A Stake in the Land by Peter A. Speek

Author:Peter A. Speek [Speek, Peter A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction, Reference & Language, Reference, Fiction & Literature, Classics
ISBN: 4064066190934
Google: hlJgvgAACAAJ
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 32477610
Publisher: Good Press
Published: 2019-12-13T05:00:00+00:00

RECLAMATION A SEPARATE FUNCTION

Up to this time both public and private efforts have been applied to the reclaiming of unused lands, rendering valuable service to the progress of the country. There ought, however, to be no question whether reclamation work should be a public or a private enterprise. If a number, and even a large number, of the private land-development companies have hitherto mined in the pockets of their land buyers instead of in the land itself, this has been largely because of the lack of any public regulation of private land-improvement companies. However, a number, perhaps a majority, of the companies have improved their land and have secured settlers who have made a success in the cultivation of the improved land. Therefore it would be a grave mistake to abandon or even to repress private enterprise in land-development work. It should be encouraged by the extension of public credit through the land companies and by putting their business under public supervision.

Where considerable areas have to be reclaimed, involving large expenditures and a long period of waiting for returns, public reclamation is preferable.

Although reclamation and colonization work are closely connected and dependent upon each other, still there is a marked difference. It is one thing to plan and irrigate a desert area and quite a different thing successfully to populate the irrigated land. The first is mainly a technical enterprise, while the other deals mainly with human beings. The people who direct and prosecute reclamation works—civil engineers and other technical experts—might not be good colonizers. The duties of the latter consist in selecting suitable settlers, directing their land-cultivation work, and organizing and directing the community life of the settlers. On the other hand, colonizers, trained agriculturists, and community workers might not be able successfully to conduct reclamation works. Therefore these two fields ought to be recognized as distinct and provided for separately.

Almost all the proposed plans of land settlement fail to make such a distinction. They propose that the same public agency should acquire land, improve it, and colonize it. The same is true in regard to most of the private land-improvement and colonization projects. They plan to improve land and at the same time colonize it, which too often consists merely in securing land buyers and leaving the latter, after they have made their initial payment, entirely to their own fate.

Private land-improvement companies doing business in two or more states should be brought under the jurisdiction of the Federal Reclamation Service. They should be licensed, their projects approved, and their general methods of business regulated. Private companies doing business within state or city limits should be regulated by state irrigation or drainage district authorities, with whom the Federal Reclamation Service should co-operate in every possible way.

In order that the Federal Reclamation Service may be extended and expanded to meet the growing demands, further legislation must be passed by Congress. Liberal appropriations are needed both for the acquisition and reclamation of unused lands of different classes, as well as for the increase of the staff and working forces of the Service.

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