If the government can enlist men in the regular army for national defense and put them in camps and barracks in time of peace to waste their time in idleness, is there any reason why it should not enlist men in a Reserve and put them in Homecrofts, where their labor will be utilized in production, and the elevating influence of family and community life be substituted for the demoralizing influences of the life of the camp or barracks?
There is no more reason why the government should not build and perpetually own the Homecrofts used for this national purpose of education and defense than there is that it should not own the Military Academy at West Point or the Naval Academy at Annapolis, or any land used by the Agricultural Department for any of its work, which is educational, or by the War Department, which is for national defense. The Homecrofts used to train and maintain in the service the Homecroft Reserves would be used for a combination of both purposes, and their cost would be just as properly classified as an expenditure for national defense as the cost of any existing camp, barracks, or army post now owned by the government.
The burden of the Standing Army of less than 100,000 men now maintained by the United States could be very considerably reduced by establishing as large a portion of it as possible in the Homecroft System, were it not for the false ideals as to human values that are apparently so deeply imbedded in the minds of the military caste.
_The entire Homecroft Reserve System should be organized as a separate department of the National government like the Forest Service or Reclamation Service, and should be known as the Homecroft Service._
The Homecroft Reserve in Minnesota should be known as the Department of the Reserves of the North; the Reserve in Louisiana as the Department of the Reserves of the South; the Reserve in West Virginia as the Department of the Reserves of the East; the Reserve in the Colorado Valley and Nevada as the Department of the Reserves of the West; and the Reserve in the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys in California as the Department of the Reserves of the Pacific.
The Louisiana Reservists would be trained as Homecrofters and sailors; the West Virginia and Minnesota Reservists would be trained as Homecrofters and Foresters; the Colorado River and California Reservists would be trained as Homecrofters and Irrigators--Conquerors of the Desert; the Nevada Reservists would be trained as Homecrofters and Cavalrymen,--the Cossack Cavalry of America,--and all would be good soldiers, as well as the very highest type of good citizens.