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.