After every other war in our history the work of internal development has gone forward by leaps and bounds, and our people have thus quickly made good the economic wastes of the conflict. The needs of to-day are different from those of the past and require different treatment, but they are by no means beyond the reach of enlightened thought and action.
More than a year ago we began an earnest discussion of reconstruction policies, particularly with respect to the land. But nothing has been done. Not one line of legislation, not one dollar of money has been provided except in the way of preliminary investigation. We stand voiceless in the presence of opportunity and idle in the face of urgent national need.
A PROGRAM OF PROGRESS.
The great work of material development accomplished in the past has been done very largely by private capital and enterprise. Doubtless this must be the chief reliance for progress in the future. We should realize, however, that this method has involved losses as well as gains, for the Nation has sometimes been too prodigal in offering its natural resources as an inducement to private effort. Not only so, but with the exhaustion of the free public lands in our great central valleys—the most remarkable natural heritage that ever fell into the lap of a young nation—conditions of home making and settlement have radically changed.
There can be do doubt that there is an important sphere of action which the Government must occupy if we are to go steadily forward with the work of continental conquest, and all it implies to the future of the Nation, but in suggesting practicable steps of progress at this time I do not forget the burden of taxation which confronts our people nor the delicate and difficult task which Congress is called upon to perform in trying to keep the national outgo within the national income. Hence, I am now suggesting such constructive things as the Government may be able to do through the exercise of its powers of supervision and direction and with the smallest possible outlay of money.
Under this head I put, first, the matter of suburban homes for wage earners; second, reclamation of desert, overflow, and cut-over areas, together with improvement of abandoned farms, under a system of district organization which may be made to finance itself; third, cooperation with various States in the work of internal development.
GARDEN HOMES FOR THE PEOPLE.
There is no more baffling problem than that presented by the continued growth of great cities, but it is a problem with which we must sometime deal. It bears directly on the high cost of living and is, indeed, largely responsible for it. Rent is based on land values. Land values rise with increasing population. The price of food is closely related to the growing disproportion between consumers and producers, resulting from urban congestion.
Here is Washington, a city of some 400,000 people, doubtless destined steadily to grow until—a Member of Congress predicts—it may touch 2,000,000 twenty years hence. Already the housing problem is acute, as it is in almost every other large American city. It would be a pitiful thing if the provision of more housing facilities to meet the needs of growing population meant merely more congestion and higher rents, with an ever-decreasing degree of landed proprietorship and true individual independence. Such conditions, it seems to me, undermine the American hearthstone and carry a deep menace to the future of our institutions. I believe there must be a better way, and that the time has come when we should make an earnest effort to find it.