The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1903-09-06

fur now amounts to about $4,000. The
money is loaned to the coionists In the
usual way, being reinvested as fast as IL
IS repaid. The colonists receive a contract
and are supplied with live stock and i'm
plements. a regular account being furnished
walls, showing his Indebtedness. The sense
Of ownership Is from the first cultivated.
with excellent results The experience of
the Salvation Army is adverse to COM
munity OF ownership in such settlements.
Most of those who settled in the Colorado
colony were ~workingmen from New York
and other Eastern cities who had not been
able TO accumulate anything. Their rail-
road fares were paid and they were given
from ten to twenty acres of ground, with
a cottage on it and a little farming outfit,
all on credit. Most of them have paid off
their Indebtedness and now have homes
of their own free of debt. Mr.. James a.
Davis. the industrial commissioner of the
Santa Fe Railroad. pronounces the Colorado
farm colony plan the most practical and
feasible that has ever come under his no.
tice. Following is an extract from a letter
from the late President Benjamin Harri-
son to Commander Booth Tucker:
Il ACOdn WALL pItdSuIe my conversation
with you in which you outlined your plans
for colonizing the poor of our great cities
on small homestead farms. l was much in
tereSted in what you said, as the work
seemed to have great promise in it. espe-
cially In view of what seemed to me the
very practical and business-like lines on
winch you had laid il down. 1t is a very
pitiful thing to see Industrious and worthy
people who have been enticed from their
country homes into the city, and are bound
there hand and foot by their inability to
umul enough 70 get hack fn rho life
In which they were reared, and in which
they might have success. Your plan TO
make a thorough inquiry into the adapta-
ton of the people to be helped, and not to
take any except those whose habits seem TO
promise success, and to help these, not by
gifts that pauperize, but by loans to be re-
paid, seems to me to be highly wise and
commendable.
When the plan was first preached in this
country many charitably disposed persons
doubted its practicability. They did not be-
lieve that poor families could be induced
to go from cities to farm colonies, or if
they did that they would not stay there
and work and pay their way out. Five
years of patient experience has removed
these objections. Several hundred families
have been colonized and have become self
supporting. Many of the twenty-acre farms
are valued at from SZ'VW 70 S,WO. On some
of them stone cottages and barns have been
erected. The difficulty has not been lack
of settlers, but lack of means to carry on
the work. Those who contribute to the
movement directly or indirectly can have
the satisfaction of feeling that they are
contributing to a work whose p~rac1cability
has been demonstrated, and hat their
money goes into safe hands and will be
honestly handled. There is no more prac-
tical charity than removing worthy poor
families from crowded cities and placing
them where they al become self-support-
ing, Independent and in a small way pros
porous. The time may come when state
and national governments will recognize
the wisdom of the plan and will turn to
the work the Salvation Army is now doing
for evidence Of it's p~racticability and USE
fulness.