Evening Star Newspaper, January 22, 1935, Page 10

A—10 HOMES FOR S0 | INCOMES ATTAINED Pynchon Outlines Benefits of Homestead Projects in Radio Forum. The subsistence homestead program now under way has reached the point | where homesteads can be provided | for families with as little annual in- come as $500 or $600, and it is hoped to get it even below this figure, Charles E. Pynchon, president and general manager of the Federal Sub- sistence Homestead Corp. said in a radio talk Jast night. Pynchon spoke in the National Radio Forum, arranged by The Star, and broadcast over a network of the National Broadcasting Co. ! He outlined the scope of this plan, | relating that 62 homestead projects now have been approved, and that when completed, they will care for 6,600 families. The expenditures thus far total in excess of $5,000,000 out of an appropriation of $25 ooo,ouo.} the speaker said | Taking note of criticism, he said: “They tell us that we have made mistakes, that in some cases our errors have been costly. We admit certain mistakes. We admit they | have cost money. I know of no| agency, public or private, which can] engage in a new enterprise and not | have first costs higher, due to errors | in judgment and the necessity of some experimentation.” Text of Address. The text of Mr. Pynchon address follows: From the beginning of time, homes | have held the minds and hearts of all peoples. For “home"—the dwelling | place of his family, the symbol of his | traditions, the repository of his am-! bitions, the refuge which shelters him | in time of distress—for “home,” a man will lay down his life, should the need arise. When he is able to own a corner of good American soil and there bring up his children among proper social, economic, and educational surround- ings, he may count himself fortunate | indeed. | Our Government, through the In- terior Department’s Division of Sub- sistence Homesteads, is making it pos- sible for several thousand persons in the low income groups to do this very thing. I suppose this radio audience, like most audiences to whom I have talked, would like first of all to know just | what is meant by a subsistence home- | stead. “Subsistence homestead” is al rather mouth-filling title for some- | thing that is really well known to all | of you. Briefly, it signifies a house and auxiliary outbuildings, located | upon a plot of land upon which can | be produced a large part of the food required for family use. In other| words, it is just such a suburban house and garden, such a semi-rural house | and small farm, as those with which you are familiar. Idea Not New. For subsistence homesteading is not | at all a new idea. I suppose that| back in prehistoric days some cave- dwelling family began it, when they brought some edible roots from the river bottom and some berry bushes from the hillside and planted them within easy distance of the cave mouth. Then, when the saber- toothed tiger was on the prowl or some rival tribe on the rampage, they could step outside and extract a meal from the soil without running the| risk of a foray over the dangerous horizon. Our frontier farmers were subsist- ence homesteaders. Except for a bit of barter for tea, or spices, or| molasses, or rum, the early American farmer produced for home consump- tion. Despite the growth of industrializa- tion and specialization which divided the population into consumers and producers of edible goods, subsistence homesteading persisted. It has been | estimated that out of the population classed as farmers by the 1930 census, perhaps a third were actually in the subsistence class in that they pro- | duced chiefly for home use and de- | pended for cash income upon some | other 1aeans of livelihood. | Even the entry of a government into the promotion of subsistence home- steading is not new. European gov- ernments have been encouraging a | are ready to flow cityward again as| ! subsistence homesteading was given sistence THE EVENING Tells of Homesteads CHARLES E. PYNCHON. out of jobs, lines of hungry men and | any other geographical factor, but as | women began to wind up to the relief- station doors. The top-heavy struc- | ture which had been built up swayed | perilously. Had it not been for the man who came into office on March | 4, 1933, it might have crashed. | Short Work Hours. | What is the outcome going to be? One thing seems apparent. We are in a new era of shorter working hours. There are hundreds of thousands of urban workers still to be re-employed. | There are an estimated 3,000,000 per- | sons who have been held back on the farms during the depression, but who | soon as the barrier of unemployment is removed. Where and how are we | going to take care of all these people? | Are we going to promote a system | which will see them all gathered into | towns and cities again, once more en- tirely dependent upon wages? Isn't there some better answer to the prob- lem? We think that there is. The man who is wise as well as thrifty deposits his savings, not in | one bank, but in two. That is the chance we are trying to give to some thousands of our citizens. For sub- sistence homesteading offers two avenues of livelihood. It is a combi- nation of rural and urban life. a com- bination of payroll employment on the one hand, and of part-time farm- | ing and gardening on the other. For | those hours in which a worker can- not earn an income through payroll employment, it provides a supple-| mentary method of earning a sub- sistence income from the soil The authority for a program of | by Congress in & section of the na- | tional recovery act. A $25,000,000 revolving fund was provided. Presi- | dent Roosevelt chose Secretary of the Interior, Ickes as the man to admin- ister this new program, and Secre- | tary Ickes delegated the job to the ! | Division of Subsistence Homesteads, which he created in his department. Low Income Group. Naturally, there was no need to help the man who could obtain as- sistance from private sources. So we have sharply limited our efforts to assisting families with annual incomes of less than $1.200. We are trying constantly, under the express orders | of Secretary Ickes. to make our pro- gram so increasingly efficient that we can extend aid to persons with a lower and still lower income. We have got to the point where we can | provide homesteads for families with | as little as $500 or $600 a year, and we hope to be able to hold out a helping hand to persons with still less money than that. What we do is to set up communi- ’ | ties consisting of from twenty-five to one or two hundred individual sub- homesteads. These com- munities or projects, as we call them, | signs a contract under | homestead. | they are most needed in the solution of the social and economic problems affecting some special area. Through the Federal Subsistence Homesteads Corp., which is the operating agency of the division, the Federal Govern- ment buys land for the builds the houses, installs such utilities as water, electricity, and sewage systems, builds roads, sets up schools where they are needed—in short, creates a complete modern rural- urban community. When the time comes for home- steaders to occupy their homes, the | cost of the project is totaled up and divided fairly among the individual homesteads. The homesteader then which he agrees to purchase the homestead over a 30-year period, with interest at 3 per cent on unpaid principal. The cost of an individual homestead aver- ages about $3,000. This embraces the land, the house, outbuildings, a share in any community facilities, and we usually include seed and fertilizer, essential farming and gardening tools, a small flock of chickens, perhaps a pig or two, possibly a horse or cow. All these things are included in the amount which the homesteader agrees | to repay. Amortized over 30 years with 62 Projects Approved. To date, 62 homestead projects have been approved, of which 43 have been | publicly announced. The 62 projects, | when completed, will accommodate | approximately 6,600 homestead fami- lies. We have purchased land for 33 projects. Approximately 1,100 houses are completed, under construction, or under contract, on 23 projects. We | have allocated approximately $19,000,- \ 000 out of our $25,000,000 re\'ol\'mgi i VITA GLASS 7-i5: o Quickly and economically installed. Write or phone. HIRES TURNER GLASS CO. R West 2560 ing Purposes DEALERS SUPPLIED Admits the healthful, tanning, ultra - violet rays shut out by ordi- nary window glass. E TORMENTS quickly pacified. For efficient help use concentrated Poslam Stafion G projects, | STAR, WASHINGTON, D, @, fund, and have made actual expendi- | houses completed and an equal num- tures of more than $5,000,000. Naturally, the houses we are put- ting up are not mansions. They can- not be and still come within the price which a homesteader can af- ford to pay. But they are substantial, well-designed houses, with some fea- tures which far more expensive houses lack. They are not shacks devoid of privacy or comfort, unable to stand the test of time and weather. They are homes of convenience and attrac- tion, with electricity and proper heat- ing, suited to the needs of the various sections of the country where they are located. They constitute a long forward step in the history of housing —and the housing of persons in the low income classes in our country is one of the dark portions of our civilization. But subsistence homesteading has more to it than the economic side, than the housing side. The social side is, after all, the most important. In the urbanization of our national life, people lost something. They lost the old emphasis on the family as the fundamental social unit; they lost the old joys of neighborliness and community living. On a subsistence lost values. They lost, too, the op- portunity and the knack of doing things for themselves. On a sub- sistence homestead, they can find any number of outlets for individual crea- tive effort. Men Build Homes. I like to think of what they are doing down on our homestead project at Crossville, Tenn. The homestead- ers there, were once miners and workers in the lumber industry, but the mines closed down and the forests were cut off, and the men who had once depended upon them for a liv- ing were left stranded. Many of them, when we went there, had been on relief for several years. Their future was one of continued unem- ployment. They knew nothing be- yond their old trades. ‘Then, the project was started. We bought a tract of land which had on it some very fine building stone and some splendid timber. The stone | was quarried; the timber was cut by |a homestead sawmill. The home- steaders themselves cleared the land, built roads, constructed their own home. Today, they have a score of { interest at 3 per cent, the monthly | payment which the homesteader must | make comes to $12.65 for a $3,000! homestead, they can recapture those | JANUARY ber nearing completion, and the first homestead families are occupying their homesteads. They are different people. They have learned new trades and crafts. They have learned masonry, carpentry, plumbing, elec- tric light fitting. They have learned modern farm methods and the mod- ern care of livestock. Some of the men are making furniture; the women are canning and weaving and making their own mattresses. Soci- ologists call this the “self-help” method of rehabilitating people—and no wonder. ‘These fine Tennesseeans, with a lit- tle direction and financial aid, have helped themselves in winning a new hope and a new chance in life. They had to have a school because | the local schools were unable to take care of all the homestead children. The homesteaders held a community meeting, and decided to pitch in and do the work themselves. Every man contributed so many hours of labor and the school was built. Living in Barns. At Crossville they put up their barns and lived in them while their houses were being built. It was in one of these barns that one of the first home- stead babies was born last Fall. The family had just moved in, after months of jobless, hopeless poverty. They had no furniture. Their chairs and tables and wardrobes were old packing boxes. And it was in a straw-filled packing box that the new-born baby . was | cradled. To one who looked in the | stable door upon that courageous little | family came inevitably the thought of | another stable, centuries ago, in a lit- tle village in Judea | Another picture I like to recall is | | that of another homestead family on | | one of our Missisippi projects. The | project was on the route of the Pri I B e s pay bigh prices for old gold, stver nd platinum or for your old jeweky. Dring in you old jeweiry today. NAtonal Worbeuia 4 Lothrep's { 2362 1004 F ‘St TUESDAY, JANUARY 22, 1935. ident and Mrs. Roosevelt during a journey through the Tennessee Valley area, on the way to Warm Springs. At this project, too, families had just re- cently moved in. The distinguished visitors had come and gone, and with them the huge crowds that had at- tended their visit. Night fell, and the moon came up over the tree tops. Its light silvered the little house and the land which was to produce the sus- tenance for the family I speak of. The father and the mother and the chil- dren came out into the night and walked back and forth before this house which was their own. And, as the , mother said later, “We just couldn't believe that this dream of ours had at last come true, that here in the moonlight was a home that was really ours. We all went indoors and fell on our knees to thank God for this blessing that had come to us." 1t is sentimental, I know, but I tell you honestly that more than once very atter-of-fact project managers and investigators have been moved as they interviewed and questioned applicants for subsistence homesteads. Every- %, w“d REAL COFFEE WITH 9 SUPER-VALUES ONEY | that in some cases our errors ha where, as though the word had been passed around the country, the phrase is, “It is like a dream come true, to think that at last we are to get a chance to have a place of our own.” A Home at Last. I shall always remember the mother of a family who stood in the investi- gator’s office in a gingham dress, faded with many wearings and washings. “I would wear this dress every day and wash it every night, all the rest of my life,” she said, “in order to be able to buy one of these homesteads.” And she meant it, for she and her husband had scrimped for years to try to buy a home, only to see their smail savings time and again swept away by some illness in the family or some dis- astrous period of unemployment. I only wish that we could help all the people who appeal to uS. They tell us sometimes that the Federal Government shouldn't be con- ducting such an enterprise as this. They tell us we have made mistakes, been costly. We admit certain mis- 7°/c OF THE CAFFEIN REMOVED AT DOWN A | takes. We admit that they have cost money. I know of no agency, public or private, which can engage in a new nd_not have first costs on Eleventh Page.) 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Regular price, $79. are scattered throughout the country, not in accordance with State lines or OsLAM small-farms movement for several years. So that subsistence homestead- ing, in itself, is no sporadic fad. “Advance” to the Farm. What is novel and modern about subsistence homesteading is the entry ! of this United States Government of ours upon a program calculated to help a large segment of our people to re- turn to the land. Many people call it a back to the land movement. I prefer to think of it as an on to the land movement, for it is not a retreat, but an advance. It is an integral part of that great pro- gram of social equity, put in motion by President Roosevelt, which we call the New Deal. It is a recognition of a set of disturbing facts, and offers a means of solving the problems pre- | sented by those facts. The facts are these: For many years we watched the stream of population flow blithely from the farms into the cities. 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