ment on the result of this experiment, I would say that, if the Government should invest $500 in equipment and first wages for each soldier in this industrial army, it would place him on the field of operations and put him in position to become self-supporting. Upon this estimate of a $500 investment for each worker, an army of 100,000 wealth producers, equal in number to our present standing army of wealth destroyers, could be placed in Nevada, and be made permanently self-supporting on an original investment by the Government of $50,000,000, which is less than one-half of the appropriation recently made for the maintenance of our standing army for the next year. This army of wealth producers would be in position to pay back to the Government within a few years this $50,000,000 advanced in their behalf, and would besides add several billion dollars to the national wealth. But this standing army of wealth destroyers will not only be unable to refund to the Government the $118,000,000 appropriated for them, but will require next year a similar appropriation. Mr. Flower says in the February ARENA that "the civilization-wide social agitation in the opening years of the twentieth century has for its magic word, coöperation, or industrial freedom." He furthermore says: "To-day it lies in the power of the thoughtful among the wealth creators to inaugurate a coöperative movement that will speedily spread and carry with it not only the promise but the realization of that economic freedom without which the shell of our republican institutions must become as much a mockery as was that of Florence under the de Medici family, Milan under Sforza, or Venice under the Council of Ten." It was in the spirit of these utterances that The Coöperative Association of America was formed at Lewiston, Maine; and, also, The Workers' Cooperative Association of Boston. It is my hope and belief that, in the event the Government should fail to act upon the suggestion of this paper, The Coöperative As ent on the result of this experiment, I would say that, if he Government should invest $500 in equipment and first wages for each soldier in this industrial army, it would place him on the field of operations and put him in position to become self-supporting. Upon this estimate of a $500 investment for each worker, an army of 100,000 wealth producers, equal in number to our present standing army of wealth destroyers, could be placed in Nevada, and be made permanently self-supporting on an original investment by the Government of $50,000,000, which is less than one-half of the appropriation recently made for the maintenance of our standing army for the next year. This army of wealth producers would be in position to pay back to the Government within a few years this $50,000,000 advanced in their behalf, and would besides add several billion dollars to the national wealth. But this standing army of wealth destroyers will not only be unable to refund to the Government the $118,000,000 appropriated for them, but will require next year a similar appropriation. Mr. Flower says in the February ARENA that "the civ ization-wide social agitation in the opening years of the twentieth century has for its magic word, cooperation. or industrial freedom." He furthermore says: it lies in the power of the thoughtful among the weath sociation of America will be strong enough and experienced enough within a few years to accomplish the thing independent of the Government. Boston, Mass. HIRAM VROOMAN. A SANE AND REASONABLE PROPOSITION. The proposition appears to me as sane, rational, practicable, and in every way worthy of commendation. That there are in the area once known as the "Great American Desert" millions of acres that may be reclaimed is well known. Some of this land should be irrigated. The water for this purpose is in many cases at hand, in the mountains or the earth, or in both. It may be led down from the mountains or pumped from the earth. In this connection it is noteworthy that experiments are reported for the utilization of the sun's rays in lifting water from its subterranean channels. The intense sun heat which pours upon some of these arid regions can, it is claimed, be caught by mirrors and transformed into an inexpensive power for pumping. Again, the importance of drought-resisting crops is but slightly appreciated by most. Experiments made by the Kansas Experiment Station and elsewhere show that large areas of semi-arid land may be promptly reclaimed by the culture of alfalfa, Kafir corn, the sorghums, and the soy bean-highly nutritive foods, some or all of which, in many of these regions, should at once be substituted for corn, wheat, or the other crops which require more abundant moisture. By the use of these crops lands formerly regarded barren have been proved highly productive and profitable without irrigation. For irrigation, money is needed. This the farmer is rarely able to supply in adequate amount. The work, then, to be done at all, must be done by a private corporation or by the public. Of private corporationism, it would seem, we have had enough. We are, however, coming more and more to see that the people working together can do things for themselves; that they are not dependent upon the paternal initiative of Messrs. Rockefeller and Pierpont Morgan; that, through their tool, the Government, organized in nation, State, municipality, and local area, they can plan and execute effectively and economically and bring to themselves and their children the benefits of such activity instead of entailing upon posterity an intolerable burden of debt, that mammoth fortunes may be accumulated in the hands of a few lords of industry. Government is one of the people's instruments. If they permit it to become their tyrant and slave-driver they have only themselves to blame. Without reason, it will do what they demand of it. If the whole people can fight they can work. If they can destroy they can produce. If they can blast they can bless. If they can crush an antipodal republic they can preserve and render habitable their own. If they can tax themselves for military purposes they can tax themselves for industrial purposes. This, in fact, they have done time out of mind; but the industries, as noted, have been made, in large measure, a curse rather than a blessing to the people. If the money spent in our atrocious and criminal struggle beyond the sea were spent at home, as suggested, it would still furnish employment; it would build homes in the wilderness where it is now destroying them in civilization; it would make the desert blossom where now it turns gardens into waste places; it would substitute genuine patriotism for the base, jingo counterfeit of which demagogues declaim; it would furnish an object-lesson in popular, coöperative self-help immeasurably more valuable than the money it would cost, and would hasten the advent of the good time coming. Clearly, work thus begun can be extended indefinitely. Railroads, of which the rapidly forming Railroad Trust |