Purchase would accomplish several desirable ends. As long as the cantonments were in use it would save the payment of rents. After the war was over, if the cantonments were retained by the Army, it would give the cantonments their full use-value, which was every penny they had cost. If, on the other hand, the decision was to dispose of them after the advent of peace, then ownership of the sites would permit the Government (1) to market the materials gradually and avoid beating down prices by glutting the market; or (2) to sell buildings intact, with the land on which they stood; or (3) to sell entire cantonments as they stood, together with title to the lands. Any one of these methods of disposition would bring a far greater salvage return than the forced sale of the materials and the payment of property damages.
In March, 1919, the Assistant Secretary of War directed that the leased sites of fourteen of the cantonments—namely, Camps Custer, Devens, Dix, Dodge, Gordon, Grant, Lee, Jackson, Meade, Pike, Sherman, Taylor, Travis, and Upton—be acquired by purchase. The investment in these cantonments was approximately $155,000,000. By continuing to use the cantonments, the War Department could get full value received for the money expended. By salvaging them after the manner of disposing of the national guard camps, the Government might recover $4,000,000 at the outside estimate. By selling the materials gradually or the buildings intact with lands, the recovery could be expected to run as high as $48,000,000. The business logic of the proposition was irresistible.
The purchase of this vast quantity of land was undertaken by the Construction Division. After the commanding officers at the cantonments had indicated what boundaries should be included, the Division sent out its field forces—on April 21, 1919. First to go to work were engineers and surveyors to fix accurate boundaries and secure complete metes-and-bounds descriptions of the properties. Contracts were drawn with various responsible title companies to make search of the land titles and to guarantee them with title insurance. Next followed acquisition officers who closed sale contracts with the private owners. The sale contracts were finally signed in behalf of the Government by competent officers. With the acquisition officers traveled disbursing officers of the Finance Service who stood ready to pay spot cash for the lands the moment the sale contracts were signed. So rapidly was this work carried on that in two months the Government had acquired ownership to more than half the area on which the fourteen cantonments stood. A year later about 55,000 acres had passed in fee simple to the United States at a price of $6,762,000. Considerable property was yet unacquired; but, although it had been estimated that the sites would cost ultimately $9,657,000, the indications then were that the Government would secure them for not more than $8,115,000.
It was found to be impossible, however, to secure all the property so simply and easily. Some owners would not sell at reasonable prices; other owners could not be found; still others were under legal disabilities which prevented them from selling. In such instances the recourse of the Government was condemnation of the lands. Proceedings were instituted eventually to condemn some 22,000 acres for government use. The condemnation proceedings were conducted by the Department of Justice, which found this work to be one of great magnitude.
One of the interesting war developments in the United States was the change in the attitude of the War Department toward real estate. Before the war the various bureaus and other agencies of the War Department acquired their own real estate by lease or purchase as they needed it and as they could secure authority to procure it. The war itself resulted in an intense demand for real estate by the War Department as sites for its war buildings or as quarters to be occupied under lease. Real estate, therefore, came to be regarded as a commodity in the supply of the Army; just as much a commodity as food or ammunition. And, as the procurement of other commodities was eventually administered and controlled by a centralized agency, so the centralized procurement of real estate was placed in the hands of a new organization called the Real Estate Service.
The Real Estate Service acted as the Army’s real estate agent. The various bureaus still originated the projects for the acquisition of property, and then the Real Estate Service acquired the property as agent for the bureaus. The Service was composed of experts who saw to it that deeds and leases were correctly drawn and that the Government made good bargains.
The armistice, if anything, meant increased effort for the Real Estate Service, since the problem of the storage of surplus supplies was to be solved only by the acquisition of space. It was also necessary to dispense with high-priced locations, essential as they had been during the actual hostilities, and to substitute more economical facilities. Many of the War Department’s war factories had been built on leased sites, and it was necessary to purchase these sites wherever it was expedient for the Department to retain the factory as a preparedness asset or where it was good business to buy the land in order to sell the factory advantageously.
Although few obstacles had been thrown in the way of the War Department in purchasing property, it was discovered after the armistice that, because of existing and obsolete laws, it was most difficult to sell any. Up to the declaration of war the law which controlled this function provided that war department lands useless for military purposes should be sold by the Secretary of the Interior. When this law was enacted (1884) most of the lands occupied by the Army had come from the public domain, and it was logical to turn them back to that source when the War Department was through with them. In May, 1917, Congress authorized the War Department itself to sell national guard target ranges. In July, 1918, Congress authorized the President to sell, through the head of any Executive Department, lands acquired after the declaration of war against Germany to be the sites of war factories. In July, 1919, Congress authorized the sale under identical conditions of lands acquired for storage purposes. These, however, were the only exceptions granted to the original rule. In fact, when the War Department went about the purchase of the fourteen cantonment sites for the possible purpose of selling these lands later and thus getting better prices for the buildings on them, it did so with the knowledge that it would take a special act of Congress to authorize such a sale.
Congress, without warning, attached a rider to the appropriation bill which was approved on July 11, 1919, forbidding the expenditure of any more money at all in the purchase of real estate by the Army except at the national guard camps or at the cantonments in use before November 11, 1918, and also except where the purchase of sites of industrial plants was necessary to protect the Government’s interests. The Secretary of War ruled that the fourteen cantonments then being purchased were exempt from this inhibition, but the law abruptly put an end to projects of the Real Estate Service to buy some 300,000 acres at a cost of $8,000,000. At that time the Service was buying 115,000 acres of land at Columbus, Georgia, to serve as an infantry school of arms, 120,000 acres at Fayetteville, North Carolina, to be an artillery range, and several other large acreages for various military purposes. The project to acquire Camp Humphreys, the Engineers’ camp in Virginia near the city of Washington, about 4,000 acres, was allowed to go through.
