sive or organized opposition to the adjusted compensation bill in the Sixty-sixth Congress, there has developed, or did develop, a very considerable adverse sentiment and opinion when the matter was taken up by the present Congress. But the extraordinary thing about that, as affecting the matter we have now under consideration, is that many of those who were most pronounced against the bonus as a general proposition, particularly against the cash bonus and even against the proposal for the issuance of insurance certificates that might be cashed. were strongly in favor of a provision of reclamation land development for the soldier.

The Chamber of Commerce of the United States early in the present year sent out a referendum, known as Referendum No. 38 on legislation for veterans of the World War. Four questions were submitted:

First. Do you favor a national system of reclamation to be initiated through adequate Federal appropriation and to be carried out for the purpose of offering exservice men opportunity to cultivate the soil?

Second. Do you favor national legislation and appropriations to enable ex-service men to build homes?

Third. Do you favor national legislation and appropriations to enable ex-service men to obtain vocational education?

Fourth. Do you favor national legislation for a general bonus, whether paid in cash immediately or with payments deferred, through the issuance of certificates?

Now, you gentlemen understand how the chamber of commerce presented its referendum. In order that there shall be no question but that these gentlemen were voting intelligently, let me say the arguments pro and con which pertain to a national system of reclamation were stated fairly in the referendum. I think anyone who reads will say that the two sides of that question were fairly stated, and if either side was weighted it was the negative rather than the affirmative side.

The answer to that question was 1,2504 votes favorable to a national system of reclamation to be initiated through adequate Federal appropriation and 461 votes against it; approximately 3 to 1 in favor of this proposition. This remarkable vote in favor of reclamation in connection with the bonus bill is particularly appreciated when we notice the votes on the other features of the bonus bill.

The vote on the second question, "Do you favor national legislation and appropriations to enable ex-service men to build homes?" was 1,023 favorable to 677 against. The majority was very much less than in the reclamation case.

"Do you favor national legislation and appropriations to enable ex-service men to obtain vocational education?"

That was favorably responded to.

"Do you favor national legislation for a general bonus, whether paid in cash immediately or with payments deferred, through the use of certificates?" brought out a vote of 467 in favor to 1,231 in oppostion.

So that this organization which put itself on record as against what many have considered the more important or more popular portion of the bonus bill, the portion that has been most criticized, is on record more than 3 to 1 in favor of a reclamation plan on the bonus bill.

If I had time I would be very glad to give the vote by States. If I may, I shall put some of the votes by States in the record because we must remember these votes go out. Men read the arguments pro and con; they sent in their votes; they come from all over the Union; and they reflect very clearly the opinion of the bankers, the business man, and the manufacturer.

Senator SUTHERLAND. Are these votes by organizations or votes by individual members?

Mr. MONDELL. The vote is by organizations, I believe.

Senator MCLEAN. Of course, it is opposed to any bonus at all. I would assume, from its record, as a choice of two evils, it chooses the reclamation plan because it would cost less money, possibly.

Mr. MONDELL. Well, I think that is not just an accurate statement of the situation, Senator, if you will allow me, because the Chamber of Commerce of the United States is favorable to the general proposition of reclamation on behalf of the soldier. They would not have a cash bonus, but they would have a provision under which there shall be vocational training and under which this land-home opportunity shall be afforded to the soldier.

Senator MCLEAN. Assuming that we must do something for the soldier, we prefer this plan to any other, but if we could have our way, we would not do much of anything. I guess that is the way the majority of the Chamber of Commerce are.

Mr. MONDELL. That may be true, but the vote on this proposition is overwhelming, and I think it has been presented very fairly, too. Of course, they had plenty of time in which to answer.

I am just getting a little ahead of my story. I will go back to the point where I referred to the fact that in this Congress the Committee on Ways and Means again took up the question of adjusted compensation. They again considered many bills. They again called in representatives of the Legion and of other patriotic organizations and organizations of ex-service men.

All of the representatives of the ex-service men, without exception-and if I had the time I would go through the hearing here in detail, but I will not take time to do that-expressed their desire to have a land settlement, land development provision, contained in the bill. They reiterated that desire when the question was put to them, as it was in one or two cases, "Do you insist upon having this as a part of the bill?" "Well, we are not insisting upon anything," they said, but they always came back—all who appeared--with the statement that they desired to have a reclamation provision in the bill. Asked as to the character of the reclamation provision to be placed in the bill, they did not in all cases pretend to insist upon details, but said in each case that they believed that the provisions which had been in the former bonus bill and which was before the committee, was a satisfactory one. At any rate, with some slight modifications the land settlement bill again became a part of the adjusted compensation bill, and as a part of the adjusted compensation bill it passed the House by a vote of nearly 5 to 1.

It is now before the Senate. During the time it has been before the Senate I have had many appeals from ex-service men, from representatives of the American Federation of Labor, from representatives of the United States Chamber of Commerce, urging the retention of a land settlement, land development provision in the bill. I am sure that representatives of these organizations have visted the members of the committee and talked with them about it. They have talked with the chairman about it, I am very confident. They are still exceedingly urgent that such a provision shall be in the bill. I understand that there is some disposition in the Senate not to retain a land settlement and land reclamation provision in the bill. I find it difficult to understand how anyone desirous of helping ex-service men, and particularly anxious to help them along the lines that they themselves suggest would be helpful, can oppose the retention in the bill of that provision which has passed the House twice and which originated with the ex-service men themselves, and which has been continuously urged by them up to this hour.

As to the demand among ex-service men for lands, we have abundant evidence. At one time there was in the Interior Department a list, as I recall, of over 100,000 exservice men who had asked to have some land settlement, land development provision made, and expressing their desire to participate in such development.

At openings of irrigated lands, that we have had in the United States since the World War, the number of ex-service men who have applied and who have taken the trouble to go long distances at great expense to secure lands has been very great.

At an opening held in eastern Wyoming about a year ago there were, as I recall, over 3,000 ex-service men who applied at the opening at which there was to be an opportunity to secure only 86 farms.

At another opening in northern Wyoming a little later, at a distant point, where the cost and the inconvenience of travel was great, the number of applications was almost as great as on the other occasion.

There is not any doubt about the desire of the ex-service man for an opportunity to secure farm lands, and this gives him that opportunity.

As the members of the chamber of commerce have well said, this is the one feature of the adjusted compensation bill that not only aids the soldier but aids him in a way that will be permanently helpful and permanently of value to the country. It is a plan to make lands which are not now productive to any considerable extent productive in a high degree; a plan under which the soldier himself may work out his own salvation; may secure employment, if he desires; may apply his compensation on his payments; and under which he is to pay back to the Government the amount of the Government's expenditure less the amount of the bonus which he applies on that expenditure.

There may be some differences of opinion with regard to the plan in the bill as it passed the House. The plan is one carefully drawn by men familiar with reclamation work, aided by the experts of the Reclamation Service, and applicable to almost any condition and almost any section. It is a perfectly sound, sane, sensible provision, but I do not insist on securing the enactment of this particular statute or the placing on the statute books this particular method of reclamation though I know it is a sound plan; I do want the enactment of some legislation which will bring about what we need very greatly in the West and what is needed quite as much in other sections of the countrypractical, helpful land development under conditions that are likely to prove success

ful not only from the standpoint of the individual but from the standpoint of the community. I should be perfectly content to have this committee place on the bonus bill its own form of legislation, whatever it may be; the plan the committee believes best, whatever it may be, providing it is a plan which will lead to reclamation development. While my desire is primarily to help the soldier, I believe in the policy of land reclamation and development as a national policy and have long believed in it, and I believe in Federal aid on behalf of such policy. I believe that such a policy is highly useful and helpful to the country as a whole.

Of course, we all realize that under any plan of reclamation development that you may undertake there will be at least a portion of the area that will be utilized, by others than soldiers, as the areas to be developed are except for the public lands now in possession of private individuals; it may be neither wise not helpful to take over all individual holdings. Retention of certain portions of individual holdings would, in many cases, be a very proper and very practical thing, and that could be accomplished under the bill that is now part of the bonus bill, or by some modification of that bill that the committee might agree to.

The Senate could present the matter in the way it believes best and wisest and in conference the two Houses could come to a satisfactory abjustment of their differences. Senator CURTIS. Some of the speakers, Mr. Mondell, have complained about your bill because of the extensive scope of it and the awful expense attached to it. Have you figured out the amount of money that would be required?

Mr. MONDELL. It would not cost a dollar unless the Congress appropriated it. Senator CURTIS. That is so, but under this bill would not Congress be under obligation to appropriate for it, if it passed this measure?

Mr. MONDELL. Yes; the Congress would be under obligation to appropriate if it passed any reclamation measure. This measure, as it appeared on the bonus bill the first time, carried a limitation, of the total expenditures, and a limitation could be placed on it now.

Senator CURTIS. What was that limitation? I have forgotten.

Mr. MONDELL. That limitation was $350,000,000. Any limitation the committee might desire to place on the bill could be placed on the bill. The amount that would be spent under any reclamation plan would be the amount that Congress in its wisdom saw fit to appropriate.

Senator CURTIS. We realize that.

Mr. MONDELL. No matter what reclamation plan you adopt, its primary purpose must be for the benefit of the soldier; it must at least appear to be, and this bill is unquestionably for the soldier. But no reclamation bill would have any standing anywhere which did not, at least on its face, give preference to the soldier and which did not give to the soldier the benefit of the first chance to take the land that might be developed and opened to entry. No bill that did not do that ought to be considered. Under the national reclamation law land was originally opened to all comers, but no land now subject to entry or to acquisition, under the reclamation law, can be acquired by anybody but an ex-soldier. The ex-soldier has first choice, and as there are so many more ex-soldiers than there are lands, as in the cases that I have referred to, not only now but for many years to come, the ex-soldier would be the man who would secure the land.

There is another bill that has been reported to the Senate, a reclamation bill, and so far as I am concerned, if the Senate thinks that bill ought to be placed on the bonus bill instead of this bill, I shall not quarrel with that at all. I want reclamation development and I want it primarily for the soldier. It must be for the soldier in any event, and I am willing to take it in any reasonable form. I have no special pride of opinion. This particular measure, the bill to which I have referred, is said by some not to be quite so wide in its application as the reclamation measure on the bonus bill, because it is said that it does not, or would not, authorize the development of any lands except those irrigated or those drained; but I think a reading of the SmithMcNary bill will make it quite clear that under the bill almost any form of development that would bring the lands into a condition of usefulness, whether it was clearing combined with drainage, or drainage combined with irrigation, or irrigation combined with either or both, could be started under that bill. But if our soldier settlement provision now on the bonus bill is too broad, it is very easy to amend that. I do not think it is. I think a reclamation law should be broad. It is very easy to narrow its provisions if you want to.

Senator MCLEAN. Mr. Mondell, I received a letter last Friday from Mr. Herbert Myrick, publisher of the Farm and Home, which I acknowledged and promised to submit to the committee, and I think that inasmuch as not only you but other gentlemen here are interested in this scheme or some similar scheme, it might be well to call it to your attention now.

Mr. MONDELL. I am interested in all of them.

Senator MCLEAN. Yes; and that is why I want to call attention to it now.

dated May 26, 1922.

(The letter referred to is as follows:)

Hon. GEORGE P. MCLEAN,

The Senate, Washington, D. C.

It is

SPRINGFIELD, MASS., May 26, 1922.

DEAR SENATOR MCLEAN: I observe that you are on the subcommittee to hear Representative Mondell relative to substituting reclamation bill for land settlement feature stricken out of bonus measure by Senate.

Of course you know that at the National Agricultural Conference in Washington in January after a prolonged contest in committec and later on the floor that great body voted unanimously:

"That no public expenditure be encouraged in the creation of more farms until present acute conditions in agriculture at home and abroad shall have been fully adjusted."

Now this reclamation scheme to use $350.000.000 as a revolving fund directly violates the above principle upon which the farmers of the whole country are well nigh unanimous. Nor do the preferences for service men in the reclamation bill amount to anything.

The effort to work this bill into the bonus measure looks too much like a desperate effort to "slip it over." For otherwise it can never pass either Senate or House. Farmers and taxpayers simply will not stand for it.

We hope you will not be a supporter of that scheme in any way, shape, or manner. It is loaded with dynamite. Enough said.

Very sincerely yours,

HERBERT MYRICK.

President and Editor in Chief Farm and Home.

Mr. MONDELL. May I look at that, Senator? Senator MCLEAN. Certainly, you may. That is why I called attention to it, because I should be glad to hear from you about it.

Mr. MONDELL. Senator, this is a very interesting letter from a widely-known and highly esteemed man. Mr. Myrick has done a very great and useful work for agriculture. But I must say that I am a little surprised at seeing this letter at this time. There was a time a year and a half ago, perhaps, when the conditions in the industry of agriculture were very desperate. They are not altogether satisfactory now; but they were very desperate then. The prices of all agricultural products were either down to the level of or much below the cost of production.

In that condition of affairs, it was not perhaps strange that a certain number of people forgot all of the lessons of our history and declared for "closed shop" in agriculture. I think at one time there was quite a little sentiment in some of the Mississippi Valley States against Federal aid in the opening of more land to settlement and cultivation. I believe that it was a very narrow view, and I imagine there are comparatively few who now hold that view.

In a country developing as rapidly as our country is, with the population increasing as it is, there must. of course, be continuous increase in the amount of land under cultivation, or in a short time we shall have not only a shortage of agricultural products, but what is even worse, we shall have an increase in the percentage of our people living in the cities and towns, away from the soil, adding to the number of consumers as compared to the producers. No country will prosper where there is an opportunity for the increase of its agricultural acreage which does not bend its energies and lend its aid—at least its encouragement-to the extension of the agricultural area.

These settlements that are proposed, which will largely be engaged in intensified agricultural production, will themselves be among the best customers for the staple products of the farmer.

Senator MCLEAN. Do you know what organization of the farmers of the country he refers to when he states it voted unaminously against this project?

Mr. MONDELL. He refers to the National Agricultural Conference in Washington in January. This is the first notice I have had that that conference did take any action at all on that subject, and if they did take action as stated, it is curious that it did not become generally known here in Washington; if they did, it was action contrary to one of the basic recommendations or suggestions of the President himself to that conference.

Of course, so far as Congress is concerned, it is more or less bound by declarations of the political parties, and both political parties have declared, particularly the Repub

lican Party, in favor of a general system of land-reclamation development; in fact, the Republican Party inaugurated such a policy in the reclamation law under President Roosevelt, and has been following it continuously ever since, and the party, as a party, has always been known to be favorable to it.

Mr. Myrick assumes in his letter that the Senate committee had finally and definitely concluded to strike out of the bill the provision of land settlement that was in the bill as it came from the House, and he further assumes that I am informed of that alleged action, and urging that if that is to go out another provision go in. Well, I have not so far understood that the committee has definitely determined to strike from the bonus bill a land-settlement or reclamation feature, but I am here to urge that some land-settlement reclamation be retained in this bill. Such a provision belongs in the bill, has always been in the bill; the soldiers are for it, and men who are opposed to other provisions of the bill are favorable to a land-settlement provision in this bill.

Coming back now to the question of cost: This committee can scarcely take the position that a land-settlement provision should not be in the bonus bill because of its cost, unless we are to understand that the committee and the Senate, if it follows the committee's view, is against reclamation because it will cost no more to reclaim lands under a provision in the bonus bill giving preferential rights to soldiers than it would cost to reclaim lands on an independent measure giving the soldiers preferential rights.

I think it is quite certain it would be possible to secure more liberal appropriations for land reclamation as a feature of a bonus bill than as an independent matter. That is one reason why I want it in the bonus bill, because I think we can carry out this beneficial program of development more rapidly as a feature of a bonus bill than we could possibly do as an independent matter. But the ultimate cost will be measured by what the Congress determines should be done, and a limitation can be placed if it is deemed wise to place a limit upon the amount which may ultimately be expended. There are various reasons, which I do not care to go into at length, why, from the viewpoint of those who are interested in reclamation, it would be advantageous to have such a provision in the bonus bill, in addition to the reason I have just given that of the greater ease of securing appropriations. For one thing, there would then be no question of its constitutionality.

There is not any doubt but what with the soldier behind this development it will have an impetus and score a success that it would not possibly secure as an independent matter. Practically the same sort of development can be secured, but in my opinion it would be secured more promptly and more surely if it is a feature of a bonus measure. Unless the Senate, a third of the Members of which are from the arid States, or States having some development under plans similar to those proposed, is prepared to say that it is not favorable to land development in any form, I do not see how the Senate can agree to strike a reasonable land-development provision off the bonus bill.

In the House only 8 per cent of our Members are from the country where land reclamation under Federal aid has been tested and proven, but those Members were able to impress their views on the House in regard to this matter, supported as they were by the soldiers, and so here we are with our plan thus far-here is legislation half way through Congress-all it requires now is the action of the Senate. I would not want to believe that the Senate is not favorable to reclamation land development. I can not understand how the Senate, with 30 per cent of its Members from States where irrigation reclamation is carried on, could afford to take from a soldier bonus bill a land development feature in such form as you may deem wise-when such a feature was the very first thing that the soldier organizations asked of the Congress.

Before cash bonuses, before service certificates, before paid-up insurance, before vocational training, came from the soldiers themselves requests for land development along these lines in their behalf, in which they could participate.

Of course, a plan of this sort, no matter whether the bill be in the form in which it is now on the bonus bill or otherwise, would be very helpful to the entire country, and its benefits would be felt by others than the soldiers. But the soldier himself has asked for it, up to this hour still requests it; and, in addition to that, the strong forces of labor and of business are still urging this as a feature of the adjusted compensation plan.

Senator MCNARY. May I just interrupt long enough to say that I do want the privilege, if you desire to incorporate in this bill the land-settlement bill, to come before the committee and explain another bill which is a little different from the one which has been presented by Mr. Mondell so interestingly to the committee? It is advised by the Western Reclamation Association with painstaking care, and I think is more feasible, omits some of the errors of this bill, and while I have no pride in the 108528-22- -2