Our National Defense: The Patriotism of PeaceMaxwell, George Hebard
History
Our National Defense: The Patriotism of Peace
Maxwell, George Hebard
United States -- Defenses
There would be no possibility of enlarging the system fast enough to keep
pace with the applications for enlistment. The benefits to the individual
who served a five years' enlistment in the Homecroft Reserve would be
obvious to the whole people. More than that, the opportunity to combine a
soldier's patriotic service to his country with home life and educational
instruction for the entire family would appeal to a multitude of
industrious families without capital. They would see the opportunity
through that channel to establish themselves in homes of their own on the
land. That is the ambition and hope of millions of our fast multiplying
population.
A charge of Ten Dollars a month as the rental value of each acre Homecroft
would be a very low amount to be paid for the use and occupation of the
Homecroft and the instruction and training going with it. That charge would
provide an annual rental to the government of $120 from each and every
Homecroft. That would cover, on a fixed valuation of $1000 on each
Homecroft, four per cent interest and two per cent for a sinking fund, and
would leave six per cent for cost of operation and maintenance, cost of
educational instruction and schools, cost of life insurance, and cost of
maintenance of military equipment and organization.
In return for this annual rental of $120, the Homecrofter would get a home
that would yield him a comfortable income, instruction in everything he
would need to know to produce the desired results from its intensive
cultivation, schooling for his children,--in fact every advantage that
comes within the compass of a wage earner's life,--and during the five year
period of enlistment he would learn what would be to him the most valuable
trade he could be taught--the trade of getting his own living by his own
labor and that of his family from an acre of ground.
He would be able--and every enlisted Homecrofter would be trained with that
end in view--to lay by enough from his sales of surplus products during the
five years of his service to buy a Homecroft of his own, at the expiration
of that term, in any part of the country where he desired to settle. He
should save at least $2000 during the five years.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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