SOLDIERS' INSTITUTE OCCUPATION OF MOUNT WEATHER.

COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE,

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

Friday, June 10, 1921.

The committee met at 10 o'clock a. m., Hon. Gilbert N. Haugen (chairman) presiding.

There were present: Mr. Haugen, Mr. McLaughlin of Michigan, Mr. Purnell, Mr. McLaughlin of Nebraska, Mr. Tincher, Mr. Sinclair, Mr. Thompson, Mr. Gernerd, Mr. Clague, Mr. Clarke, Mr. Jacoway, Mr. Aswell, Mr. Kincheloe, Mr. Jones, and Mr. Ten Eyck.

The CHAIRMAN. The committee has met this morning to give consideration to H. R. 5901. We will be pleased to hear from you, Mr. Bush-Brown.

STATEMENT OF MR. HENRY K. BUSH-BROWN, SCULPTOR, WASHINGTON, D. C.

The CHAIRMAN. Kindly give your full name, address, and occupation.

Mr. BUSH-BROWN. My name is Henry K. Bush-Brown. sculptor by profession, resident in the city of Washington.

I am a

I became interested in this matter by having been associated indirectly with the work in St. Elizabeths and having taught modeling there voluntarily and having come in contact with the soldiers and seeing their needs, and I was invited by Mrs. Boggs, who is here present, to go down and see Mount Weather, something like over a year ago, and I became very much interested in the possibility of having an industrial school and training station there. We had arrangements made last year with the Weather Bureau to use the property in that way under a lease which they were willing to grant to us, but the lawyers said it was unconstitutional and that it could not be done without an act of Congress, and that threw the whole thing up in the air and the difficulties surrounding the whole situation. last year prevented our pursuing the thing any further until the new administration came in.

Mr. MCLAUGHLIN of Michigan. You speak of an industrial school. Under what auspices and for what particular purpose; that is, to serve what particular class of men or women?

Mr. BUSH-BROWN. For the purpose of rehabilitating the wounded soldiers after they are able to leave the hospital and before they are able to go out and wrestle with the world for their living in competition with well men.

Mr. MCLAUGHLIN of Michigan. Under what auspices?

Mr. BUSH-BROWN. Under the auspices of an organization that we have created, the Soldiers' Institute.

Mr. JONES. How is this institute supported?

Mr. BUSH-BROWN. Here [indicating] are some of our letterheads showing the board of trustees, etc.

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Mr. MCLAUGHLIN of Michigan. Why not under the auspices of the veterans' bureau that we are promoting now by act of Congress for the care of the soldiers and for looking after their matters in all respects.

Mr. BUSH-BROWN. That will come out, sir, in this argument which I am prepared to read as soon as we get at the issue.

Mr. MCLAUGHLIN of Michigan. In your own time, if you will direct your attention to that question, I should like to hear you.

Mr. BUSH-BROWN. Yes, sir. I have here the articles of incorporation and our by-laws, which I would like to file later. [Reading:]

PROSPECTUS FOR SOLDIERS' INSTITUTE.

PREAMBLE.

When Gen. Grant was asked for his plans to resume specie payments he replied he had no "plans". The way to resume payments is to resume.

The injured soldiers are applying for hospital care and education faster than can be provided for them, and it is reported that 300,000, who do not need hospital care, are out of work. Therefore to supplement what the Government is doing the Soldiers' Institute has been organized for reconstruction, in which the students will be largely self supporting by tilling the soil and other manual work, for we hold it is fundamental that every one should know how to support himself by agriculture. This gives strength to the individual and the Nation. Therefore, it is proposed to have ample acreage and make the work highly educational.

The institute will provide for that interval between the hospital and full ability to wrestle with the world, and also provides for these on the verge of needing hospital care and who could be better restored in the Soldiers' Institute.

To meet these needs there will be a balance of occupation, let us say, four or five hours per day for physical work for the maintainance of the body, and the balance of working time for the product of the mind. A balanced occupation is as necessary for the satisfaction of the soul as a balanced ration is for the nourishment of the body.

This means the full circuit of vocations, including the art-crafts and fine arts. Therefore we will have all the arts from the tilling of the soil to the presentation of symphonies, and the sciences from the analysis of the soil to the measure of electric currents.

Our agricultural land will be in some instances adjacent to the city so as to make available the many advantages in education which the city offers, and thereby save duplication. This also will introduce a new art, that of city planning, for with such a plant its orderly development should be along the lines of suburban growth and thus ultimately because part of the city as may be needed in the extension of its streets and parks. This is very important as herein will come increased valuations and a result of the work applied to the land, and finally accrue to the perpetuation of the institute.

There will be many complete units, for instance, one might be the development of water power, another the development of a marble quarry, the quality of which would be suitable for building purposes and instruct such of the students who have an adaptability for working marble to be skilled artisans in this trade. Heretofore these artisans have all come from Europe, and we need to give our own men this opportunity. Then we will have our own soldiers quarrying the stone and cutting it into columns, architraves, and statues for the buildings and monuments that will be erected in Washington to the memory of their comrades who fell at the front. This will not only give occupation of a reconstructive character, but also give a spiritual vision of what it is to be an American, and what it is to live in the best country under the sun, and be a part of the best Government that has as yet been devised.

The salvation of man is work; the satisfaction of work in production; the flower of production is art; art is the handmaid of religion; and if we are to succeed as a nation we must make a religion of our liberties. These are the ideals for the Soldiers' Institute and the reason for the appeal for its support. It is doing a work that the people can do better for themselves than any government can do for them.

It is the very spirit of self-reliance without which the courage of the people dies. The way to resume prosperity is to resume first, by giving work to the idle soldiers in public improvements that are contemplated in every town and city and which have been waiting for these times of peace. As soon as general prosperity has returned

the men will automatically leave the educational environments of the institute, which will have added to their powers of production, to apply these powers for their own advancement and the benefit of all.

ARGUMENT.

When one hears of the large appropriations for hospital care and rehabilitation of the soldiers one naturally asks why we need the Soldiers' Institute for the same purpose, therefore let us review what the Government is doing.

I. In the first place the appropriations can be applied only to the injured or disabled soldiers, and yet some of these who escaped harm do not want to return to the place they had before the war, for the service had given them a new and broader vision of life, but it does not always bring the opportunities which their ambition longs for. Therefore we hold that those who are not among the injured and are willing to work for their own advancement should he given an opportunity to do so in the Soldiers' Institute, so far as the money at its command will justify after the wounded soldiers have been pro rided for.

I would like to pause a moment to put into the record a letter from Sir Philip Gibbs, written from England and published in the Sunday edition of the Washington Herald of May 8, 1921, in which he lays great stress on the fact that the English soldiers do not want to return to the work that they had before the war. It probably gives one of the best definitions of their critical situation over there and the fundamental, underlying reasons for much of their discontent and their present strikes which are putting the English Empire in peril at the present moment. I mention that because the dissatifaction of our own soldiers is not any different from the dissatisfaction of the soldiers of other countries along these same lines. [Reading:]

The high percentage of illiteracy and the lack of manual efficiency compelled the Government to create and assist many forms of education as a war measure, and the education provided in the Army and Navy has been an essential feature in national advancement.

It can not be too highly commended and supported. Some of the results of Army training and that of the Federal Board of Education are shown in the following tables of comparison of the wages earned before and since the war, both for wounded and the unwounded. (See Appendix II.)

We hold it is unanswerable that the good work established by the Government should be continued for a time after the discharge from the service for the men who want to work for their own better efficiency.

This the Government is not doing, and this the Soldiers' Inst tute proposes to do. II. Life in the Army by its very nature substitutes obedience for self-reliance, and when added to this comes life in the hospital where everything is properly done for the patient, it is a hard period of adjustment to restore self-reliance. Therefore the Soldiers' Institute is a necessity to take care of that interval between the hospital discharge and the full ability to battle with the world.

This can be better done by an organization with this as one of the objects than by any institution managed by the Government for reasons that are inherent to the morals of the life itself, as will be apparent to every one who knows the conditions.

The soldier who has been wounded is looking to the Government to do everything for him and in this institution where the spirit of the life is work and service, he will be stimulated as he can not be stimulated under any Government-managed institution, because the very fact that he looks to the Government for all of the things that the Government ought to do for him relieves him of much of that stimulus and self-reliance that we are endeavoring to engender, whereas in this institution he will be thrown on his own responsibility and he will have to do his fair share of work for his physical maintenance up to the ability of his strength so as not to overwork him, and if he is not willing to do that, he is too ill to be in this place

and should go back into the hospital or he is too inefficient to spend time with, and then he can be thrown out into the world; in other words, this will give him his opportunity to try himself out and make good and find out whether he is morally inefficient or whether he has the stamina to be rehabilitated into a full effective man. [Reading:]

The appalling lack of physical development disclosed by the men drawn for service was a national disgrace and will be one of the elements carefully considered in the life of the institute.

III. Since environment plays an important part in recovery from illness we propose to locate in a beautiful and inspiring country near Washington, which will keep the institute in accord with the many Government activities dealing with the injured soldiers so as to cooperate with them in every way and obviate duplication of effort, to the end that each will supplement the other.

We are negotiating for an abandoned marble quarry which has never been a commercial asset to its owners, but which has great educational value to the Soldiers' Institute. It has white, pink, and green marbles. It would furnish the means of establishing many little industries and trades that would produce things of a market value, and we could furnish stone for building purposes of a memorial character.

I think I may pause there a moment to say that the plans for a memorial peace bell tower in Washington are well under way under the auspices of the Arts Club, which I helped to found, and in the course of this month the general Federation of Women's Clubs are going to indorse that at their meeting in Salt Lake City. They have a membership of two million and a half and they are going to cooperate with the Arts Club and form an organization to put up that bell tower in Washington, and it will add to their ability to raise that fund if it is known that the Soldiers' Institute have a marble quarry, is going to quarry the stone and cut it, and that the building will be largely put up by the work of the rehabilitated soldiers who are now in hospitals and needing occupation.

I have been testing some of that marble in my own studio in order to know its quality and it is very fine building stone and when the quarry is really developed it is very likely that we will find statuary marble in there. My piece was a rough piece that I picked up on the surface and it was not a real test of the quality of the marble. It is within 10 miles of Mount Weather and can be made easily supplementary to the work that would be done at Mount Weather, and would add to the interest of the life there. [Reading:]

To put up a memorial building entirely by contract to the lowest bidder deprives it of much of its spiritual significance, but to have it put up by the soldiers working out their own better proficiency in memory of all who served them at the front brings us to a kind of service which made Athens the center of Greek culture and inspired the people of the Middle Ages to erect their beautiful cathedrals.

IV. Our institute shall have a school of architecture, and one of its first problems will be to design a temple to liberty.

A location was chosen for such a temple when we were in the midst of the war in a little valley on the shoulder of Pikes Peak, Colo. It is a gem of a place, with a little spring of water. It probably is the highest spring water that flows down the Mississippi River, the "Father of Waters," and there 13,000 feet above the sea it is proposed to erect a shrine to liberty, designed and erected by the soldiers who served their country in this war as a heritage for the future, where for all time pilgrims may come and kneel down and drink the pure water of the fountain on the border of which will be inscribed, "He who drinks here dedicates himself to the cause of liberty and the brotherhood of man." This is what we mean by making a religion of our liberties. It means that government is not a mechanical thing, it has always failed as a military institution, it is not solely legal, but is a spiritual thing and depends on the consent of the governed, and, may we add, the intelligent cooperation of the governed. This is our kind of government, and it will be better understood by this kind of visual

expression of its meaning in a temple to liberty. If our institute attains this, it will have fully justified its existence.

V. We will soon mark the one hundred and fiftieth year of the Nation's existence; we are the oldest unchanged Government, and the spiritual leaders of the world. Our strength has been personal freedom and initiative. They make for success only in the hands of the wise; in the hands of the ignorant they lead to sedition; in the hands of the vicious they lead to anarchy. Therefore, the success of the future depends on the wisdom of every individual, consequently each individual's education is the concern of all, for the truth shall keep us free.

VI. During the 150 years our Nation has paid great attention to law and order as a safeguard to life and liberty, but we have not paid sufficient attention to the pursuit of happiness. It can be pursued to best advantage by cooperative action with due regard to every other person's right to the same pursuit, and as we propose to have a study of design in mosaic, we might in this way learn the value of each little stone in the picture and thus learn the relative value of each individual in the picture of our civilization.

Let us imagine 100,000,000 people really comprehending how important each is in the whole mosaic of life. Suppose we could round them all up in a huge picture extending from San Francisco to Maine, all dressed in yellow, brown, green, blue, and white, the purpose being to spell the word "happiness" on the whole country in letters 40 miles high, so the people of Mars could see us. The trouble is that, although we are all dressed in the proper colors of yellow, brown, green, and blue for the background and white for the letters, too many of us think he or she should be dressed in white, and we need only the great political artist to call us to our proper places. When the master mind comprehends and the people all understand, then we will spell the word, and then it will be each for all and all for each in this great mosaic of happiness.

A nation of happy people can safely defend themselves from without, and they are armor proof against boring from within with the augur of sedition, destructive discontent, and class antagonisms.

Discontent is the mainspring of life; all that we are we owe to it. For the want of a better term we may divide it into two parts, one benign and the other malignant. In the benign form it is the generator of progress, construction, and evolution; in the malignant form it begets riot, destruction, and revolution.

That all may have an equal chance in the pursuit of happiness and in finding his place in the great mosaic, there will be no examinations to exclude the service men from their institutes. There will be but two questions to ask, "What can you do to maintain yourself while here, and what do you wish to study in order to better your condition?"

Confident that the application of these principles will bring us to a better national life, we appeal for the necessary financial support.

Now, I suppose you are all aware that last year they appointed the Secretary of the Treasury, the Secretary of War, the Secretary of the Navy, and the Secretary of Agriculture as a commission to report on this very property at Mount Weather, to see if it could be used under any Government functions for the rehabilitation of the soldiers as a Government function, and their report has been published here in this. report of December 20.

Mr. JONES. Do they recommend that it be turned over to this institute?

Mr. BUSH-BROWN. No, sir; this institute did not exist at that time. Mr. JONES. When was this institute organized?

Mr. BUSH-BROWN. It was organized on April 21, I think.

Mr. JONES. How is it supported--by contributions?

Mr. BUSH-BROWN. Yes, sir.

Mr. JONES. What funds has it available for its own use?

ent.

Mr. BUSH-BROWN. It has not asked for any contributions at presWe were first desiring to obtain recognition from the Government and a plan of cooperation, so that we might have the right to ask for contributions. This can be successful only by the cooperation of the Government officials who are dealing with these problems,