Utah-all have been consulted in the hope of evolving a measure that should be founded on sound economic principles, yet made sufficiently elastic to fit the widely varying conditions which must be dealt with in different parts of the country.

The original idea was to develop projects in every State where feasible opportunities were found, and the latest reports are to the effect that such projects will be found in every State. The ideal project would be one which should offer a sufficient area to make possible complete community development and thus to afford the cooperation, assistance, encouragement, and stimulus to be found in a well-organized community. The bill, however, fixes no minimum unit either for the farm or the project. It will be entirely feasible, under the wide discretion granted to the Secretary of the Interior, acting in cooperation with State authorities, to develop a small number of contiguous farms. In this connection it is well worth while to quote the testimony of Arthur P. Davis, the Director of the United States Reclamation Service:

"We know of an attractive tract in Pennsylvania, and quite a number in the State of New York: In Greene County, N. Y., there is a tract that I had better describe as being typical of others that can probably be found in other parts of the Northeast, where the settlement is supposed to be rather dense.

"Not far from Albany, in the Hudson Valley, is an area of eighteen to twenty thousand acres, already in farms and with farm buildings. The farms are usually from 154 to 400 acres, and most of them are under cultivation, but the majority are farmed by tenants. The great majority of the farms in the group I speak of are listed for sale, and I should say that the majority of the farms that are offered for sale could, at the time I looked, last December, be purchased at less than the present value of the improvements."

Secretary Lane has also directed attention to opportunities in the northeastern States, as follows:

"We have the land; we have it in every part of this country, in the North as well as in the South. One of the richest parts of the United States is Aroostook County, Me. Maine has been deserted in part in her farming regions because the boys have had a lust for the western country that I love, and I can not blame them for that; but they have left good farms there. In Massachusetts it may surprise you to know, perhaps, that we have one little section of country around Cape Cod where there is some of the richest land in the United States, and it has been proved so in the last two or three years; and in the body of the State they have very considerable quantities of land that needs to be cared for a little bit-cut-over land that has been deserted, that needs to be brought into shape that will make good farm land. The same thing is true in New York."

It should be said that it is not proposed, as some critics have averred, to divert men from their own States and ask them to settle in "district swamps and deserts.'' The idea is to find opportunities of employment and homemaking in their own States and, so far as practicable, in their own districts, unless they prefer to go elsewhere. Since there will be an average fund of something more than $10,000,000 available for each State, it will be entirely possible to have many small projects in a given State, provided favorable opportunities are found. It will be possible also to create industrial settlements near centers of population where groups of soldiers engaged as wage earners may desire to make homes on very small farms and perpetuate the beneficient scheme of war gardens. In a word, the soldier-settlement fund is designed to assist soldiers in getting homes under the best conditions, as these shall develop in practical administration.

Attention should be called to the safeguards which will surround the expenditure of the large appropriation authorized in this bill. The first actual appropriation asked for will be very small, only sufficient to enable the Secretary of the Interior to negotiate with various State commissions and enter into preliminary contracts for the acquisition of the needed lands. Each particular project and contract will then be submitted to the Committee on Appropriations and, if approved, presented for the action of Congress. Under this system the danger of serious blunders in the selection of projects would be very small indeed. Four different agencies will be brought into action before a dollar is expended in actual development, viz: First, the Secretary of the Interior, with his well-equipped organization for investigation, acting in cooperation with the farm loan board of the district; second, the governors and their State commissions, who will doubtless cooperate with important civic bodies in their various States: third, the Committee on Appropriations, which must consider and pass upon each contract and project; fourth, both Houses of Congress, who must actually vote the appropriation before the money can be expended.

The project having been developed to a point where the lands, by restoration, clearing, drainage, or irrigation, or a combination of these, were in fit condition for

utilization for farming, the area would be divided into farms of suitable size to support a family, and the price fixed on the farms, which in the aggregate will pay the cost of the project, the price of each farm to represent, as near as it is possible, its value compared with the total cost and the value of the other farms.

The soldier who has worked upon the project will be given the preference in the selection of farms, and a payment of 5 per cent of the value fixed is to be paid at the time the farm is allotted. Assuming the average value of $5,000 or $6,000 per farm, this would require an initial payment of $250 to $300, a sum which the soldier could save in anticipation of the projects during the period of the development of the project, which would be from one to three years.

After the farms have been allotted, assistance is to be given the soldier in the making of his improvements, the maximum loan provided for this purpose being $1,500, and not in excess of three-fourths of the cost or value of improvements. The soldier's contribution to improvements could, and undoubtedly in the majority of cases would, be in the form of labor. During or in connection with the making of his improvements the soldier could by his personal efforts and work easily contribute his 25 per cent of the total cost.

Provision is also made for loans to the soldier settler for the purchase of necessary live stock and equipment, the maximum of such loans being $1,200, or 75 per cent of the total cost of necessary live stock and 60 per cent of the cost of equipment. Here again the soldier's obligations under this class of loan could if necessary be met by his individual efforts. In fact, while it is assumed that in many cases the soldier would have some savings which he could utilize in getting a start, it is believed that a man starting at the beginning of one of these projects without any capital could, through industry and frugality, earn and save enough to meet his initial and other payments as they become due.

APPROVED BY PUBLIC SENTIMENT.

The late President Theodore Roosevelt advocated the soldier settlement policy, as proposed by Secretary Lane, in the last article which he wrote for the press. President Wilson has urged it upon Congress in two messages. The governors of 27 States have appointed commissions to cooperate with the Secretary of the Interior, and all of these commissions have expressed their earnest interest in legislation of this character.

One of the strongest indorsements of the bill in its present shape has come from the officers of the Eastern States Agricultural Industrial Exposition, which has its headquarters at Springfield, Mass., but represents 10 Northeastern States-the six States of New England and New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware. This organization represents some of the strongest business interests in the country, who have inaugurated great plans looking to the systematic renewal and restoration of a prosperous agriculture throughout the northeastern part of the United States. They have discovered the very intimate relationship between industrial and agricultural prosperity and find that the existing condition under which, in the State of Massachusetts, for example, 92.8 of their entire population lives in cities, a very serious menace to their welfare. They are seeking, through the instrumentality of a permanent exposition at Springfield, to demonstrate that farming can be made a paying business and that it is possible to create more attractive conditions of rural life. These gentlemen have discovered that their work exactly parallels the policy embodied in the soldier settlement plan and have come to believe that the soldier will do as great a work for his country at home as he did abroad, while at the same time achieving an independence for himself. Hence they are urging the support of the measure by all the members from their 10 States.

DOES THE SOLDIER WANT IT?

The most vital question that can be asked in regard to this policy is this: Does the soldier want it? The answer is: He does. The American Legion has officially indorsed the bill after a careful consideration of its provisions. Up to the present writing 112,088 soldiers have made formal application for opportunities of employment and home getting under the terms of this bill. The number, which is increasing every day, ranges all the way from 6,752 in Illinois to 80 in Delaware.

The most impressive evidence in respect to the soldiers is contained in letters from commanding officers with the American Expeditionary Forces in Germany. Maj. Gen. Mark L. Hersey, for example, in command of the Fourth Division, American Expeditionary Forces, was requested, among others, by Secretary Lane, to ascertain the feeling of his men. He states that he went into the matter with a view to deter

mining in actual figures the number of men in this division that would not only be interested in farming, but interested with sufficient definiteness to take up the work should the plan be put into effect." He reports in detail upon each regiment, the net result being as follows:

"Present strength, officers and enlisted men, 23,363.

"Number interested in soldier settlement plan, 4,595."

General Hersey expresses his own opinion as follows:

"The men who are returning to America from the European battle fields have given to their country the best they have. They have paid their debt to America; not in full, perhaps, but in full up to the present time. It is up to the United States to take care of them; to exercise over them a proper degree of paternalism; to make them feel that what they have given up in order to come to the war will be made good by the Government. These men are coming with a higher respect for American institutions and for constituted authority than they ever had before. They are thoroughly good citizens who need only the ties that bind them to the land, that give them a sense of proprietorship in the soil, that impel each man to establish his own home and to rear his own family. All these your proposed plan should furnish. I am heartily in favor of it. I hope you may push it to a successful conclusion. Several of the division staff officers have received letters similar to the one that was sent to me. I might say that this letter voices their sentiments as well as my own.

Mr. MONDELL. Some time after this soldier settlement bill was reported in the Sixtysixth Congress there was a very insistent demand in the House of Representatives for the passage of an adjusted compensation act, and a great many bills were introducedI think as many as 60-proposing bonuses or compensation for the soldiers of the World War in one way or another. Finally, in order to secure action, these bills were referred to the Committee on Ways and Means, and the Committee on Ways and Means of the House called on the legislative committee of the American Legion for such suggestions as it cared to make touching the proposition of soldiers' bonus or adjusted compensation. After a number of meetings between the representatives of the legion and members of the Ways and Means Committee, the legion presented to the Ways and Means Committee their recommendations in the form of a bill which they referred to as the "fourfold plan."

The first feature of the bill thus presented by the American Legion to the Congress was the soldier settlement plan to which I have just referred. You understand that this was a proposal made by the legislative committee of the legion after a meeting of the legion, at which this committee was appointed and at which meeting the general view of the legion with regard to adjusted compensation was expressed. Not only was this soldier settlement plan a part of the fourfold plan of the American Legion, but it was the first feature of the fourfold plan; in other words, it was the first proposition ever presented officially to the Congress by an organized body of soldiers of the World War asking for legislation in their behalf.

After the presentation of this fourfold plan many legion ex-soldiers were heard, and among them members of the legislative committee of the legion, representatives of other organizations of veterans, and ex-soldiers appearing as individuals. Everyone of those so appearing asked to have a soldier settlement plan made a part of the aid and assistance which it was proposed to render to the soldiers. In addition to that, representatives of the American Federation of Labor and representatives of the Chamber of Commerce of the United States appeared before the committee urging the reclamation plan. At that first hearing there was more urging of the reclamation plan than of any one of the features of the fourfold plan save the cash bonus. In addition to that many who were opposed to the cash bonus and, in fact, to several of the other features of the bonus bill, favored this development feature.

Naturally, there was no question about the measure being made a part of the bonus bill, and the bill was reported to and passed the House by a large majority, carrying as one of its features the soldier settlement plan as it had been reported by the Committee on the Public Lands, with some modifications which did not materially affect its scope, plan, or purpose.

That bill was not considered in the Senate. Early in the present Congress the Committee on Ways and Means took up the question of adjusted compensation or bonus. Most of you gentlemen are familiar with the difficulties tha were encountered in arriving at a satisfactory agreement or compromise touching that legislation. Conditions in the country had changed quite materially between the passage of the original bonus bill in the Sixty-sixth Congress and the agitation of the bonus measure in the Sixty-seventh Congress. People were not as flush as they had been, things were getting back to normal, the weight of taxes was being felt to a greater extent, profits and incomes had dwindled somewhat, and whereas there was no very exten

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.

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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