The Republican journal., 1918-10-24
When the Boys Come Home.

When the Boys Come Home.
When the boys come home there will be
rejoicings and fetes and receptions. In
city and village there will be bands and
addresses and honors for those who have
bravely and willingly done all, and more,
than was required or could be expected
of them. 1t is yet too early to arrange
for those days, but it is none too soon to
plan for the weeks and months and years
that will follow. One of the changes
which we can expect will be that our in
door and office life will no longer appeal
to the thousands of young men who have
been living in the open. They will de-
mand the freedom of the out-of door life,
and the broader scope of individual action
which goes with it. The independent life
of scientific farmer will appeal to them
as never before. and for their own good
and the good of the nation, this desire
should be met in comprehensive manner
Secretary of the Interior Lane, with
admirable foresight, has worked out a
plan which is both practical and desir-
able.
At the close of the Civil War there
were vast areas of the choicest land
which had never felt pillow, that thou
sands of returning soldiers were allotted
under the homestead law. That was over
fifty years ago, when hundreds of our
now well-known western cities and
towns had not been thought of. While
there remains some good unclaimed gov
eminent lands in various States, its total
is mere garden compared to what was
available then.
The problem of supplying productive
lands in both our warm and colder eli
mates becomes one largely of reclama-
ton. Take the swamp and overlooked
lands of Florida and the Gull States, and
few other States, of which there are
some 6u, 0UO,0 900 acres of the richest soil.
There are also the cut over lands which
still lie waste, and other now barren
lands in the far West, rich as the valley
of the Nile when water is poured upon it.
These three classes of land are all
capable of enormous production, once
they are reclaimed and titled. This work
of reclamation would Immediately offer
the inducement of outdoor activities,
and when accomplished, permanent
home and occupa ton to thousands Sec
rotary Lane calls attention to the vastly
improved terms of his plan over that of
the early homestead days. Then the
homesteader was also pioneer, who
started with almost nothing in the way of
buildings, farm machinery, and stock.
The nearest post office was often a days
journey dis ant; the life was hard and
isolated. Progress was slow for want of
money. The more abundant the crops,
the less the price per bushel. There are
OF ho hor ho
when the expense of hauling a load of
grain to the nearest market equaled every
dollar the grain sold for. Papers and
magazines were almost unknown; the set
tiers life.wa hard in the extreme, and
in some places in actual jeopardy.
Under the proposed plan all this is to
be reversed The government would
finance and engineer the reclamation;
would build roads and farm buildings;
would equip with necessary machinery
and stock; would establish rural delivery.
Where the pioneer did everything by the
hardest work, scientific farming would
reduce manual labor to minimum; where
he had to wait several years to move
from his sod hut into something better,
under the new plan the settler would
commence with every essential to COM
fort and success. With these new dis
tricts fully settled as fast as developed,
and with automobiles, the buyer of these
reclaimed lands would be anything but
isolated or remote. New towns will spring
up to supply stores, and with so large
percentage of young people, conditions
will be IDEAL The above plan is an ex
pansion of one already used with success
in some other countries.
Nobody is to receive something for
nothing. The government would use the
returned soldier and pay him; as fast as
one reclaimed section was completed and
ready for occupancy, farms would be
sold on asy-payment plans, the payments
extended over very long term of years
if necessary. With their natural enter
prise, the large portion of buyers would
work out of debt in few years.
While the actual work of reclamation
would not be undertaken during the war,
the details of the plan should be, so that,
Immediately ON return to civilian life,
those who desired to 60 into the re lama
ton work could do so. To accomplish
this ecretary Lane is asking Congress
for few hundreds of thousands of dol
lars. Seldom has more deserving ap-
preparation been requested.-H. H. Wind
sor, in November Popular Mechanics
Magazine