Remarks by Edward F. Adams

MR. ADAMS: We are talking about land settlement, and I do not want to drift off into an economic discussion. I am a very pronounced individualist. As we become more crowded, we have to sacrifice a certain portion of our liberties, and my impulse is to fight for, even at economic sacrifice, every bit of liberty I can, and to hold on to it as long as I can. There is a pleasure in doing what you want to do. We are gradually losing that as the pressure of society bears down upon us. Now, in regard to just one point that I wanted to make about the use of private energy and initiative in disposing of lands, as the State is disposing of these colony lands. It is ideal. If it can be done it is the best way, but it does not seem to me that it can be done. I do not know where the men are to be found who will do it. Nor do I see how they could economically do it. There are not many who realize how much the success of this enterprise has been due to the tact and sound judgment of those immediately connected with it. I have been on both these settlements, and in one of them, particularly at Durham, I had the opportunity to see the exquisite tact displayed there in solving difficult questions which arise, I can assure you, in these enterprises constantly. They also had the judgment and enterprise of members of the board who could not be employed by the State for any salary which the State, for a moment, would think of paying them. And where the men are to come from who would use the judgment for the benefit of the settlers, and use the tact in settling the little difficulties and sometimes serious annoyances that arise, I don't know. There have been large land owners who came to this board and wondered if they could not undertake to dispose of their land holdings on the same plan as the State. Is not that correct, Dr. Mead?

DR. MEAD: Yes.

MR. ADAMS: The way has not opened, at the present time, apparently for them to do it. Remember that another thing that the State has had is the benefit of is free advertising in all countries of the world, that could not be purchased by any private enterprise for the capital value of the property involved. It has had it from the beginning, and will continue to have it forever. Now, those are economic advantages that are to the advantage of the movement when conducted as it has been conducted in this State and other places. I do not know of any practical way in which, considering the human agencies with which land owners would have to work, we could do it any differently than what it has been done heretofore. If you put

up the land for sale on a commission, your commission salesman, in order to live, must have a liberal first payment out of which to get his commission. There has been a careful and conscientious selection in regard to the placing of people on these lands, in order that the first experiments might be exceedingly successful, and even then they have had difficulties which have not been mentioned here tonight, except in a few cases. I had an opportunity to see particularly, in one case, how nicely it was managed in order to get the unsocial man out of the way without any loss to himself. That kind of work cannot, as it seems to me, with the human agencies that are available to any land owner, be worked out through the initiative of private enterprise, without involving a multitude of severe losses to individuals who might undertake to carry through that plan, and would lose.

Statement by C. M. Wooster*

MR. WOOSTER: It runs against the grain for me to say a word which might be interpreted as a negative expression to the building of farm homes, for that has been the earnest effort of my life.

Every citizen of this country should have the opportunity to acquire a self-supporting home on the land, and the way should be made easily possible for such attainment. There is no more important work to do, for every home built by an American on his own land is a plank in the foundation of our Constitution.

Paternalism is dangerous. Its practices indulged too far leads downwards, tends to impair ambition, individuality, and the desire of achievement, which desire inspired and characterized the development of our great western country.

Men who blazed the trails westward over plains and into forests had no other help than the right of selection which carried the right of property flowing to the man of pluck and energy, and to all citizens alike. That was an opportunity. It made big, broad-gauged men in a broad-gauged country, the development of which has no counterpart. The Mormons moved west against hostile Indians, and encountered all the trials incident to the pioneer. They builded an empire where once was a desert, with no paternal money, but with cooperation and the spirit of free-men and independence.

To build farm homes for wounded soldiers is a duty. No paternalism, nor preferred class, enters into that phase of the question. That

*Substituted for the impromptu remarks made by Mr. Wooster at the meeting.

work should have been farther advanced and better done. Good land and water for them can be had at less than $100 an acre.

That the State should provide the way for a limited number of its citizens, giving to them advantages not common to all citizens, is to my mind unfair to the young man who bought his farm on the savings from salary of $26 a month, and who must in future earn his farm by the sweat or his brow, or wait the pleasure of another paternal offering.

Mr. Packard tells us the cost of a Delhi farm to the settler is $400 an acre, and that the State will take a mortgage at that price payable within some 35 year period, with interest at 5%.

The State Bank Superintendent would not approve loans by any savings bank for half that amount per acre for the Delhi farm. If not safe for a savings bank, operated by practical men, skilled in appraisement of securities, is it safe for the State whose administration is so notoriously extravagant?

Too often liberality of terms have been the inducement to inflate the price of land, placing a burden on the purchaser beyond his ability to carry it to the day of settlement.

Next to war, colonization is the most serious thing I know. The colonizer who has not the most sincere consideration for the welfare of the settler is a misfit and a failure, and the trail of the serpent is over all his course in this State.

The Chowchilla ranch of 108,000 acres was recently bought by an Eastern speculator for $20 on acre on terms of payment extending over a period of years. This profiteer sold that land to the settler at $150 to $200 an acre, adding no particular value in the way of increasing its productiveness. The good name of California was used to the limit to induce confiding purchasers from other States to take that hook. The result is that the savings of many frugal families who, after years of self-denial in behalf of a home in California,came here with confidence in the State and its people and lost it all. It is a brave family indeed which continues the effort after such experience.

The Kuhn property of 150,000 acres in Sacramento Valley, which cost them $33 an acre, was sold to Eastern people at $250 per acre. The Kuhns failed, and most of the purchasers were forced to abandon their farms. Many other colonization projects in the State met with a similar fate, for the same lack of regard for the fairness of values and sincerity of purpose of the projectors.

With the desire to give to the real home builder land at the lowest

possible price some years ago, I organized a club of 500 members, with the understanding that when that number had been secured we would buy a large tract at a wholesale price and divide the land among the club members at its wholesale cost.

The profiteer was entirely eliminated. The man who bought five acres paid $27.50 an acre, and the man who bought 80 acres paid the same price. They got the land with free irrigation for $27.50 an acre, with canals built and in operation, and with no bonds to pay some future day. Several hundred homes were built at once, and a continuing prosperous settlement resulted.

They received no help from any source, but entered into the work individually, bought their homes, developed their farms, and created a real value of $200 to $250 an acre today. The difference between $27.50 an acre and $250 an acre represents the man power value made by individual ambition to achieve, to create a value and to possess it. They needed only the opportunity.

I purchased 5,000 acres in Santa Clara valley and sold it under an agreement to plant it to vines and trees for the purchaser, and to care for it for a period of years. The price of that land was $130, planted to fruit or vines, and cared for over a period of three years, free of further cost. The terms of purchase were $100 down and $25 monthly. When these farms reached the producing age, the purchaser was advised to quit his job and move on to his own home, from which no one could dispossess him. Some four hundred families did move, and the selling value of the land which cost them $130 an acre has since reached $1000 an acre because of increased income created by the men who saved, and thus invested free of graft. They established a new value which now belongs to the individual whose savings created it. He is a better citizen for having passed through this experience. He had no special favor, but he did have an opportunity.

In my opinion, there should be no preferred class, except the soldier, to whom the money of the State should be devoted. The State cannot hope to have sufficient funds to serve all citizens alike.

The motives prompting the high ideals of the very excellent gentleman who heads the State Land Settlement Board are most commendable, but results, however, will be unfair to the individual who has not had such help, and who cannot be so favored in the future. Unfairness breeds discontent, and discontent totters a nation.

The State might better use the $10,000,000 as a fund to loan to any citizen for the purpose of acquiring a farm, provided he shall invest,

of his own funds, forty per cent of the cost of the farm, and provided further, that the farm be bought at a fair price, and with six per cent interest, and amortize the loan over a period of thirty-five years.

Let the State use the mortgages so made for a bond issue revolving indefinitely. Such a plan would stimulate frugality by giving the opportunity to achieve an ambition which is the essential element to make for permanent success.