"On the Gulf side of these islands you may observe that the trees—when there are any trees—all bend away from the sea; and, even of bright, hot days when the wind sleeps, there is something grotesquely pathetic in their look of agonized terror. A group of oaks at Grande Isle I remember as especially suggestive: five sloping silhouettes in line against the horizon, like fleeing women with streaming garments and wind-blown hair—bowinggrievously and thrusting out arms desperately northward as to save themselves from falling. And they are being pursued indeed;—for the sea is devouring the land. Many and many a mile of ground has yielded to the tireless charging of Ocean's cavalry; far out you can see, through a good glass, the porpoises at play where of old the sugarcane shook out its million bannerets; and shark-fins now seam deep water above a site where pigeons used to coo. Men build dikes; but the besieging tides bring up their battering-rams—whole forests of drift—huge trunks of water-oak and weighty cypress. Forever the yellow Mississippi strives to build; forever the sea struggles to destroy;—and amid their eternal strife the islands and the promontories change shape, more slowly, but not less fantastically, than the clouds of heaven."And worthy of study are those wan battle-grounds where the woods made their last brave stand against the irresistible invasion,—usually at some long point of sea-marsh, widely fringed with billowing sand. Just where the waves curl beyond such a point you may discern a multitude of blackened, snaggy shapes protruding above the water,—some high enough to resemble ruined chimneys, others bearing a startling likeness to enormous skeleton-feet and skeleton-hands,—with crustaceous white growthsclinging to them here and there like remnants of integument. These are bodies and limbs of drowned oaks,—so long drowned that the shell-scurf is inch-thick upon parts of them. Farther in upon the beach immense trunks lie overthrown. Some look like vast broken columns; some suggest colossal torsos imbedded, and seem to reach out mutilated stumps in despair from their deepening graves;—and beside these are others which have kept their feet with astounding obstinacy, although the barbarian tides have been charging them for twenty years, and gradually torn away the soil above and beneath their roots. The sand around,—soft beneath and thinly crusted upon the surface,—is everywhere pierced with holes made by a beautifully mottled and semi-diaphanous crab, with hairy legs, big staring eyes, and milk-white claws;—while in the green sedges beyond there is a perpetual rustling, as of some strong wind bearing among reeds: a marvellous creeping of 'fiddlers,' which the inexperienced visitor might at first mistake for so many peculiar beetles, as they run about sideways, each with his huge single claw folded upon his body like a wing-case. Year by year that rustling strip of green land grows narrower; the sand spreads and sinks, shuddering and wrinkling like a living brown skin; and the last standing corpses of the oaks, ever clingingwith naked, dead feet to the sliding beach lean more and more out of the perpendicular. As the sands subside, the stumps appear to creep; their intertwisted masses of snakish roots seem to crawl, to writhe,—like the reaching arms of cephalopods.... Grand Terre is going: the sea mines her fort, and will before many years carry the ramparts by storm. Grande Isle is going,—slowly but surely: the Gulf has eaten three miles into her meadowed land. Last Island has gone! How it went I first heard from the lips of a veteran pilot, while we sat one evening together on the trunk of a drifted cypress which some high tide had pressed deeply into the Grande Isle beach. The day had been tropically warm; we had sought the shore for a breath of living air. Sunset came, and with it the ponderous heat lifted,—a sudden breeze blew,—lightnings flickered in the darkening horizon,—wind and water began to strive together,—and soon all the low coast boomed. Then my companion began his story; perhaps the coming of the storm inspired him to speak! And as I listened to him, listening also to the clamoring of the coast, there flashed back to me recollection of a singular Breton fancy: that the Voice of the Sea is never one voice, but a tumult of many voices—voices of drowned men,—the muttering of multitudinous dead,—themoaning of innumerable ghosts, all rising, to rage against the living, at the great Witch-call of storms...."
"On the Gulf side of these islands you may observe that the trees—when there are any trees—all bend away from the sea; and, even of bright, hot days when the wind sleeps, there is something grotesquely pathetic in their look of agonized terror. A group of oaks at Grande Isle I remember as especially suggestive: five sloping silhouettes in line against the horizon, like fleeing women with streaming garments and wind-blown hair—bowinggrievously and thrusting out arms desperately northward as to save themselves from falling. And they are being pursued indeed;—for the sea is devouring the land. Many and many a mile of ground has yielded to the tireless charging of Ocean's cavalry; far out you can see, through a good glass, the porpoises at play where of old the sugarcane shook out its million bannerets; and shark-fins now seam deep water above a site where pigeons used to coo. Men build dikes; but the besieging tides bring up their battering-rams—whole forests of drift—huge trunks of water-oak and weighty cypress. Forever the yellow Mississippi strives to build; forever the sea struggles to destroy;—and amid their eternal strife the islands and the promontories change shape, more slowly, but not less fantastically, than the clouds of heaven.
"And worthy of study are those wan battle-grounds where the woods made their last brave stand against the irresistible invasion,—usually at some long point of sea-marsh, widely fringed with billowing sand. Just where the waves curl beyond such a point you may discern a multitude of blackened, snaggy shapes protruding above the water,—some high enough to resemble ruined chimneys, others bearing a startling likeness to enormous skeleton-feet and skeleton-hands,—with crustaceous white growthsclinging to them here and there like remnants of integument. These are bodies and limbs of drowned oaks,—so long drowned that the shell-scurf is inch-thick upon parts of them. Farther in upon the beach immense trunks lie overthrown. Some look like vast broken columns; some suggest colossal torsos imbedded, and seem to reach out mutilated stumps in despair from their deepening graves;—and beside these are others which have kept their feet with astounding obstinacy, although the barbarian tides have been charging them for twenty years, and gradually torn away the soil above and beneath their roots. The sand around,—soft beneath and thinly crusted upon the surface,—is everywhere pierced with holes made by a beautifully mottled and semi-diaphanous crab, with hairy legs, big staring eyes, and milk-white claws;—while in the green sedges beyond there is a perpetual rustling, as of some strong wind bearing among reeds: a marvellous creeping of 'fiddlers,' which the inexperienced visitor might at first mistake for so many peculiar beetles, as they run about sideways, each with his huge single claw folded upon his body like a wing-case. Year by year that rustling strip of green land grows narrower; the sand spreads and sinks, shuddering and wrinkling like a living brown skin; and the last standing corpses of the oaks, ever clingingwith naked, dead feet to the sliding beach lean more and more out of the perpendicular. As the sands subside, the stumps appear to creep; their intertwisted masses of snakish roots seem to crawl, to writhe,—like the reaching arms of cephalopods.... Grand Terre is going: the sea mines her fort, and will before many years carry the ramparts by storm. Grande Isle is going,—slowly but surely: the Gulf has eaten three miles into her meadowed land. Last Island has gone! How it went I first heard from the lips of a veteran pilot, while we sat one evening together on the trunk of a drifted cypress which some high tide had pressed deeply into the Grande Isle beach. The day had been tropically warm; we had sought the shore for a breath of living air. Sunset came, and with it the ponderous heat lifted,—a sudden breeze blew,—lightnings flickered in the darkening horizon,—wind and water began to strive together,—and soon all the low coast boomed. Then my companion began his story; perhaps the coming of the storm inspired him to speak! And as I listened to him, listening also to the clamoring of the coast, there flashed back to me recollection of a singular Breton fancy: that the Voice of the Sea is never one voice, but a tumult of many voices—voices of drowned men,—the muttering of multitudinous dead,—themoaning of innumerable ghosts, all rising, to rage against the living, at the great Witch-call of storms...."
The defense of the Gulf gateway of the United States of America not only against Nature's forces, whether coming in the form of an invasion by a mighty flood from the North, or the invasion of a great destroying storm wave from the South, must be accomplished by the adoption of a plan for the protection of that country similar to that proposed for the organization of a Homecroft Reserve in the Colorado River Valley and in the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys and in the State of Nevada.
The national government should immediately acquire not less than 1,000,000 acres of land bordering on the Gulf of Mexico and lying between Bayou Lafourche and Atchafalaya Bay and the Atchafalaya River. Then a great dike should be built by the national government from Barataria Bay, following the most practicable course along the shores of the Gulf to and along the eastern shore of the Atchafalaya Bay and River to MorganCity. Thence this great dike should skirt the northeastern shore of Grand Lake to the northern end of that lake. From there it should be continued north to the Mississippi River to a connection with that river near the headwaters of the Atchafalaya River.
The material necessary for the construction of this great embankment and protecting levee from the Gulf north to the Mississippi River should be taken entirely from the eastern side of the embankment, and the channel thus constructed should be enlarged sufficiently to build an adequate protecting levee on the east bank of the channel. The artificial channel thus constructed should be so large as to constitute a controlled outlet and auxiliary flood channel which, with the ten mile wide Atchafalaya wasteway, would take off all of the flood flow of the Mississippi River at that point in excess of the high water level as it rests against the levees in all ordinary flood years. The purpose of this outlet and wasteway would be to make it impossible that in any year of unusual floods the levees or banks should be subjected to any greater hydrostatic pressure than in ordinary years. The point where this controlled outlet would leave the river would be approximately the same place where the great Morganza Crevasse broke through the levee and opened a way for the flood to sweep with its devastating force through the country between the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico.
Map of Louisiana, showing the Great Controlled Outlet at Old River and the Atchafalaya Wasteway, Auxiliary Flood Water Channels and Canals; and showing also the Spillways and Controlled Wasteways from the Mississippi River to Lake Pontchartrain and Lake Borgne, and the Great Gulf Coast Dike.Map of Louisiana, showing the Great Controlled Outlet at Old River and the Atchafalaya Wasteway, Auxiliary Flood Water Channels and Canals; and showing also the Spillways and Controlled Wasteways from the Mississippi River to Lake Pontchartrain and Lake Borgne, and the Great Gulf Coast Dike.
Ten miles west of the great north and south embankment above described, on a north and south line which would pass close to the town of Melville in Louisiana and follow the west bank of the Atchafalaya River for some distance below Melville, another great embankment should be built, paralleling the one previously described. The material for the construction of this second embankment should be taken from its western side, thus forming a channel which should be used both as a drainage outlet and a navigable canal extending from the Bayou Teche to the Red River. At the point of its junction with the Red River, locks should be constructed which wouldprevent any of the floods of the Red River from ever entering or passing through this navigable drainage canal. From that point another great embankment should be extended by the most practicable route to the west or northwest, where a junction could be formed with the high land in such a way as to turn all the surplus flood drainage from the Red River and all other rivers to the north into the great ten-mile wide wasteway lying between the two embankments and running south from the mouth of the Red River or from Old River to Grand Lake.
The volume of water that would make a flood twenty feet deep in a channel a mile wide could be carried through this wasteway with a flow of only about two feet in depth, and two great benefits thereby attained:
First, the cutting power of the water could be controlled and its danger from that cause obviated.
Second, the sediment carried by the water could be settled across a strip ten miles wide, which could be thereby brought to a level and its fertility enormouslyenriched by these sedimentary deposits which it would receive only in years of great floods. In the meantime and in other years the land could be used for meadow, or for the production of crops which could be grown after the danger of overflow in any season had passed.
This ten-mile wide wasteway, supplemented by the auxiliary flood water channel paralleling its eastern embankment on the east, would completely control and carry to the Gulf all the excess flood water in years of extreme floods, and hold the high water level of the Mississippi River from Old River to the Gulf at an absolutely fixed level above which the river would never rise.
The ten-mile wide wasteway could be extended north from the mouth of Red River to the bluffs at Helena. Then from Helena south the entire Mississippi Valley would be protected against danger from floods in the Mississippi River in the extraordinary flood years which may come only once in a generation, and yet may come in any two consecutive years asthey did in 1912 and 1913. If this ten-mile wide wasteway, with its auxiliary flood water channel paralleling it, between it and the river, were constructed from Helena to the mouth of the Red River, and thence to the Gulf of Mexico, and in turn supplemented by source stream control of the floods of the Ohio, the Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers, the lowlands of the Mississippi Valley could be made as safe from overflow or damage by devastating floods as the highlands of the Hudson River or the dry plains of eastern Colorado. The entire area of the Mississippi River Valley now subject to overflow is about 29,000 square miles. This is an area one-third larger than the entire cultivated area of the Empire of Japan, which sustains a farming population of 30,000,000 people. The lands of the Mississippi River Valley are infinitely richer and of greater natural fertility than the farming lands of Japan. Every acre of the rich sedimentary soil of the Delta of the Mississippi River would, if intensively cultivated, produce food enough to feed a family of five, with alarge surplus over for distribution to the world's food markets.
The entire 1,000,000 acres to be acquired by the national government in Louisiana should be immediately acquired within the area bounded on the south by the great embankment along the shores of the Gulf of Mexico and on the west by the great wasteway and auxiliary flood channel to be built from the mouth of Red River to Atchafalaya Bay and on the north and east by the Mississippi River.
This entire territory would be so absolutely and completely protected from all possibility of overflow by the proposed system of protection from floods or overflow and from Gulf Storms that any part of it could be safely subdivided into acre-garden-homes or Homecrofts. Every acre would be adequate for the support of a family when properly reclaimed, fertilized, and intensively cultivated. The variety of food that would be available for the people living on these one million Homecrofts would be greater probably than would be within the reach of people living in anyother section of the world. The mild and equable climate would make practicable a successful growth of every possible product of garden, orchard, or vineyard, including oranges and grape-fruit. Proximity to the Gulf and a network of canals that would lace and interlace the country in every direction would furnish them, at trifling cost or none at all, with the most delicious sea-foods, fish, crabs, shrimps, crayfish, and oysters without limit. Every canal and bayou would furnish its quota of fish and the oyster beds of the Louisiana coast are capable of almost limitless extension.
In addition to the cultivation of their Homecrofts for food from the ground, the Homecrofters enlisted in the Louisiana Homecroft Reserve would be afforded abundant occupation in catching or producing sea-food for themselves as well as for export. Anyone not familiar with the country can form no adequate conception of the stupendous possibilities of this bayou and Gulf coast country along this line of production and development.
More than this, the luggermen of thebayous and the Gulf are the best coast-wise and shallow sea sailors in the world, and the bays and bayous of Louisiana, if inhabited by a dense population, would once again breed a race of seafaring people—sailors and fishermen—to man our navy or merchant marine.
The complete adoption of the plan advocated for the reclamation and settlement of these swamp and overflowed lands, and the establishment there of a perpetual reserve available for military service whenever needed of a million seasoned and hardened citizen soldiers, involves doing nothing that has not already been done by other nations of the world.
Holland has built dikes as defenses against the inroads of the ocean greater even than those proposed in Louisiana, and the plans of Holland for reclaiming for agriculture vast areas of land now buried beneath the waters of the Zuyder Zee are much bolder in conception and more difficult of accomplishment.
Australia and New Zealand have both demonstrated the practicability and proved the success of a national policyof land acquisition and colonization. What Australia has done in the reclamation and settlement of her deserts, we can do not only on our deserts but also in our swamps.
Switzerland and Australia have both proved the practicability of a military system similar to that which it is proposed to establish for the defense of the Gulf Gateway of this nation. The plan urged for Louisiana would in many respects be an improvement upon a plan which made it necessary to call men from commercial or industrial employment for military service.
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 HomecroftReserve 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 requiredof 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 than100,000men will befive billion dollars.
During that same periodthe 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 offive million menwould benothing.
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 greatEducational Institutionfor 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 fromthe 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, andIndividual Industrial IndependenceFor every worker in aHome of his own on the Land.
Every child in a Garden,Every mother in a Homecroft, andIndividual Industrial IndependenceFor every worker in aHome 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 publicschools, 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, fewrealized 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 Aëroplane Service in the present war? And yet, all that has so far been done is only a forecast of greater development in aërial 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 nomore 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, orone 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 addedto 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 acquirednear 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 acresshould 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 forall 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, whichthe 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$10,000,000Sacramento Flood Control10,000,000Calaveras Reservoir10,000,000San Joaquin River10,000,000Drainage Canal to Bakersfield10,000,000Atchafalaya Controlled Outlet10,000,000Atchafalaya Protection Levees10,000,000Monongahela Reservoirs10,000,000Ohio River Reservoirs10,000,000Mississippi River Reservoirs10,000,000——————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 anacre, $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 asEducational 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, coöperative 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 asfast 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 asthe 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 ofgetting 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 waythe 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 specialpurpose 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 muchas 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 spendlessthan $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 fileof 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 capitalnecessary 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 rentalof 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, itcould 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 yearsthereafter 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 propertyvalue 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 shouldnot 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 inagriculture, 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 inAcreculture, 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 MilitaryAcademy 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.