APPENDIX-SUMMARY OF THE PENNSYLVANIA EMERGENCY PUBLIC WORKS ACT, SENATE BILL 1065, 1917

PURPOSE OF THE ACT

1. To provide for the extension of the public works of the state during periods of extraordinary unemployment.

2. To provide a fund for the purpose to be known as the Emergency Public Works Fund. 3. To create the Emergency Public Works Commission as trustees and custodians of the fund.

PROVISION OF THE ACT

The Emergency Public Works Commission shall consist of the Governor, the State Treasurer, the Auditor General and the Commissioner of Labor.

It shall be the duty of the Emergency Public Works Commission to proceed forthwith to secure from the various departments, bureaus, boards and commissions of the state, tentative plans for such extension of the necessary public works of the state as shall be best adapted to supply increased opportunities for advantageous public labor during such periods of temporary unemployment together with estimates of the amount, character and duration of said employment, the number of employes who could be profitably used therein together with rates of wages, etc.

It shall be the duty of the Emergency Public Works Commission, when in its opinion a period of extraordinary unemployment does in fact exist within the state, to make such disposition and distribution of the Emergency Public Works Fund among the several departments of the state for such extension of the public works of the state under the charge or direction of the state as the Emergency Public Works Commission may approve.

APPROPRIATIONS. FOR EMERGENCY PUBLIC WORKS

The sum of $40,000 is hereby appropriated to the Emergency Public Works Commission for the purposes of this act. (This sum should not lapse if unexpended, but with succeeding regular appropriations should be allowed to accumulate in the Emergency Public Works Fund, the purpose being to accumulate money during prosperous years for expenditure during periods of unemployment and industrial depression.)

Placing Soldiers on Farm Colonies

By ELWOOD MEAD

HERE is reason to hope that one of the results of the war will

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be a carefully thought out, social land-settlement policy. This is something the nation has long needed but never enjoyed. Although there has been administered from Washington the greatest area of fertile land ever controlled under one civil polity there has never been any attempt on the part of the government to plan in advance the development of any particular area so as to create an agriculture that would maintain or increase the fertility of the soil, that would regard the farm as not solely a place to make money, but the means of a healthy, independent existence and the center of family life. There has been no attempt to select colonists so that they would be harmonious or agreeable members of the rural community or effective agents in rural development. There has been no attempt to fix the size of farms so that they would have a definite relation to the ability of the settler to cultivate them properly or to the income needed to give a comfortable support to a family.

The social and economic importance of having land owned by its cultivators and of having such restriction on tenure as would prevent land monopoly was not realized. As a nation we have acted on the idea that anyone who was strong enough and shrewd enough to own the earth was privileged to do so. In our early history, land was sold chiefly to the speculators. Later on it was given away mainly to corporations and to states, and the corporation and the state alike paid little attention to the kind of agriculture or the rural society which an unthinking disposal of these lands to private owners might create. Men who bought lands from railroads and from states did not, as a rule, buy with the idea of becoming farmers or of creating an enduring kind of agriculture. They usually bought to sell again at a profit, and from 1870 until near the close of the nineteenth century we had in this country the unfortunate spectacle of the federal government unable to prevent wholesale fraúds under the Homestead and Desert-Land Acts, and the railroad, the state and the private speculator

selling land under conditions of development fixed mainly by the speculative colonization agent.

This review of our past shortsighted carelessness is indulged in primarily to show how great would be the change if in place of this the experience and wisdom of our ablest minds were enlisted in an effort to plan rural development in advance, to think out what an agricultural community needs, what obstacles will confront the man of limited capital who seeks to achieve landed independence, and what can be done to help him overcome them.

Such a planned land-settlement policy should be put in operation at once if the nation meets adequately the situation now upon it. Over a million soldiers were drawn from rural pursuits. An equal number should be returned. The argument for this is that an increase in farm products will meet an urgent national need. Before the war, this country had begun to realize that something should be done to insure a more abundant and cheaper food supply. We were importing butter from Australia, meat from Argentina, sugar from many countries. There was no shortage but there was increasing difficulty on the part of wage-earners in providing their children with an adequate amount of wholesome, nourishing food, the things the citizens of the future should have.

The end of the war finds the cost of food so increased as to be a serious menace to industrial progress and political stability. The milk riots of cities and the declaration of the Food Administration that price control of foods should continue for several years are two of many indications. Every European country feels the pinch of hunger and some are menaced by famine. Not only have the world's available stores of food been exhausted but Europe looks to this country to increase production to meet its people's needs and this is causing the fertility of farm lands to be depleted at a rapid rate by overcropping.

More farms and more attractive and better-organized rural life are therefore among the nation's foremost economic requirements. Only those who have studied the conditions of rural life in this country in recent years fully realize the political and economic value of soldier settlements created under carefully thought out plans. Such settlements will give to some sections of the country an agriculture and a democratic rural life they have thus far lacked. A journey from New York to Atlanta, Ga., through

the Piedmont area, with its succession of abandoned fields and destructive methods of tillage, shows that we are to have a rude awakening unless there is a complete reform in our agricultural practices. One century has done more to impoverish the soil in this region than a thousand years of intensive cultivation on the farms of Europe.

We have slashed away our splendid wealth of forests. We have planted hillsides to cultivated crops with no binding material in their roots, and winter rains have washed off the stored-up fertility of centuries and left them scarred with gullies, with many fields which now grow only weeds and brush. Instead of the land being owned by its cultivators, we have a menacing increase in the area farmed by tenants. Formerly indifferent to land tenure, we are now beginning to realize, as yet vaguely and uncertainly, that if we are to be a real economic democracy we cannot tolerate land monopoly nor allow this nation to become a revolutionary Russia through the growth of non-resident ownership and tenant cultivation of land.

It is a happy coincidence, therefore, that the open, healthful life of the farm is what a large percentage of the returning soldiers will desire. This has been shown by the demand for farms by the soldiers of Australia who have been invalided home, and by the inquiry by soldiers now in the American Army for farms under the land settlement act of California.

Two years ago the legislature of that state created a state land settlement board and authorized the purchase, subdivision and improvement of 10,000 acres of land and its sale in small, readymade farms to settlers. It was not a war measure but was intended to be a demonstration of what could be done through government aid and direction to create broader opportunities for poor men.

sons.

The first lands purchased under this act were settled last June. Fathers of four soldiers in our army applied for farms for their These were granted. Another tract of land will be settled in November. One father writes: "I have three sons fighting in France. They all want to be farmers. Isn't there some way by which I can apply for one farm for myself and another for my oldest boy? The four of us will then work the two farms together." Soldiers have written asking if they could register as

applicants, and, if it had been legally possible to give them preference, not a single farm would go to a civilian. There are tens of thousands of such young men in the American Army.

It means much for the success of the soldiers' settlement proposed that our young men abroad have been living for the past year in countries which are not only examples of the best kind of agriculture, but where the ownership of a farm has back of it tradition and sentiment that thus far rural life in this country has lacked. The farm home of France is the altar of the family life. Love for the soil by the French and Belgian farmer is the mainspring of his love of country. Fresh from these impressions, these young men will be ideal material to build up a new and better rural life in this country, to help end our speculative and migratory development and create communities that will be reservoirs of patriotism and new sources of national strength.

THE NATION AND STATE SHOULD COÖPERATE

Assuming that we will follow the example of the other Allied countries and create opportunities for ex-soldiers to obtain homes in the country, there arises at once the question as to whether the state governments or Congress shall direct the undertaking. Thus far, it has been considered mainly as a national matter, the movement having been inaugurated and national interest therein aroused and maintained chiefly through the influence and efforts of Secretary Lane.

The great extent of this country, the wide variation in the soils, climate and productions, and the different ideas and habits of the people seem to make it desirable that both the national and state governments should take part in the movement. This plan has been adopted in several English-speaking countries.

Another reason for state participation is that it can provide the land and be a responsible partner in this movement with a small appropriation of money. Visits to many states have shown that where it is not possible to secure an appropriation of money to buy land, the owners will turn their property over to the state under a contract which permits of its sale to settlers, the owners of the land to be paid from the settlers' payments. The California Land Settlement Board is offered all the land that it cares to colonize on these terms, and there was not back of these offers