206 City Homes on Country Lanes 



the few States where no one ever dreamed of trying 

 to make merchandise of the melting snow and falling 

 rain. Irrigation was a purely cooperative undertaking 

 from the first, as much as the dikes of Holland. It was 

 the first and most essential provision for the common 

 welfare. Men shared the benefits and the burdens 

 equitably. Out of this initial cooperation grew a whole 

 fabric of cooperative industry. 



The only valid claim I know against the system is 

 that it required its beneficiaries, so far as the law 

 could be enforced, to pay tithings, or ten per cent of 

 their gross returns, to the Church. It always seemed 

 to me that this was purely a personal matter between 

 the payers and the payee, and that the loyalty of the 

 vast proportion of the payers might fairly be accepted 

 as the complete vindication of the pa}ee. At any rate, 

 this feature is only incidental to the system; it signifies 

 nothing when we come to consider the application to the 

 national life of this great and tried principle of leader- 

 ship by the Government that represents us all. 



Many measures providing for reclamation and settle- 

 ment were introduced in the G5th and 66th Congresses 

 — several of them in response to Secretary Lane's 

 propaganda for Soldier Settlement. All of them 

 frankly recognize the obligation of National leader- 

 ship to the homeseeker; all of them go much further 

 in extending national aid than any previous legisla- 

 tion; all of them contemplate not merely the reclama- 

 tion of the land, but the preparation of the soil, its 

 subdivision into community centers and outlying farms, 

 construction of roads and other facilities of the com- 



