A Stake in the Land Part 13

Although there have been attempts in other states to secure legislation, so far they have been unsuccessful. In essentials they have resembled the California law, although differing in details, such as amounts of bonds, fees, and penalties. In Minnesota, several years ago, the State Immigration Commission was instrumental in introducing a land-regulation bill which was killed by the efforts of the land dealers.

In 1914 the Executive Committee of the Real Estate a.s.sociation of New York submitted for the consideration of the a.s.sociation a bill for the licensing of real-estate brokers and the creation of a real-estate commission. In 1916 a bill similar to this one was introduced in the legislature of the state of New York, but failed of pa.s.sage. In Texas a bill was approved by the Texas Realty a.s.sociation, but was not enacted into law. In addition to efforts for legislation in the states there have been national recommendations.

The Committee on State Legislation of the National a.s.sociation of Real Estate Exchanges in 1913 reported on a bill for the regulation of the real-estate business. The main provisions are as follows:

A State Board on Real Estate Licenses shall be established, consisting of five members, all real-estate men, appointed by the Governor, and having its headquarters in the state capitol. Every person engaged in the real-estate business shall apply for a license to the board. The applicant shall present proof that his standing is above reproach and that his record for honesty and fair dealing is clear. The applicant shall file a satisfactory bond in the amount of $1,000, conditioned on the faithful performance of any undertaking as a real-estate broker, the bond to be renewed with each renewal of the annual license. The fee for the license shall be $10 for each dealer, firm, or corporation, and $2.50 for each salesman, the fees to be, respectively, $5 and $1 after the first year.

Licenses shall expire each year. The board shall have power to revoke at any time any license where the holder thereof is guilty of gross misrepresentation in making sales, etc., or of any other conduct which, in the opinion of the board, is opposed to good business morals. The board shall investigate all complaints; it shall have power to subpna witnesses. Any person violating the act shall be fined not less than the compensation or profit received or agreed to, and not more than four times that amount, or be imprisoned not more than thirty days, or both.

The Legislative Committee of the Interstate Realty a.s.sociation of the Pacific Northwest has proposed a real-estate license law for the state of Washington, the main provisions of which are similar to the others already quoted.

Although there has been no successful state-wide provision, in Portland, Oregon, an ordinance licensing real-estate brokers was approved in 1912, including the salient features of the proposed state laws. Application is made to the city auditors, with proof of the applicant's good standing and square dealing. The Council Committee on licenses has power to revoke or withhold, and penalties are provided for.

As an example of the occupational tax law applying to the real-estate business, the law of the District of Columbia may be mentioned. The District of Columbia (1914) has a law imposing a license tax of $50 per annum on real-estate brokers or agents. The a.s.sessor of the District said that the fee was not large enough to restrict character of trade, and that the payment of the fee was the only qualification for a license.

A PUBLIC LAND EXCHANGE

In addition to the need for honest dealing there is everywhere felt the need of bringing farm sellers and buyers together through a public agency. Certain states, in co-operation with the Federal Department of Agriculture, have made provision for doing this. For this purpose an office is created similar to a public employment office. It aims to provide the farm sellers and buyers with more or less reliable information without cost to either side.

In the state of Maryland the Extension Service of the state college, in co-operation with the Federal Department of Agriculture, has worked out a farm-description blank for farm sellers. The blank contains questions in regard to the location of the farm, its size, distance from communication lines, and inhabited places of various sizes and market facilities, its soil, its fences, buildings, water supply, ownership, price, and other points intended to show the condition and value of the farm for sale. The office distributes these blanks among the county agents, from whom the farm sellers secure the blanks. The county agents forward the completed forms to the main state office, which periodically publishes the collected information for farm buyers.

This information is available to farm buyers for the mere asking. Anyone can see, in the state office or in the published volume, the blanks describing in detail the farms for sale. In this way they can be directly connected with the seller of the selected farm, without agents or advertising cost to either side. Thus misrepresentation can be avoided to a certain degree. The Extension Service, however, does not enter into any financial arrangement or give any guaranties. Aside from the information contained in the filled forms, it gives information of a general character concerning the agricultural possibilities of the state and of various sections and localities in it. At present the Service is particularly interested in locating the returned soldiers.

As such a public agency system is of comparatively recent origin and has not had time to develop, it is impossible to judge with certainty its future possibilities. In theory the operation of the system seems to be an easy matter, but in practice it is complicated. The farmers who intend to sell their holdings have to be informed of the work of the office, and equally the farm buyers have to be acquainted with the plan.

This involves education of the farmers by an extensive advertising campaign, which requires time and expenditure of public money. However, there is a real need for such a public agency and the results of the attempts to establish and develop it have been encouraging.

It would be desirable that the states which have already established or will establish such public agencies should co-operate with one another through the Federal Department of Agriculture and, with the a.s.sistance of the latter, should organize a central office as a clearing house.

Nation-wide advertis.e.m.e.nt should be made by the central office for all the states in co-operation. In this way the farm advertis.e.m.e.nts would be made more effective--unnecessary repet.i.tions, and the expenses connected with these, would be avoided. Through interchange of experiences a uniform system might be established. Such a central office, in co-operation with the Immigration Bureau, Department of Labor, should inform immigrants who desire to establish rural homes of the various farm opportunities.

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 pa.s.sed by Congress. Liberal appropriations are needed both for the acquisition and reclamation of unused lands of different cla.s.ses, as well as for the increase of the staff and working forces of the Service. The bills under consideration were discussed in Chapter VI. The bill introduced by Representative Mondell of Wyoming effectively provides for this service.

A COLONIZATION BOARD

The word "colonization" suggests the following: populating a given unused area of land suitable for cultivation, according to a plan covering the selection of people, the cultivation of the land, providing credit and markets, instruction in land cultivation, planning, organizing, and directing of community life in its numerous branches, such as co-operation for various purposes, education, recreation.

Colonization work in the modern sense is a new, delicate, and complex field, for it affects all sides of human life.

There is a wide difference of opinion the country over as to whether colonization should be a public affair or be left to private initiative and effort. Those who favor private colonization claim that public colonization is wasteful, uneconomical, that it puts a new burden on the taxpayers, and savors of Socialism. Those who favor public colonization maintain that private colonization companies in the very nature of their endeavors work for their own profit, considering the settlers' interests and public welfare of secondary importance.

Colonization results must not be counted only in the terms of money, but also in the terms of social value to the community and to the country.

Again the writer has to call attention to the fact that both public and private colonization is going on side by side all over the world. In certain foreign countries public colonization is predominant, while in this country the reverse is true. Only the state of California has undertaken public colonization as an experiment on a small scale, and so far with success.

It would be advisable that both public and private colonization go on, one competing with the other and learning from the other's experience.

Private companies must be regulated and licensed by public authorities, and public credit should be extended to them. All this requires that the colonization work be organized on a nation-wide scale.

To meet the national need there should be established an interdepartmental Federal colonization board with the following duties:

(1) To make community plans. This would involve the location of settlements, their roads and building sites; plans for division of land into farms; plans for erection of farm buildings; plans for town sites and buildings as colony centers, parks as playgrounds, etc., all to be surveyed and put in working shape by the Reclamation Service, Department of the Interior.

(2) To select suitable people for settlement on the lands acquired and improved by the Reclamation Service, with the preference to be given to former soldiers.

(3) To distribute the selected immigrant settlers of non-English mother tongue, including soldiers, having in mind the need of mixing different races with the native settlers so as to facilitate the process of incorporating all into American life.

(4) To plan and organize the economic life of the colonies. This means the introduction of, and instruction in, farming and methods of cultivation suitable to the land, climate, and other conditions surrounding the colony, the organization of buying and selling co-operation in the colonies, provision of markets, etc.

(5) To plan and organize the educational, recreational, and general community life of the colonies--schools, libraries, lectures, games, etc.

(6) To regulate and license or charter private colonization companies.

Among the policies of the Colonization Board a very prominent one should be a proper distribution of the immigrant settlers. Owing to the lack of any public plan or measures for the distribution of the immigrants in the country in the past the results have been astonishing. The Little Polands, Italies, ghettos, Germanies, and others in our great industrial centers are well known, though the word "Little" is not applicable in every case. It is especially inapplicable where the compact immigrant settlements exceed in numbers the largest cities of their home countries. For instance, according to the last census figures, there were in the city of New York more Italians (including their children) than the population of Rome, more Germans than in Cologne, about as many Irish as the population of Dublin and Belfast together, and about three times as many Jews as there were in the British Empire.

All this is already known to the public at large. What is not popularly known is the fact that there are foreign provinces in the agricultural sections of the country. There whole counties and even a number of neighboring counties are populated by immigrants of the same race and nationality. Such provinces have become self-sufficient; they have their own towns, their own schools, churches, industries, stores, select local public officials of their own nationality, speak their own tongue, and live according to the traditions and spirit of their home country.

These traditions and this spirit are kept alive by their schools, churches, and libraries, and by the absence of any direct contact with American customs and traditions. From such localities came a considerable number of the American-born drafted men who could not speak, write, or even understand English.

Such foreign provinces in the rural sections of the country are princ.i.p.ally found in the North Middle Western states and Western states. When the writer, during his field investigation, arrived in such localities--for instance, in the southwestern part of North Dakota--he found that the townspeople, business men, and public officials, as a rule, understood English, but spoke German or Scandinavian among themselves. In talking with any man in the street the writer had to resort to the man's mother tongue, while the farmers back in the country, as a rule, did not speak English at all. Yet many of them were born in this country.

On the whole, the impression of the writer was that the larger the rural immigrant colony, the less it showed evidences of American influences.

This was quite apparent in regard to the Slavic and especially the Polish colonies visited by the writer in a number of states.

The immigrants already settled in large colonies of one nationality cannot be redistributed, but they can be reached by other means, one of which is an efficient public-school system, which is dealt with in later chapters.

Measures should be undertaken for the distribution of the new immigrant settlers so as to avoid their congregation in large colonies of only one nationality. The experience of private land dealers and colonization companies shows that it is not wise to settle a single immigrant family among native settlers or the settlers of another nationality. Such a family becomes lonesome and sooner or later leaves the settlement.

Therefore the immigrants must be settled in groups according to their nationalities.

The question is, how large such national groups must be in order to keep the settlers in the colony and at the same time to avoid their becoming clannish and remaining untouched by American influences for a generation or a number of generations. The observation of the writer and his interviews on this question with the people engaged in colonization have led him to the conclusion that such groups ought to be of from five to fifteen families each, settled in the same neighborhood among either groups of other nationalities or native settlers.

Such distribution of the immigrant settlers in smaller groups is favored by the immigrants themselves. As a rule, they are eager to learn American ways as soon as possible, and usually accede with alacrity to distribution, provided no violent compulsion is used and they are directed to land where they are able to make a success by their investment and toil, without being cheated or exploited. The writer discussed the size of a rural immigrant group of the same nationality in a number of the immigrant colonies. The settlers, even the Russian sectarian peasants, believed that if there were not less than five families in one group no loneliness would be experienced. If there were no more than ten or fifteen families there would be no danger of their becoming clannish and self-sufficient, for they would of necessity have to deal with other groups and intermingle with them for both business and social purposes.

A rigid selection of settlers on the basis of their ability to farm and to stay on the farm is of prime importance. Among the applicants for farms in new colonies there are three main cla.s.ses of people, each distinct from the others: (1) those who have experience, knowledge, and otherwise ability for land cultivation and the capacity for sticking to a job. These should be selected and will contribute to the success of the colony, which ultimately depends upon the settlers themselves; (2) those who are hunters for easy pickings in the way of a piece of property or for an opportunity for safe investment or for speculation.

These should be avoided as the plague; and (3) those who are not suited for rural life and heavy toil on the land, mostly city people who dream of changing their life for improvement of their health in the country, for an independent life, or for an easy-going life, of fresh air, sunshine, flowers, and birds. Such people are not able to make a success of farming and should be avoided. These cla.s.ses of applicants are found among immigrants as well as among natives, soldiers, and civilians.

How important the selection of settlers is for the success of colonization and settlement on land is shown by the close scrutiny of prospective settlers made by the agents of modern private colonization companies and also by certain state immigration officials. They ask an applicant about his supply of money or credit, about his experience, about his past in detail, his habits, his inclinations, and his aspirations. They judge him by his appearance, his physique, and his health. He is also questioned about his family life; special attention is given to the att.i.tude of his wife toward rural life, her past experience, the probability of her being satisfied and able to stay permanently on the farm and carry the heavy burdens of a farmer's wife.

Finally, the prospective settler is warned of the existing conditions in the colony, of the heavy toil and the difficulties, and of the long period of waiting which must elapse before he can enjoy the results of his investment and labors. Selection made in this way will guarantee the success of a colonization enterprise, be it public or private.