Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1918-12-08

kkI YARNS for the soldiers"
r. Yes and for every man
who is willing to work when
he comes home from France!
Not for hundreds or thousands but
for hundreds of thousands and per-
haps millions If that many converted
by the open-air life of the Army
should want to go back to the land!
This, in brief, is the project upon
which the government is working. 1t
Is big project, bigger than the ques-
ton involved in giving life work for
the soldier 1t is a project which.
thus beginning, promises to develop
into reclamation Of waste land that
will increase our national wealth by
billions of dollars and add new en-
pire to the active working forces of
the American people.
But first the farm for the soldier!
That is the kernel from which is to
velopment. We shall look at it as it
lies in the nutshell. 1t is to reclaim
the deserts, swamps and cut-over
lands of the United States through the
soldiers as the employees of Uncle
Sam, and to enable them to buy the
of low-interest payments which may
run through third or half life
time.
The work of reclamation will be
done by the soldiers. They are to be
given the opportunity to continue In
the employ of the government, con-
structing dams and canals, blowing
out stumps and clearing brush, dig
ging bitches for drainage and. In
short, building group settlements In
practically every state of the Union.
The settlements will be model COM
munity centers, comprising townsites
surrounded by forty or eighty acre
farm homes, with all the advantages
and none of the loneliness of ordinary
country life. In doing this the SOL
dier will receive the current wages
for the special kind of labor for which
he enlists. If he is an engineer ne
may lay out the canals. II carpen-
ter he may work at building the
may be employed on the dams. The
laborers will receive their wages
from the government, and there VIII
be we'll paid out-of-door work for all.
After the settlements are completed.
the houses and barns built and the
be given the right to pick out farm
home Of his own and to pay for it at
O low rate of interest on long time.
covering perhaps thirty or forty years:
Stock and farm implements, furnished
by the government, may be paid for
in a period of from five to ten years.
and the whole will be so arranged
that there will be no element of char
fty or pensioning In the TRANSACTION.
The soldier will earn all he receives,
rryi1 a n
actual cash every cent 1t expends and
also add greatly I'd the food supply
and wealth of the nation.
This scheme, which originated with
Secretary Lane, has the approval of the
propriated 100000 for the preliminary
Investigations, and another appropria-
ton Of 100000 will probably have
passed the Senate before this letter Is
published. The plans are now being
the Interior Department. Under the
general direction Of Arthur P. Davis.
chief of the reclamation service, the
government engineers are travelling over
the United States investigating the pos,
sibilities. F. r. Weymouth, the chief
Of construction of the reclamation serv-
ice. b.lc taken charge of the so-called
arid region formerly known as the
great American desert. This is in the
Rockies and the far west. 1t comprises
Lne seventeen fhiit anu ''Sii' s1' IA
states, with the exception Of the eastern
PARTS of North Dakota, South Dakota,
Nebras ska, Kansas, Oklahoma and
Texas Those sections and the north
eastern part of the country, including
also all the land east of the Mississippi
and north Of the Ohio river, is in charge
of F.. w. Hanna, another reclamation
engineer. 1t contains "a large area OF
out over and swamp lands which can be
redeemed. The southeastern section,
h,,1l- >f e,,ct, 1o,, to hn-
ing investigated by II. T. Cory, the man
who shut the Colorado river out of the
Salton sea for the Southern Pacific
railway and who has long been con-
nected with reclamation work Of va
rious kinds. In addition to these men
the department has secured the serv-
ices of Or. Elwood Mead. recently In
charge of the land settlement problem
in California and for eight years be-
fore that connected with similar work
in Australia.
The amount of territory we have for
such schemes is enormous. I have
talked with the reclamation engineers
and can give faint idea of the pos
sibilities. According to them, the area
of desert. swamp and cut-over lands
that can be reclaimed is more than
100000 square miles. It is bigger than