Jasper County Democrat, Volume 18, Number 59, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 October 1915 — Military Training of the Unemployed Would Create Large Reserve Army [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Military Training of the Unemployed Would Create Large Reserve Army

By MAJOR GENERAL WOOD,

United States Army

( A PLAN 1 would suggest to accomplish the double good of*enlargiiig the reserve army and relieving the cities of the burden of unemployment would be the establishment of suburban camps placed near the cities, where any man WHO IS OUT OF WORK COULD APPLY AND, ON BEING ADMITTED, RECEIVE THREE MONTHS OF MILITARY TRAINING, HIS BOARD, LODGING IAND UNIFORM AND SIX DOLLARS A MONTH BESIDES. I do not refer necessarily to those who are too lazy and inefficient to work, but to the thousands of men who are ready and willing to do wh it®ver they can. They have become one of the great municipal problems, and if every little town in the country, to say nothing of the cities, would mobilize its unemployed we would have an army of more than one million men, in addition to the reservists we already have. Three months under military supervision would give these men health, morale, knowledge of how to take care of themselves and self respect, so at the end of that time they would be three times as capable of finding a position and of holding it as they were before. « H M TO SAY NOTHING OF THE MILITARY VALUE TO THE COUNTRY DERIVED FROM SUCH A LARGE NUMBER OF RESERVISTS, THE ADTHE CITIES OF ORGANIZING AND EQUIPPING THESE MEN WOULD BE ALMOST TOO GREAT TO BE MEASURED.