Part 23

To the great number of returning soldiers, land will offer the great and fundamental opportunity. The experience of wars points out the lesson that our service men, because of army life with its openness and activity, will largely seek out-of-doors vocations and occupations. This fact is accepted by the allied European nations. That is why their programs and policies of re-locating and readjustment emphasize the opportunities on the land for the returning soldier. The question then is, "What land can be made available for farm homes for our soldiers?"

We do not have the bountiful public domain of the sixties and seventies. In a literal sense, for the use of it on a generous scale for soldier farm homes as in the sixties, "the public domain is gone." The official figures at the end of the fiscal year, June 30, 1917, show this: We have unappropriated land in the continental United States to the amount of 230,657,755 acres. It is safe to say that not one-half of this land will ever prove to be cultivable in any sense. So we have no lands in any way comparable to that in the public domain when Appomattox came--and men turned westward with army rifle and "roll blanket," to begin life anew.

While we do not have that matchless public domain of '65, we do have millions of acres of undeveloped lands that can be made available for our home-coming soldiers. We have arid lands in the West, cut-over lands in the Northwest, Lake States, and South, and also swamp lands in the Middle West and South, which can be made available through the proper development. Much of this land can be made suitable for farm homes if properly handled. But it will require that each type of land be dealt with in its own particular fashion. The arid land will require water; the cut-over land will require clearing; and the swamp land must be drained. Without any of these aids, they remain largely "No Man's Land." The solution of these problems is no new thing. In the admirable achievement of the Reclamation Service in reclamation and drainage we have abundant proof of what can be done.

Looking toward the construction of additional projects, I am glad to say that plans and investigations have been under way for some time. A survey and study has been in the course of consummation by the Reclamation Service on the Great Colorado Basin. That great project, I believe, will appeal to the new spirit of America. It would mean the conquest of an empire in the Southwest. It is believed that more than three millions of acres of arid land could be reclaimed by the completion of the Upper and Lower Colorado Basin projects. ...

What amount of land, in its natural state unfit for farm homes, can be made suitable for cultivation by drainage, only thorough surveys and studies can develop. We know that authentic figures show that more than fifteen million acres have been reclaimed for profitable farming, most of which lies in the Mississippi River Valley.

The amount of cut-over lands in the United States, of course, it is impossible even in approximation to estimate. ... A rough estimate of their number is about two hundred million acres--that is of land suitable for agricultural development. Substantially all this cut-over or logged-off land is in private ownership. The failure of this land to be developed is largely due to inadequate method of approach. Unless a new policy of development is worked out in cooperation between the Federal Government, the States, and the individual owners, a greater part of it will remain unsettled and uncultivated. ...

Any plan for the development of land for the returned soldier, will come face to face with the fact that a new policy will have to meet the new conditions. The era of free or cheap land in the United States has passed. We must meet the new conditions of developing lands in advance--security must to a degree displace speculation. ...

This is an immediate duty. It will be too late to plan for these things when the war is over. Our thought now should be given to the problem. And I therefore desire to bring to your mind the wisdom of immediately supplying the Interior Department with a sufficient fund with which to make the necessary surveys and studies. We should know by the time the war ends, not merely how much arid land can be irrigated, nor how much swamp land reclaimed, nor where the grazing land is and how many cattle it will support, nor how much cut-over land can be cleared, but we should know with definiteness where it is practicable to begin new irrigation projects, what the character of the land is, what the nature of the improvements needed will be, and what the cost will be. We should know also, not in a general way, but with

## particularity, what definite areas of swamp land may be reclaimed,

how they can be drained, what the cost of the drainage will be, what crops they will raise. We should have in mind specific areas of grazing lands, with a knowledge of the cattle which are best adapted to them, and the practicability of supporting a family upon them. So, too, with our cut-over lands. We should know what it would cost to pull or "blow-out" stumps and to put the lands into condition for a farm home.

And all this should be done upon a definite planning basis. We should think as carefully of each one of these projects as George Washington thought of the planning of the City of Washington, We should know what it will cost to buy these lands if they are in private hands. In short, at the conclusion of the war the United States should be able to say to its returned soldiers, "If you wish to go upon a farm, here are a variety of farms of which you may take your pick, which the Government has prepared against the time of your returning." I do not mean by this to carry the implication that we should do any other work now than the work of planning. A very small sum of money put into the hands of men of thought, experience, and vision, will give us a program which will make us feel entirely confident that we are not to be submerged, industrially or otherwise, by labor which we will not be able to absorb, or that we would be in a condition where we would show a lack of respect for those who return as heroes, but who will be without means of immediate self-support.

A million or two dollars, if appropriated now, will put this work well under way.

This plan does not contemplate anything like charity to the soldier. He is not to be given a bounty. He is not to be made to feel that he is a dependent. On the contrary, he is to continue, in a sense, in the service of the Government. Instead of destroying our enemies he is to develop our resources.

The work that is to be done, other than the planning, should be done by the soldier himself. The dam or the irrigation project should be built by him, the canals, the ditches, the breaking of the land, and the building of the houses, should, under proper direction, be his occupation. He should be allowed to make his own home, cared for while he is doing it, and given an interest in the land for which he can pay through a long period of years, perhaps thirty or forty years. This same policy can be carried out as to the other classes of lands. So that the soldier on his return would have an opportunity to make a home for himself, to build a home with money which we would advance and which he would repay, and for the repayment we would have an abundant security. The farms should not be turned over as the prairies were--unbroken, unfenced, without accommodations for men and animals. There should be prepared homes, all of which can be constructed by the men themselves, and paid for by them, under a system of simple devising by which modern methods of finance will be applied to their needs.

As I have indicated, this is not a mere Utopian vision. It is, with slight variations, a policy which other countries are pursuing successfully. The plan is simple. I will undertake to present to the Congress definite projects for the development of this country through the use of the returned soldier, by which the United States, lending its credit, may increase its resources and its population and the happiness of its people, with a cost to itself of no more than the few hundred thousand dollars that it will take to study this problem through competent men. This work should not be postponed. Cordially and faithfully yours,

FRANKLIN K. LANE

The bill, incorporating this plan, was rejected by a Congress unwilling to accept any solution of any part of the after-war problem, if the plan came from the Wilson Administration.

In 1918, Colonel Mears, who had been Chief Engineer and later Chairman of the Alaskan Commission, in charge of the construction of the Alaskan railroad, went, with many others, to the front, and Lane was obliged to find new men to carry on the Alaskan work.

To Allan Pollok

Washington, July 17, 1918

You certainly can have more time, because I want you, and it is not on my own account altogether, because I feel sure you will delight in the kind of creative job that it is. I found that Scotchmen had made Hawaii, and I would like to see some of that same stuff go into Alaska. You see we have a fine bunch of men there, practical fellows of experience, but not one of them looms large as a business man or as a creator. I would personally like to spend a few years of my life just dreaming dreams about what could be done in that huge territory, and if I only got by with one out of five hundred, I would leave a real dent in the history of the territory.

That coal must be brought out of Alaska for the Navy, if the Navy is going to use any coal, and we ought to be able to send a great many thousands of Americans, as stock raisers and farmers, into Alaska after this war. The climate is just as good as that of Montana, and in some places much better. Of course it is not a swivel-chair job. It is a challenge to everything that a fellow has in him of ambition, courage, imagination, enterprise, and tact, and if we can possibly get that road completed by the end of the war, and know that we have another national domain there for settlement, it would help out mightily on the returning soldier problem. You and I cannot fight and that is our bad luck. We were born about thirty years too early but I have a notion that we can make Alaska do her bit through that railroad. ... If you want a great mining expert to go in with you I can get one. ... Come on into the game.

FRANKLIN K. LANE

To E. S. Pillsbury

Washington, July 30, 1918

MY DEAR MR. PILLSBURY,-- ... In these radical times when things are changing so quickly it does not do to be too conservative or things will go altogether to the bad. ...

Pragmatic tests must be applied strictly and the way to beat wild- eyed schemes is to show that they are impracticable, and to harness our people to the land. Every man in an industry ought to be tied up in some way by profit-sharing or stock-owning arrangements, and we should get as large a proportion of our people on small farms as possible. If this is not done we are going to have a reign of lawlessness.

When a sense of property goes, it becomes more and more apparent to me, that all other conserving and conservative tendencies go, and the man who has something is the man who will save this country. So it is necessary that just as many have something as possible. ... The one thing which the Bolsheviki do not understand is that the economic world is not divided between capital and labor, but that there is a great class unrepresented in these two divisions--the managing class which furnishes brains and direction, tact and vision, and no socialistic scheme provides for the selection and reward of these men ... Cordially yours,

FRANKLIN K. LANE

To William Marion Reedy Reedy's Mirror

Washington, September 13, 1918

MY DEAR MR. REEDY,--In the first place ... as to the coal agreement, when coal was more than six dollars a ton and climbing, and it was nobody's business to reduce the price, I made an appeal to the coal operators to fix voluntarily a maximum price of one- half of what they were then getting. This they did, with the understanding that it would stand only until the Government fixed the price, if it chose to do so later. The price was three dollars in the East, and two dollars and seventy-five cents in the West, and there is not a coal mine in the country to-day, under Government operation, that is producing coal for as little as that price, which the operators themselves upon my appeal, fixed ...

Some day or another we will meet, ... and I am inclined to believe that you will think me less of a reactionary than a radical. I am against a standardized world, an ordered, Prussianized world. I am for a world in which personal initiative is kept alive and at work. There are a lot of people here who believe that you can do things by orders, which I know from my knowledge of the human and the American spirit can much more effectively be done by appeal.

Everything goes happily here these days, because we are winning the war, and the future of the world will soon be in the hands of a man who not so long ago was a school teacher. A great world this, isn't it? And the greatest romance is not even the fact that Woodrow Wilson is its master, but the advance of the Czecho-Slavs across five thousand miles of Russian Asia,--an army on foreign territory, without a government, holding not a foot of land, who are recognized as a nation! This stirs my imagination as I think nothing in the war has, since Albert of Belgium stood fast at Liege. Cordially yours,

FRANKLIN K. LANE

Notes on Cabinet Meetings Found in Lane's Files

October 23, 1918

Yesterday we had a Cabinet Meeting. All were present. The President was manifestly disturbed. For some weeks we have spent our time at Cabinet meetings largely in telling stories. Even at the meeting of a week ago, the day on which the President sent his reply to Germany--his second Note of the Peace Series--we were given no view of the Note which was already in Lansing's hands and was emitted at four o'clock; and had no talk upon it, other than some outline given offhand by the President to one of the Cabinet who referred to it before the meeting; and for three-quarters of an hour told stories on the war, and took up small departmental affairs.

This was the Note which gave greatest joy to the people of any yet written, because it was virile and vibrant with determination to put militarism out of the world. As he sat down at the table the President said that Senator Ashurst had been to see him to represent the bewildered state of mind existing in the Senate. They were afraid that he would take Germany's words at their face value.

"I said to the Senator," said the President, "do they think I am a damned fool?" ... Yet Senator Kellogg says that Ashurst told the Senators that the President talked most pacifically, as if inclined to peace, and that Ashurst was "afraid that he would commit the country to peace," so afraid that he wanted all the pressure possible brought to bear on the President by other Senators. At any rate, the Note when it came had no pacificism in it, and the President gained the unanimous approval of the country and the Allies.

But all this was a week ago. Germany came back with an acceptance of the President's terms--a superficial acceptance at least--hence the appeal to the Cabinet yesterday. This was his opening, "I do not know what to do. I must ask your advice. I may have made a mistake in not properly safe-guarding what I said before. What do you think should be done?"

This general query was followed by a long silence, which I broke by saying that Germany would do anything he said.

"What should I say?" he asked.

"That we would not treat until Germany was across the Rhine."

This he thought impossible.

Then others took a hand. Wilson said the Allies should be consulted. Houston thought there was no real reform inside Germany. McAdoo made a long talk favoring an armistice on terms fixed by the military authorities. Strangely enough, Burleson, who had voted against all our stiff action over the Lusitania and has pleaded for the Germans steadily, was most belligerent in his talk. He was ferocious--so much so that I thought he was trying to make the President react against any stiff Note--for he knows the President well, and knows that any kind of strong blood-thirsty talk drives him into the cellar of pacifism. ...

One of the things McAdoo said was that we could not financially sustain the war for two years. He was for an armistice that would compel Germany to keep the peace, military superiority recognized by Germany, with Foch, Haig, and Pershing right on top of them all the time. Secretary Wilson came back with his suggestion that the Allies be consulted. Then Baker wrote a couple of pages outlining the form of such a Note suggesting an armistice. I said that this should be sent to our "partners" in the war, without giving it to the world, that we were in a confidential relation to France and England, that they were in danger of troubles at home, possible revolution, and if the President, with his prestige, were to ask publicly an armistice which they would not think wise to grant, or which couldn't be granted, the sending of such a message into the world would be coercing them. The President said that they needed to be coerced, that they were getting to a point where they were reaching out for more than they should have in justice. I pointed out the position in which the President would be if he proposed an armistice which they (the Allies) would not grant. He said that this would be left to their military men, and they would practically decide the outcome of the war by the terms of the armistice, which might include leaving all heavy guns behind, and putting, Metz, Strasburg, etc., in the hands of the Allies, until peace was declared.

I suggested that Germany might not know what the President's terms were as to Courland, etc., that this was not "invaded territory." He replied that they evidently did, as they now were considering methods of getting out of the Brest-Litovsk treaty. He said he was afraid of Bolshevism in Europe, and the Kaiser was needed to keep it down--to keep some order. He really seemed alarmed that the time would come soon when there would be no possibility of saving Germany from the Germans. This was a new note to me.

He asked Secretary Wilson if the press really represented the sentiment of the country as to unconditional surrender. Wilson said it did. He said that the press was brutal in demanding all kinds of punishment for the Germans, including the hanging of the Kaiser. At the end of the meeting, which lasted nearly two hours, he asked to be relieved of Departmental matters as he was unable to think longer. I wrote a summary of the position he took, and read it after Cabinet meeting to Houston and Wilson, who agreed. It follows:--

If they (the Allies) ask you (the President), "Are you satisfied that we can get terms that will be satisfactory to us without unconditional surrender?"

You will answer, "Yes--through the terms of the Armistice."

"By an armistice can you make sure that all the fourteen propositions will be effectively sustained, so that militarism and imperialism will end?"

"Yes, because we will be masters of the situation and will remain in a position of supremacy until Germany puts into effect the fourteen propositions."

"Will that be a lasting peace?"

"It will do everything that can be done without crushing Germany and wiping her out--everything except to gratify revenge."

November 1, 1918

At last week's Cabinet we talked of Austria--again we talked like a Cabinet. The President said that he did not know to whom to reply, as things were breaking up so completely. There was no Austria-Hungary. Secretary Wilson suggested that, of course, their army was still under control of the Empire, and that the answer would have to go to it.

Theoretically, the President said, German-Austria should go to Germany, as all were of one language and one race, but this would mean the establishment of a great central Roman-Catholic nation which would be under control of the Papacy, and would be

## particularly objectionable to Italy. I said that such an

arrangement would mean a Germany on two seas, and would leave the Germans victors after all. The President read despatches from Europe on the situation in Germany--the first received in many months.

Nothing was said of politics--although things are at a white heat over the President's appeal to the country to elect a Democratic Congress. He made a mistake. ... My notion was, and I told him so at a meeting three or four weeks ago, that the country would give him a vote of confidence because it wanted to strengthen his hand. But Burleson said that the party wanted a leader with GUTS--this was his word and it was a challenge to his (the President's) virility, that was at once manifest.

The country thinks that the President lowered himself by his letter, calling for a partisan victory at this time. ... But he likes the idea of personal party-leadership--Cabinet responsibility is still in his mind. Colonel House's book, Philip Dru, favors it, and all that book has said should be, comes about slowly, even woman suffrage. The President comes to Philip Dru in the end. And yet they say that House has no power. ...

Election Day. November 5, [1918]

At Cabinet some one asked if Germany would accept armistice terms. The President said he thought so. ...