What the Government Owes Its People 203 



ter of fact the veterans of peace, because of age and 

 other disabilities, are often in more urgent need of 

 homes and employment than that large proportion 

 of War's young veterans who came unscathed from the 

 battlefields, or perhaps never had the good fortune to 

 come within sound of the enemy's guns. 



In searching for a key that might unlock the door 

 to the land in the interest of all elements of our people, 

 some eyes were turned toward Utah, which has enjoyed 

 an uncommonly successful colonization experience since 

 July 24, 1847, when Brigham Young and his little 

 band of hunted fugitives emerged from the mouth of 

 Emigration Canyon and entered upon the founding of 

 a great State, whose cornerstone was the little irri- 

 gated farm. Here, for three-fourths of a century, poor 

 men have been coming from all parts of the earth to 

 find jobs working for themselves and build self-sustain- 

 ing homes, to become landed proprietors, to share in 

 the cooperative ownership of the store, the factory and 

 the bank. Nowhere else is ownership so widely dis- 

 tributed among the people, or the common prosperity 

 erected on so firm a foundation. 



The achievement can not justly be credited to cap- 

 ital. There was no capital to speak of in the early 

 days when the foundations of the Commonwealth were 

 being laid deep in the arid soil. Labor can claim no 

 peculiar credit for the achievement, because men have 

 labored everywhere and always, and have no expecta- 

 tion of ever doing otherwise. "Thou shalt earn thy 

 bread in the sweat of thy face," is the Divine com- 

 mand. Utah is a monument to leadership to a qual- 

 ity of leadership that has been creative and inspiring. 



