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Show Be Just as Well as Generous CONGRESS on Monday voted a great sum for the afflicted beyond the sea. That was the proper thing to do. But there are more strong men in the United States who are out of work and cannot obtain employment than there are refugees In Italy and Sicily Cannot Congress Con-gress be as generous to our own country's poor as to the unfortunate of other lands? Why not set the idle men of a dozen eastern states to making homes where now only malarious ma-larious swamps exist? Why not order the work just so soon as engineers can set the stakes? Extend Ex-tend the reclamation act and begin. And to pay them issue $500,000,000 in one per cent bonds, to be distributed and pass from hand to hand as money, and make them redeemable from the proceeds pro-ceeds of the sale of the redeemed lands, so much per annum. In that way the Government would not ultimately be out a dollar; it would have some more millions of acres of land under culti vation, some, thousands more homes as Bulwarks J of the Republic. . 1 We hear much about conserving natural re sources; why not utilize a resource, which tor all time has not only been "profitless, but a blight, and convert it into something that will be an im- menso food producer? In the beginning man was commanded to subdue sub-due and till the earth, and he was promised tho spring time and harvest, that, surely is authority enough for undertaking the scheme. There are people who say it is not the business busi-ness of the Government to provide work for the' people. But no one denies that it is the business of the Government to remove every possible obstruction ob-struction from the pa of the people and to command com-mand order and peace. Is there any other so sure a way to keep an earnest man peaceable when hungry as to supply him with work through which to earn his bread? It is more terrible for a man to starve to death in this free1 land than in Italy. |
