THE MENTOR 1918.10.15, No. 165,
Reclaiming the Desert

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-door 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 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, the Lake States and the South; and also swamp lands in the Middle West and South, which can be made available through 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.

Our thought should now be given to the problem. 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 can be reclaimed, how they can be drained, what the cost of drainage will be, what crops they will raise. We should have in mind specific areas of grazing lands, with a knowledge of the cattle that 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 farm homes. 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.”

From a letter to President Wilson from Secretary Lane of the Department of the