_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 Aeroplane Service in the present war? And yet, all
that has so far been done is only a forecast of greater development in
aerial 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, cooperative
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.
[Illustration: 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 cooperate 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._"
THE SECRET OF NIPPON'S POWER
THE FIRST BOOK OF THE HOMECROFTERS CONTAINS
WE DARE NOT FAIL
THE BROTHERHOOD OF MAN--Poem
CHARITY--Poem
CHARITY THAT IS EVERLASTING
THE SECRET OF NIPPON'S POWER
COMMERCIAL COMPETITION OF JAPAN
A WARNING FROM ENGLAND
THE GARDEN SCHOOL IS THE OPEN SESAME
THE LESSON OF A GREAT CALAMITY
OUR MOTTO--"DROIT AU TRAVAIL"
THE SIGN OF A THOUGHT--THE SWASTIKA
THE CREED AND PLATFORM OF THE HOMECROFTERS
"HOMECROFT"--THE MAKING OF A WORD
Price $1.00
Including Postage
May be ordered by mail from
RURAL SETTLEMENTS ASSOCIATION
COTTON EXCHANGE BUILDING, NEW ORLEANS, LA.
End of Project Gutenberg's Our National Defense:, by George Hebard Maxwell