This is an immediate duty.  It will be too late to plan for these things when the war is over.  Our thought now should be given to the problem.  And I therefore desire to bring to your mind the wisdom of immediately supplying the Interior Department with a sufficient fund with which to make the necessary surveys and studies.  We should know by the time the war ends, not merely how much arid land can be irrigated, nor how much swamp land reclaimed, nor where the grazing land is and how many cattle it will support, nor how much cut-over land can be cleared, but we should know with definiteness where it is practicable to begin new irrigation projects, what the character of the land is, what the nature of the improvements needed will be, and what the cost will be.  We should know also, not in a general way, but with particularity, what definite areas of swamp land may be reclaimed, how they can be drained, what the cost of the drainage will be, what crops they will raise.  We should have in mind specific areas of grazing lands, with a knowledge of the cattle which are best adapted to them, and the practicability of supporting a family upon them.  So, too, with our cut-over lands.  We should know what it would cost to pull or “blow-out” stumps and to put the lands into condition for a farm home.

And all this should be done upon a definite planning basis.  We should think as carefully of each one of these projects as George Washington thought of the planning of the City of Washington, We should know what it will cost to buy these lands if they are in private hands.  In short, at the conclusion of the war the United States should be able to say to its returned soldiers, “If you wish to go upon a farm, here are a variety of farms of which you may take your pick, which the Government has prepared against the time of your returning.”  I do not mean by this to carry the implication that we should do any other work now than the work of planning.  A very small sum of money put into the hands of men of thought, experience, and vision, will give us a program which will make us feel entirely confident that we are not to be submerged, industrially or otherwise, by labor which we will not be able to absorb, or that we would be in a condition where we would show a lack of respect for those who return as heroes, but who will be without means of immediate self-support.

A million or two dollars, if appropriated now, will put this work well under way.

This plan does not contemplate anything like charity to the soldier.  He is not to be given a bounty.  He is not to be made to feel that he is a dependent.  On the contrary, he is to continue, in a sense, in the service of the Government.  Instead of destroying our enemies he is to develop our resources.