(c) The board may establish town sites within any project and develop and sell lots therein, to veterans and repatriates only, under such regulations and upon such terms as it shall prescribe.

SEC. 807. (a) When used in this title, the term "repatriate" includes (1) any citizen of the United States who has served with the military or naval forces of any nation allied against the German Government or its allies without loss of citizenship, and (2) any former citizen of the United States who has so served with loss of such citizenship but has since been repatriated; except that such term shall not include a veteran or any individual who was separated from such forces under other than honorable conditions.

(b) Whenever in the opinion of the board farm units or farm workers' units within any project are available for settlement, the board shall give public notice and description thereof, together with a statement of the construction charges and other conditions incident thereto, and shall mail individual notices to any veteran whose name has been certified to the board under the provisions of section 303. The board shall allot a farm unit or a farm workers' unit to any such veteran or repatriate who applies therefor in such manner as the board shall by regulation prescribe. As between applicants, preference in making allotments shall be given, first, to a veteran who has been employed upon and who has rendered substantial service in the development of any project; and, second, to a veteran or repatriate, who, in the opinion of the board, is least likely to fail in his enterprise or to cause the United States loss.

(c) The board shall allot farm units, farm workers' units, and town lots to veterans and repatriates only.

SEC. 808. (a) The cost of construction, including the purchase price of any lands acquired for the project, but excluding administrative expenses and the expenses of maintaining general offices and exercising general supervision over projects, shall be apportioned equitably among the farm units, farm workers' units, town lots, and other tracts within the project in proportion to the selling value of each unit, lot, or tract; and the total sale price of all lands within the project shall be fixed with a view of repaying the total of such construction cost of the project.

(b) Each allottee of a farm unit or farm worker's unit shall pay to the board such price as the board shall fix for the unit in pursuance of the provisions of subdivision (a) of this section; except that in case the allottee is a veteran there shall be deducted from such price the amount of his adjusted service credit.

(c) A veteran or repatriate may at his option, in lieu of payment in full at the time of entry, pay all balances due upon the purchase price for his unit upon an amortization plan by means of a fixed number of annual installments sufficient to cover (1) interest on the unpaid principal at the rate of 5 per cent per annum, and (2) such amount of the principal as will extinguish the debt within an agreed period not exceeding twenty-five years from the making of the contract of purchase. In the case of a veteran, the installments shall be so arranged that he will not be required to pay any installment until two years after the making of the contract of purchase. The board may in its discretion, whenever it is of the opinion that any emergency has caused default in the payment of any installment of the veteran or repatriate, postpone the payment of such installment until such date as it deems expedient. Such postponed payments shall continue to bear interest on the unpaid principal at the rate of 5 per cent per annum from the date of the contract of purchase. The board shall make such regulations as to residence upon, and use or cultivation of, units by a veteran or repatriate, as in the opinion of the board will carry out the purpose of making the unit his permanent home.

SEC. 809. A patent or deed, as the case demands, shall immediately be issued to a purchaser who has paid the full price for his unit, and may be issued at any time more than five years after the date of purchase to any purchaser under the amortization plan who has met all payments then due from him to the board and has observed all conditions prescribed by regulations issued under the provisions of subdivision (c) of section 808. Each such patent or deed shall expressly reserve to the United States a prior lien on the land patented or deeded, superior to all other liens, claims, or demands whatsoever, for the repayment of all sums due or to become due to the board.

SEC. 810. (a) If the veteran dies after making application in accordance with the provisions of section 302 for land settlement aid and before having entered into a contract of purchase under section 808, the amount of his adjusted service credit shall be paid by the board to his estate, but no such payment shall be made if the veteran has beeв separated from the military or naval forces under other than honorable conditions or discharged therefrom on account of his alienage.

(b) If the veteran or repatriate dies, previous to the completion of his contract of purchase, the successor by law to his interest in the land, if a widow or heir at law,

may assume the contract of purchase. If the successor is other than a widow or heir at law, the balance due the board under the contract of purchase shall be due immediately and shall be paid the board within such time after the death of the veteran as the board shall by regulation prescribe.

SEC. 811. No lands within any project shall in any event become liable to the satisfaction of any debt contracted prior to the issue of the deed or patent therefor. No transfer, assignment, mortgage, or lease of the interest of any purchaser of a unit shall, unless approved by the board, be valid previous to the issue of the deed or patent for the land, or within five years after the date of purchase.

SEC. 812. Prior to the issue of a deed or patent, as the case may be, for any unit, lot, or tract within a project, such unit, lot, or tract shall be subject to taxation by any State, or political subdivision thereof, but only upon the appraised value of the owner's interest in the land and improvements thereon. If the owner fails to pay any such tax or assessment, the board is authorized to pay such tax or assessment and to include the amount of the payment, together with interest and penalties at the rate provided by law for delinquent taxes in the State in which the land is located, in the installments payable under the contract of purchase.

SEC. 813. Upon the default of any payment due to the board under, or upon the violation of, the provisions of subdivision (c) of section 808, or of section 810, 811, or 812, the interest of the purchaser in the unit shall revert to the United States free of all encumbrances, but subject to the right of the defaulting debtor, or any mortgagee, lien holder, judgment creditor, or subsequent purchaser, to redeem the land, within one year after the board gives notice of such default, by payment of all moneys due with interest at 8 per centum per annum from the date of default, and costs. The board, at its option, may cause the land to be sold at any time after such failure to redeem. From the proceeds of the sale the board shall retain all moneys due, with interest as provided, and costs. The balance of the proceeds, if any, shall be the property of the defaulting debtor or his assignee. In the case of sale after failure to redeem under this section, the board is authorized to bid in such land at not more than the amount in default, including interest and costs.

SEC. 814. In case a veteran has entered upon land reclaimed under the reclamation law, the board shall, upon application of the veteran, pay to the reclamation fund the amount of the adjusted service credit of the veteran, and the Secretary of the Interior shall thereupon credit such sum to the amount payable to the fund by the veteran.

RECEIPTS FROM PROJECTS.

SEC. 815. All moneys received by the board as payments in respect to lands within any project shall be covered into the Treasury of the United States as miscellaneous receipts; except that from such receipts shall be deducted the amounts required to make such repayment or reimbursement to any State or designated agency thereof, or to any district or other public corporation, as is necessary to carry into effect the provisions of subdivision (d) of section 803 and of subdivisions (b) and (c) of section

804.

APPLICABILITY OF RECLAMATION LAW.

SEC. 816. The board shall, so far as possible, in executing the provisions of this title, make use of existing agencies in the Department of the Interior and comply with the reclamation law in so far as such law is applicable and not inconsistent with the provisions of this title. Such reclamation law shall, for the purposes of this title, be deemed applicable to the reclamation of lands by drainage, or by any other manner or method, as well as to reclamation by irrigation. This section shall not be construed to give the board any control over the disposition of moneys in the reclamation fund.

EFFECTIVE DATE.

SEC. 817. Sections 802 to 816, both inclusive, shall take effect on January 1, 1923. Senator MCLEAN. You may proceed.

STATEMENT OF HON. FRANK W. MONDELL, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF WYOMING.

Mr. MONDELL. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen. I wish to thank you for the opportunity of appearing before you to urge the adoption of a reclamation land settlement, and farm-home development provision on the adjusted compensation bill, or, as it is known, the bonus bill.

The very earliest proposal of aid and assistance to the returning soldier, not only the soldier who may have been somewhat injured, but the soldier who came home well and hearty, was along the line of assistance to enable him to secure a home on the land. Many of those men are without any considerable means, and we all know that it is difficult for a man starting without some savings to acquire ownership and proprietorship of an improved, developed farm home.

Our people from the very beginning of our history, or our young people at least, have, in large measure, obtained their homes on farms by going upon the raw lands and developing them. By so doing they have been enabled by their own efforts and their own labor to add to the lands the improvements necessary to make them productive. They have, by reason of their productive residence upon the lands and the improvements made upon the lands and in the community by themselves and their neighbors, become the beneficiaries of the increasing increment of value that came with development; and by securing lands in their more or less raw state and aiding in their development, men have been able to secure valuable farm homes who would have found it difficult to secure such homes had they, without previous savings, attempted to secure them through purchase.

Our returning soldiers, from the very beginning of the Government, have turned their faces toward the farms, toward the new lands, the raw lands.

It was the soldiers of the Revolutionary War who very largely blazed the way, or at least broadened the trails and roads across the Alleghenies, who settled the country along the Ohio. It was the soldiers of the Civil War who largely settled and developed the prairie States.

We have reached a point now where those opportunities no longer exist. The area of free lands or cheap lands that can be made productive by merely turning the sod is practically exhausted. The returning soldier of the World War looking to a farm home must either become a renter, must, as some few of them have, avail himself of very limited opportunities now offered under irrigation development and on the unirrigated lands of the West, or he must begin an uphill effort to secure a home by purchasing a farm already partly developed. It is very difficult for him to do that, or even to attempt to do it, without some considerable means; and if he does attempt it without considerable savings he is very likely to fail in his efforts.

In view of this changed situation, some of us who have had to do with new settlement and development and pioneering the land for a great many years began immediately after the close of the war and the signing of the armistice to consult together with a view to working out some plan whereby we might, in a measure, give to the returning soldier of the World War something like the opportunities that the returning soldiers of other wars have had.

With that object in view there were quite a number of meetings held in the office of the Secretary of the Interior, Hon. Franklin K. Lane, and elsewhere, and out of those meetings came a bill which was introduced during the Sixty-sixth Congress as H. R. 487, to provide employment and rural homes for those who served with the military and naval forces, through the reclamation of land. It came to be known as the soldier settlement act and was sometimes referred to as the Lane-Mondell bill. That bill laid down a broad and comprehensive plan of land development applicable to practically all sections of the Union. Under that bill the lands that were to be reclaimed for the benefit of the soldier and by the soldiers in the far west would be reclaimed by irrigation reclamation; in the South and Northwest-some sections of the Northwest by a combination of drainage, clearing, and leveling; in the States where certain areas have never been fully developed and others once developed have been more or less abandoned, by the orderly development and improvement of areas that have never been fully and completely developed for agricultural purposes, or for one reason or another may have been partly or wholly abandoned.

The plan or thought was the establishment throughout the country, for the purpose of furnishing homes for the soldiers, of conditions under which communities of soldiers would have a common interest, a common purpose, in the improvement and development of a considerable area of land to be divided into farms, each to secure such farm area as might be suited to his capacity as a farmer and might please his fancy as a land

owner.

We have seen in the West the wonderful benefits of community development. I do not mean of communal development, but development through individual effort where everyone in the community has a common stake in making the community and the areas of the community productive. The community spirit is established, whereas a single individual going among well-to-do farmers on a tract of land which is not in its original state as alluring as the surrounding acreage, is likely to become discouraged by reason of the fact that he is doing pioneering work while all his neighbors are operating on developed properties. Where, however, everybody in the

community is doing pioneering work each encourages the other and no one is better circumstanced than another; all have a common interest in the development of the area and of the community as a whole.

The projects of development in order to be successful should include an area or acreage sufficient for a considerable community, a community which might gather around a center already established, or established a new center, a community large enough to enable those who participating in the development to have the benefit of cooperative effort so far as they might desire to engage in such effort.

In the arid West we have such communities under the Reclamation Service, and they have been in the main very successful. The same sort of communities could be developed anywhere in the Union. There is not a State in the Union outside of, possibly, two or three peculiarly fortunate States like Kansas, Illinois, and Iowa, where there are not very considerable areas producing little or nothing, which could, through cooperative effort, be transformed into thriving communities and the lands made fertile and productive.

If the committee had time, I could refer to localities of that sort within 100 to 150 miles of the capital. I visited several of them within 100 to 150 miles of this city last summer and the summer before, where, for one reason or another, areas have either never been well developed, or for reasons that were rather obscure and a little difficult to figure out, they have been partially abandoned, and where very prosperous and splendid communities could be built up.

It was the purpose of this soldier settlement bill to do a constructive thing for the country and for the soldier. The bill in question was reported by the Committee on the Public Lands of the House of Representatves on August 1, 1919, and remained on the calendar of the House during the remainder of that Congress. I was very anxious to have it brought up, but at that time the argument was made that we might want to do other things for the soldier and that this might be made a part of the general plan on behalf of the soldier and that, therefore, it would not be wise to consider the matter as a separate proposition.

The report on the soldier settlement bill was made by Mr. Sinnott, of Oregon. That report goes into the matter so intelligently, outlines the situation to be met, the conditions to be overcome so clearly, the benefits which it is hoped would accrue so convincingly, that I shall ask permission to place a portion of that report in the record. I shall not take the time of the committee to read it at this time. (The extracts from the report referred to are here printed as follows:)

NATIONAL SOLDIER SETTLEMENT ACT.

The committee has given the most patient and thorough consideration to the matter of framing a comprehensive constructive program in the interest of our returning

soldiers.

Broadly, the problem is how to absorb them into our national life on terms that shall be satisfactory to them and profitable to the Nation. Specifically, the problem as presented in all of the bills referred to the committee is how to furnish them with immediate employment and to open the way to self-sustaining homes on the land, and how to furnish them with the necessary capital.

There are two considerations to be borne in mind in dealing with the question. The first is the welfare of the soldier himself. It is incumbent upon Congress to see that no man who offered his life to protect the Nation in time of war shall come to want in time of peace. Every soldier who needs employment upon being discharged from the Army should have employment; and, so far as possible, employment at some congenial task. Moreover, it will be desirable in many instances to provide the soldier with a permanent occupation, and this should be of such a nature as to lead in the direction of genuine economic independence. The second consideration to be observed is, of course, the welfare of the Nation.

The American stock is of the colonizing breed. Not only the descendants of our earliest settlers but even our latest immigrants belong to the element which does not rest content with existing conditions, but constantly seeks to better them by reaching out to new opportunities in new lands. Our great patrimony of free public lands has been the safety valve of the Republic in the past. Lord Macaulay predicted that when this was gone-"then will come the real test of your institutions." If there was any measure of truth in the prediction, the present moment carries a challenge to the genius of American statesmanship, for the free public lands suitable for agriculture without irrigation are practically gone. Nevertheless, if the past is any guide for the present and the future, this is a challenge which must be accepted in order that the Nation shall remain sound and wholesome, and that man's conquest over the resources of nature shall go on in this and in coming generations.

In this connection it is worth while to recall how the veterans of the Revolution made their way through the almost trackless forests of the Alleghenies and planted the seeds of the great civilization we now behold both north and south of the Ohio River. It is well to recall how the veterans of the Civil War completed the occupation and development of the great region watered by the Mississippi and its tributaries, carrying their homes and farms to the extreme limit of the district where crops are assured by natural rainfall, and to the very threshold of the arid region.

There is another lesson which it is very important for us to learn from the past. The number of veterans who actually availed themselves of land opportunities at the close of former wars was small as compared with the total number engaged. Even so, the invitation to go on with the development of natural resources was effective not only in meeting the needs of the discharged soldier, but in steadying the whole fabric of industry and society at the most critical periods in our history.

As has already been said, the problem of how best to provide for the welfare of the returning soldier is not our problem alone, but equally that of all other countries. It is interesting to observe that the other great English-speaking countries-England, Canada, and Australia-are turning to the land as a means of meeting the need of the hour. England has a density of population equal to that of any American State. Its last acre of free public land disappeared centuries ago. And yet England is finding room upon her crowded soil to make more homes and farms for her soldier boys, and she is backing them in the new adventure with her money and credit. Canada and Australia have adopted most generous policies in this regard, as fully set forth in the report of the Secretary of the Interior on H. R. 487.

LEADING PRINCIPLES OF A SOUND POLICY.

In view of the foregoing considerations, the committee has decided that it is unquestionably the duty of Congress to enact legislation with the least possible delay which shall make provision for the welfare of returning soldiers, sailors, and marines; and that such legislation should be based on these principles:

First. The continuation of our historic policy of opening the way to work and homes on the land for the veterans of our wars.

Second. In the absence of any considerable area of public land suitable to the purpose, the acquisition of lands now in private ownership followed by such improvement as may be necessary, either by clearing, fertilizing, draining, or irrigating, in order to render them fit for the best forms of agriculture.

Third. The employment of soldiers wherever practicable in all departments of the work to be done on the basis of current wages to the end (a) that opportunities for remunerative work may be supplied to those who need or desire it, and (b) that the soldiers may have opportunity to accumulate the amount of money that will be required as first payment upon property subsequently allotted to them.

Fourth. The advance of limited sums of money to be used by the settlers in the construction of permanent improvements, such as houses, barns, and fences, and of other limited sums for the purchase of necessary live stock and equipment, always with a reasonable margin of security for the Government.

Fifth. The subdivision of lands into lots, farm-workers' tracts and farms and the disposal of such property upon such terms as shall, in a period of not more than 40 years, reimburse the Government for its entire outlay, with interest at 4 per cent per

annum.

Sixth. The provision of reasonable safeguards against speculation in farm allotments, to the end that permanent homes shall be made in good faith.

Seventh. The colonization of soldier settlers in groups of sufficient size to enable them to take advantage of every opportunity for economy and efficiency in the purchase of supplies and sale of products and for organized social life; also to permit them to receive the full benefit of community-created values.

Eighth. The absolute solvency of the entire enterprise, alike from the standpoint of the Government and the soldier settler, and the authorization of a total expenditure of not more than $500,000,000, but with actual appropriations made from time to time as particular projects shall be submitted to Congress by the Secretary of the Interior.

PROVISIONS OF THE BILL.

The present bill has been perfected after consultation with many elements of citizenship, representing many different parts of the United States. Soldiers, statesmen, sociologists, men of large affairs, practical farmers, gardeners, live-stock men, experienced administrators of the immensely successful Mormon colonization work in