I want to say here that Delhi is also a solvent undertaking. We followed the same plan there. The whole question with us was whether the physical aspect of that country (it looked like a sand pile) would prevent people taking the land. We were sure of the result if enough settlers came to show what crops would grow under the irrigation system we were building. Well, settlers are taking it. We advertised the first of September, fifty-three new farms; we sent out or are sending out this week five thousand folders describing these farms to people who have asked when the next unit at Delhi would be thrown open.

These folders will go to every state in the union because the requests for information have come from every state. The letters we get are well written. They are not illiterate letters. They are from educated earnest Americans of moderate circumstances, not rich, but with money enough to enable them to buy a small farm under our plan without risk to this State, the kind of people that Mr. Packard has told you about. Mr. Seagraves, of the Santa Fe Railroad, who is here tonight, wired last week for one thousand folders to meet inquiries from people along his road. Now we find no such interest in farms sold on short time payments, with no credit, no community life. The old style of colonization is ended. It does not create the rural life that people long for. It is dead because the increasing cost of development and of land has made the short time purchase of farms by men of moderate means impossible.

The point that I want to make, the reason that I am speaking here tonight is this: That while what we have done is admirable, it is far less than the State needs to have done. It is simply an illustration of what can be done. It does not, however, meet the needs of this State. The last report of the state engineer shows that of the sixty-eight irrigation districts of this State, twenty-five were created in the last two years, and surveys are being made and plans perfected for the creation of as many more. The aggregate area of those districts is nearly two and a half million acres. That land is today mainly used to grow grain and for pasture. California is ready today to have that land devoted to a higher use. It will support twenty times as many people as now live on it. Not only that, but in the older districts. there is need for more small farms, more orchards and dairy herds. In the new districts, only the small intensively cultivated farm will pay irrigation costs. Unless this State wakes up to that situation and creates a land settlement policy adequate to this need, banks will

own more farms, and interest on irrigation bonds will be paid with difficulty.

Now we know from what has happened to the nearly three hundred settlers that are on the state settlements that it takes somewhere between seven and ten thousand dollars to improve and equip a fortyacre farm so that its owner can get the full benefits of our soil and climate. We know many worthy people who want to settle on farms here have not got that much money. Their capital will run from three thousand to five thousand dollars. Occasionally, there is one with ten thousand dollars, but there is not one in a thousand that has over ten thousand dollars, and if they do have more, they will not pioneer.

We have here an opportunity to create homes like those at Durham and Delhi on a million acres of land. The ditches are built, the water is ready, the opportunity is waiting. A great responsibility rests on us to devise a scheme for carrying out on an adequate scale the work of creating, not one Durham or two Durhams a year, but three or four a year.

We are only doing in a small way, what Germany did in a large way between 1906 and 1914. And Germany had nothing like the opportunities we have, had nothing like the incentive we have. Yet in that time they created two hundred ninety-six settlements like ours and spent $400,000,000 of public money doing it. Between 1903 and 1910 Great Britain spent $550,000,000 and transformed 9,000,000 acres of land in Ireland in order that the discouraged Irish tenant might become a farm owner.

Australia, with only 5,000,000 people, 12,000 miles away from the home country, out there in the midst of the southern ocean, has provided $200,000,000 since the war to continue making homes on the land. The point is we should quit thinking about hundreds of thousands of dollars. We must begin to think in millions. We must cease thinking about one settlement, and consider the number of places in this State where closely settled land and intensive cultivation is the only way to bring to full fruition our great latent resources. This kind of development will build your cities. Without it, city building means a one-sided and unstable economic life. The last census shows that farm building has practically ceased. Seven times as many people went into the cities as went into the country. In this State the total increase of farms was only 29,000. More people went into the city of Los Angeles alone than went on farms in the whole State. I do not think that I need to talk to you about the proposition that any coun

try that hopes for a sound economic life must see to it that country growth keeps pace with the growth of cities. To do this we must develop the kind of institutions in the country that will attract and hold earnest, worthy, intelligent men and women. The country is the reservoir that contains and maintains the physical and mental stamina. The great war showed that the greatest percentage of the strong people came from the farms. It will not do for us to sit back and follow the laissez faire policy. What lies before us is not to decide whether we are going to follow this plan or that, but to decide that we are going to take one step further and create a plan and policy that will meet our present and future needs. (Applause.)

Remarks by President Boardman

THE PRESIDENT: The section found it difficult to secure anyone to present an argument against state colonization. Mr. H. C. Cutting of Richmond has very kindly consented to give us some of the points on the other side and in opposition to the plan that has been described by Doctor Mead and Mr. Packard.

Objections to State Settlement

MR. CUTTING: I want to state that I have had no experience whatever in the selling of country land. I am not interested in any country land. I did take hold of four hundred acres over at Richmond, and fathered the inner harbor project over there, and if it was a matter of digging a harbor and pumping mud, I could tell you a lot more about it than I can about land settlement.

The time alloted would not allow me to answer the greater problem of rural life. But I can answer it if given the opportunity. That, as given to us by Mr. Packard, is the financial problem. And I wish to state to you now that when this Club wants to know the solution of the financial problem of the farmer, I am ready to give you that solution, to meet every objection that will be brought forward, and give it to you in a practical way.

The two settlements which have been made are experiments. They have shown us how, and they are wonderful successes. This Club should be very proud of the part that it has taken in starting the system; the State of California should be very proud of the part that it took; and these gentlemen who have conducted it are surely worthy of the gratitude of this Club and of the State of California. No one of intelligence would wish to criticize it; it is splendid. Making homes for our people where you can raise an intelligent manhood and womanhood, is an achievement of real patriotism.

But, I believe that I can show you that these two colonies should be regarded as educational enterprises rather than business enterprises. I believe that I can show you that, with a little correction in some of our laws, we can make the private interests take these settlements as guides and devote private energy to building up just such settlements. That would be arguing on the negative side of this question in a way that I would like to argue it, because the work should go on. The only question is how best to make it go fast.

As to the development there, why, there is no criticism at all. It is a fine example. But, I am opposed to everything that savors of paternalism; I am unalterably opposed to everything savoring of the socialistic idea. Men do not want paternalism; they want to develop in their own sweet way. Men want liberty, but they want education; and Dr. Mead has been showing us how to do something of importance.

Now, there are some problems of the farmer that are really more important than those of putting him on the land. One of those prob

lems is that, after he is put on the land, and he has raised a crop, he shall get a price out of it that shall be satisfactory. He should know something about what that price will be in relation to what it has cost him.

Last year, in the spring of 1920, our farmers planted crops with a dollar that was worth fifty cents. During the summer of 1920 our bankers, due to a defect in our financial system, found it necessary to deflate our medium of exchange. So, your farmer who planted with a dollar that was worth fifty cents in the spring, had to sell his crop in the fall for a dollar that was worth one hundred cents; consequently he had to sacrifice half of his crop. Now, if anybody had broken into his granary and stolen half of his grain, there would have been a great hue and cry throughout the land, and the thief would have been run to earth. Our financial system did that; and it is not necessary that it should do it. It looks as impossible to overcome that as it did to overcome the sand-blown lands of Delhi, but it can be done.

None of the farmers got any profits last year. Now, it is not fair. to put a man out there upon the land and encourage him to raise a crop, and then take it away from him, and it is not necessary, and when you give me more time than twenty minutes, I will show you how to overcome that difficulty.

I want to show you now just a little way in which you make private enterprise do the very thing that these gentlemen are doing through the state's money. We go to the legislature of the State of California and pass a law which says, "The assessor shall assess all property at its true value," and then we all go home and do our very best to see that he does not do it because we want to keep the values down in the assessor's office and up in the bank. Now, suppose we recognize the fact that the medium of exchange is a public utility just like the railroad is. It is that utility which you use when you want to transfer ownership, and the railroad is the utility that you use when you want to transfer the goods. They are both public utilities. Now, suppose we recognize that bank credit, which is ninety-nine per cent of our medium of exchange, is a public utility, and then suppose we had a method of putting it under public control which would be absolutely automatic so that there is no chance in the world for political inefficiency or dishonesty to affect it; then we would have accomplished something.

A part of that little program would be to pass a law like this: The assessed value of every piece of property in the State of California