Our National Defense: The Patriotism of Peace

by George Hebard Maxwell

The works necessary for the reclamation of at least a million acres of this land should be carried to completion with all possible expedition. This one million acres should be brought to the highest stage of reclamation and cultivation, subdivided into Homecrofts of one acre each, and as rapidly as possible settled by men with families who either already know or are willing to learn how to get a comfortable living for a family from one acre of land in the Colorado River Valley.

The Australian system of land reclamation and settlement should be applied to the colonization of these acre-garden farms or Homecrofts. On every one of them a house and outbuildings adapted to the climate should be built, costing not over $500. That is all that would be necessary in the way of buildings. Shade rather than shelter is needed and it is more important to provide ways to keep cool than ways to keep out the cold. Life is lived practically out-of-doors all the year round.

These Homecroft settlements should be organized in communities of not less than one thousand each and, in advance of settlement, schoolhouses adapted to the climate and all necessary roads and transportation facilities should be brought into existence. The price to be paid for the right of occupancy of each acre Homecroft during the five year period of enlistment in the Educational System of the Homecroft Reserve Service, should be based, not on the cost, but on the full value of the reclaimed land and its appurtenant water right plus the entire investment for house and community improvements and the overhead expense of its development.

No cash payment should be required from the settler. He should only pay the fixed annual rental for use and occupation from year to year. The test of his acceptability as an applicant would be his physical fitness for the labor required in the development of that country, as well as for possible military service in the event of war. The most important question would be his ability, with the help of his family, and with the instruction that would be given to all, to so cultivate and manage his acre Homecroft as to produce from it all the food needed by the family throughout the year. The first consideration in putting such a settler on the land would be the willingness of himself and family to do that one thing above all others and thereby demonstrate the practicability of the plan.

There would thus be brought into existence something rare among American institutions—an independent and self-sustaining community of a million men of military age with families from whom the mainstay of every family would be available for military service without interference with complex commercial or industrial conditions, and without in the slightest degree subjecting the family to possible privation from lack of food, shelter, or raiment. The question of raiment in the Colorado River Valley involves, if necessity exists for economy, an expense so small as to be negligible. If the men from such a community were absent for five years in military service, the sale of surplus products and poultry in excess of the family needs for food, that could be produced from the acre, would amply supply the need of the family for clothes, and all their other necessary requirements.

The character of the cultivation necessary upon such an acre would be peculiarly adapted to the labor which would be available from the old men, the boys, the women, and the children of the community. Each family would continue to live in its accustomed home indefinitely. If the men of military age were called on for military service, all rentals or other charges against the land or for water maintenance or for instruction or upkeep of roads and public works should be remitted during such a period of actual service and borne by the national government. And in the event of the loss of the head of the family in the service, the ownership of a completely equipped and stocked homecroft should vest in the family in lieu of a pension.

Not only should the Australian land system be made applicable to such communities, so that each settler could secure his home without the payment of any cash down, or anything more than the annual rental, but the Australian or Swiss system of military service should likewise be adopted, with reference to all these communities and the entire section of the country embraced in the Colorado River Valley.

The plan has no elements of uncertainty or impracticability. The land is there and the government already owns more than enough of it to carry out the plan without the acquisition of any land now in private ownership.

The water necessary to reclaim the land runs to waste year after year into the Gulf of California, and it never will be fully conserved and utilized until the government takes hold and does it on a big interstate scale such as can be done only by the national government. The latent water power should be developed as fast as needed and perpetually owned by the national government. Every available acre of land that can be reclaimed in the main Colorado River Valley, and on the mesas adjoining it, should be acquired and gradually settled under this plan by the national government.

Every new acre thus developed and settled would add to the economic strength of the nation as well as contribute to its military strength. The fact that this whole section of the country can be so readily adapted to the Australian system of land reclamation and settlement, and also to the Australian system of military service, is one of the strongest reasons for locating the first demonstration of the advantages of such communities in the Colorado River Valley.