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. It is dated May 26, 1922.

(The letter referred to is as follows:)

Hon. GEORGE P. MCLEAN,

The Senate, Washington, D. C.

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 committee 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

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bill-only have a desire to see the best legislation possible put over-if it goes in and the chairman will be kind enough to notify me, should you try to incorporate this provision, I should like to be heard then and will not take up further time to-day. Senator MCLEAN. We will be glad to notify you. If you desire to be heard, Mr.. White, the committee will be glad to hear you now.

STATEMENT OF HON. HAYS B. WHITE, MEMBER OF CONGRESS FROM KANSAS.

Mr. WHITE. I have prepared a short statement. I did not know how much time I might be given. I think, gentlemen, I can make a consecutive statement of what I have to say in about 10 minutes. This is a very moderate statement, and contains some of my opinions, and they are given as such. I will make my consecutive statement and I want then to occupy a very few minutes in answer to one or two statements made by my colleague, the House leader, Mr. Mondell.

I will say, first, there is nothing sought to be accomplished by the inclusion of this land-settlement provision as it passed the House or the Smith-McNary bill, which I have examined very carefully in the limited time I have had at my disposal since the bill came under my notice, which can not in my opinion, be accomplished much more successfully through the provision known as the farm or home-aid provision, Title VII, of the bonus bill as it passed the House; and in my judgment as a business man at approximately one-fifth of the expense to the Government and with incomparably greater advantage to the service man.

I desire to call the attention of this committee to a very brief and fundamentally sound statement in the report of the House committee on this bill found at the bottom of the first page of its report:

"In the ordinary transaction of borrowing, the security is in existence and is put up when the money passes from the lender to the borrower, while under the proposed law the money to be advanced is to create the security for its return."

Mr. SMITH. What bill do you refer to?

Mr. WHITE. I refer to the Smith-McNary bill.

So that it is fair and appropriate to designate this provision the great $350,000,000 governmental adventure into the domain of business experiment.

Who has submitted to this or any other committee of either branch of the Congress a per capita estimate of the cost to the Government, either in the case of this provision or the land-settlement title which passed the House without opportunity for amendment?

I am a farmer and stockman and have been all my life, with occasionally a little side adventure into politics, and I feel competent, in a modest degree, to discuss the practicability of this proposition.

Would you think $62.50 per acre a high estimate to set as the cost of development of land as provided for in the proposed section? That would be exactly $5,000 for the reclamation of an 80-acre unit, or $10,000 for the reclamation of a 160-acre unit. Those are not random figures. They are far below the actual cost of land already placed under irrigation through the Reclamation Service. The question of the election to be made as to what particular one of the many provisions offered in the bonus bill shall be selected by service men is extremely speculative and problematic, to say the least. But if 1,000,000, or 25 per cent, of the service men should elect to choose the provisions of this proposed section, the Government would spend $5,000,000,000 to develop one million 80-acre farm units; or $10,000,000,000 to develop one million 160-acre farm units; that would provide for approximately one-fourth of the service men. Or if they shall choose half-and-half, so that the Government should reclaim 1,000,000 farm units at $7,500 each, the Government would then be involved to the extent of $7,500,000,000. Do you smile at this, gentlemen? Do you know what they will elect to do? Do you pretend to know? I am frank to say I do not know, and I do not pretend to know. But I do know that there is no stronger urge in the human mind than to secure power and wealth, and I do know, and every observant man knows, that every normal boy associates in his thought the possession of wealth, power, and financial independence with the ownership of property. And more than any other class of property, property in land.

It is borne in upon his thoughts by the sight of his eyes and by every environment of his life; and I say to you that this plan here proposed to be inserted in this bill is as dazzling as it is impossible and chimerical. It is the latest dream, and to the practical business mind, as preposterous as the myth of Midas.

Do not misunderstand me, gentlemen; I am for a soldier bonus and I am for it now. I do not believe its payment, if judiciously undertaken, will disturb the financial situation in the country.

I am unqualifiedly in favor of reclamation, and I have consistently supported the legislation proposed in the past three years for its development and extension. The Government has been and continues to be very generous in its provision for its maintenance and extension. It is a wise and beneficent public policy. A revolving fund of approximately one hundred and thirty millions of dollars is now available for its promotion and further development. Much has been accomplished already and under its orderly development there is great promise for the future. It has no warmer friend nor proponent than myself. I am for it solely on the ground that I believe it is a wise national policy to pursue, for not a dollar of all the millions which have been expended and which will be expended in the future has ever been or ever will be expended in the district I have the honor to represent.

But nothwithstanding all that I have said in favor of the reclamation it is yet true that in the severe readjustment of the past two years, which seems to have fallen with greater weight upon agriculture than upon any other industry, that no section of agriculture has felt so keenly the effect of the low prices of agricultural products resulting from this readjustment, as the irrigation farmers themselves. And legislation has been enacted for their temporary relief from the payment of charges for operation and maintenance. This is indeed most regretable; but is at the same time the strongest sort of an argument against the Government's proposed adventure upon this stupendous experiment, which has not, so far as I know, anywhere in the world to-day or at any time in the past a successful precedent for its justification. I am speaking, Mr. Chairman, of the plan proposed; I am not speaking of the irrigation already established and in successful operation.

Would it not be better, I ask you seriously, gentlemen; would it not be wiser and safer for both the service man and the Government to say to the service man through an act of legislation, "Make your own selection, exercise your own judgment in the locality where you may desire to make your investment, where you are familiar with the conditions, where you may have the advice of your father and mother, your friends who are interested in your welfare, of your banker, whom you may subsequently look to for financial assistance, and also where there are established markets, transportation facilities, educational institutions, and all the concomitants of civilization?"

Mr. MONDELL. Will you allow me a question?

Mr. WHITE. I shall be very glad to.

Mr. MONDELL. Would that plan cost less money than the other plan?

Mr. WHITE. Much less, as stated. I shall be very glad to elaborate, when I finish my statement.

These, gentlemen, I claim, are the important considerations which must be weighed if the service man himself is to succeed and if the government is to be made safe in its investment. Do not for his own sake send him to an untraversed desert to be ranked up in communities, for I say to you this is a bitter prank to play upon the brave service man to whom this Government is now proposing to do justice. The result of this provision can not be good, but will finally discredit its authors and bitterly disappoint its designated beneficiaries.

Mr. MONDELL. Will you allow me just one other question?

Mr. WHITE. I should be very glad to.

Mr. MONDELL. I did not quite understand whether your criticism applied equally to either plan or to both; that is, the plan contained in the House bill, or to the SmithMcNary bill which you referred to.

Mr. WHITE. If I understand my colleague, the gentleman from Wyoming, it makes little difference, as far as I am concerned, and the application is made for the reason that my colleague stated, if I understand him correctly, that he had no personal pride, that he was not so strongly and especially in favor of the land-settlement bill or of any especial bill, except that he was in favor of a policy of reclamation. So that I am willing that the committee shall understand my statement as applying to both propositions: That contained in the House bill as it passed the House, or the Smith-McNary bill as it is now introduced and is before the House.

Mr. Chairman, I want to call the attention of the subcommittee to this fact: The bonus bill as it passed the House was not considered under the 5-minute rule. I want to state this opinion as a Member of the House, that the membership of the House did not support the bonus bill because the reclamation feature was written into it, but they supported it with the reclamation feature in it because there was no opportunity under the rule to get it out.

I want to call this committee's attention to another fact in the history of this legislation, which I think, in view of the statement of my colleague, should not be overlooked, that in the consideration of this bill before the Public Lands Committee,