Evening Star Newspaper, December 3, 1935, Page 13

TUGWELL HALS NEW ERAFORU.S. Undersecretary of Agricul- ture Details Resettlement Hopes in Forum Talk. Hailing & “new era in terms of assured income, security and content- ment at a high standard of living,” Dr. Rexford G. Tugwell, Undersec- retary of Agriculture, last night de- clared this will be brought about “if we learn to adapt ourselves to the realities of the power age and cease to rely upon the cutworn shibboleths of international finance and the pat formulas of nineteenth century econo- mists, who thought in terms of feudal privilege and vested interests.” Tugwell, the resettlement admin- {strator, spoke in the National Radio Forum, arranged by The Star and broadcast over a Nation-wide net- work of the National Broadcasting Co. Much of his speech was devoted to the resettlement work which is designed ultimately to rehabilitate 525,000 farm families, and to improve rural and suburban housing. He recounted the struggle of thou- sands of farm families to keep going on land unfit for farming, and said by the end of this year his agency will have bought 10,000,000 acres of such land, which will be converted to such uses as recreational areas and game refuges. About 22,000 farm fam- ilies will be given a chance to move to better lands and an average of 75,000 men will be given work de- veloping the land which is bought, the speaker added. The process of land adjustmént, Tugwell said, will result in saving to communities in taxes now necessary to support roads and schools in sub- marginal areas. Text of Address. The text of Dr. Tugwell's speech follows: Just after war, alluring advertise- ments appeared in the larger news- papers of the Middle West. They ran about as follows: “FOR SALE—Excellent Wiscon- &in farm lands. Buy now and as- sure your future. Small down pay- ment, easy terms. No previous farm experience needed. Hun- dreds have made good.” Barbers, mechanics, steel workers, school teachers and tailors saw in these advertisements the opportunity to real- ize a lifelong dream. Here was & chance to establish a home on the traditional American pattern, to be- come well off and to provide for their children’s future. It seemed easy and safe. Farm prices were high; even banks and insurance companies were investing heavily. What safer place could be found for savings? Many borrowed money and added it to their own sav- ings in order to make first payments. ‘The earnings of years were transferred to' the bank accounts of farm-land speculators. So great were hopes and s0 artistic were the illustrated booklets that some purchases were made sight unseen. Other buyers, more cautious but still afire with enthusiasm, asked to be shown the land before parting with their life savings. ‘The speculators were ready for them. A few model farms had been fixed up | on the best land. Drainage ditches were in operation. Fields wére under cultivation. Families were living in pretty little farm houses and the barns were filled with sleek cattle. The pic- ture was so serene that even the doubt- ful, after viewing its pastoral charm, dug into their pockets for the cash payments. Didn’t Get Model Farms. That was 16 or 17 years ago. Let's see what these people got for their money. Of course, they didn’t get the model farms. Instead of rich soil, they tar and not the land had Courage failed a few in this wilder- ness of sand and stumps and peat with the loss of their down payments. However, it was not long before a slick salesman had lured another family into the same predicament. Long before the Federal Government stepped in, many of those who stuck it out were being supported by charity. Many still are. For all of them, living is desperately hard. Children are underfed and badly clothed. Not long ago a Resettlement man called at the home of one of these poor-land farm- ers.: His young daughter said: “Dad ought to be in bed. He's almost got pneumonia.” But he wasn't in bed. He was standing almost knee-deep in a swamp cutting marsh grass for the few cows and horses he had left. Mal- nutrition had worn down his resist- ance and overwork had sapped his energy. He was helpless and hopeless. Resources Swept Away. ‘These people are stranded. Their resources have been swept away, and they are unable to move. No one will buy their land. It never should have been put under the plow in the first place. No one but a slick salesman could sell it and these gentlemen are having & hard time now. Our resettlement people are now trying to help. We are buying up land in this old glacial lake bottom and in other badly used areas and shall put it back to uses nature will allow. Some 150,000 acres in this particular section will be turned into recreational will be offered a chance to move to good land nearby. After nearly & generation of frustration and disap- pointment, hope is again restored to them. More is involved than relief of human misery and suffering. Tax- payers will be saved thousands of dollars each year. Roads and schools in the purchased areas will be closed down. The families moving out of the area will become self-supporting tax- payers, whereas now in some of the townships involved more than half of the land has been tax delinquent. The land is being changed from & public liability into a public asset. This is only one type of resettlement problem. Let me tell you what has happened in another area, in what is sometimes called the “Dust Bowl.” Some years ago a prosperous farmer from the Corn Belt bought a large tract on the Southwestern plains. He invested several thousand dollars in | 1and and equipment and had one of the best farming layouts in the region. | He thought he had every chance of | success. Prices were good and neigh- | boring farms in the same region had | produced bumper crops in the previous | few years. He, too, had a dream. He | thought that, after a few years of | large-scale farming, he could retire with a competence, and he was a practical and successful farmer who knew what he was about. Drought Last Ever Since. That was several years ago. | No | destruction. been a drought year. The wind has lifted the top soil—his capital—and blown it away in black, choking clouds. It now lies in drifts and dunes on once grassy flelds. Continued failure has wiped out his investment and today, he, t00, is stranded. He retently told one of our Resettiement Administra- tion people: “Our one hope is to get away, but we can’t get away unless the Government helps us.” There are thousands of families in a similar situation throughout the whole of the Great Plains. Like the Wiscon- sin lake bottom, much of this land got land which had been part of the Now... should never have been plowed. But it the name bogs, and they were glad to get out | sh area and wild-life refuge. More than | 200 families in this one project alone | nearly 5,000,000 people living on the | sooner had he plowed under the wild | | prairie grass than the wind began its | It was a drought year— | and practically every year since has | This is not an exceptional case. | makes excellent range for livestock and the Resettlement Administration . is helping to restore it to that productive use. This is the country where grass grew waist high, where the great herds of buffalo lived and where the traditional prairie fires menaced the early settlers. To make & change now is less costly than it would be to wait. Few people realize how wasteful it is to-misuse lend. Let me illustrate. A study made in one county of the Northwest that the public is paying $185.61 per family to transport children in & poor-land area to school. The actual tax collected from each farm con- cerned average $6—less than 4 per cent of each family’s transportation bill. The other citizens in the county had to dig into their” pockets for the difference. Eocnomic Leak Plugged. By restoring misused lands to a better gise, the Resettlement Adminis- tration is helping to plug this eco- nomic leak. At the same time, we are adding directly to the wealth of the Nation, for land which is & public lability if wrongly used, becomes a na- tional asset if it is rightly used. ‘We will have bought about 10,000,000 acres of such misused land by the end of this year. These acres are located in 208 different projects throughout the country. About 22,000 farm fame ilies are in this way being given a chsince to move to better lands. The tracts we are buying are being de- veloped as forests, parks, grazing areas and wild-life refuges. The mere task of preparing them for these other uses can give employment to a daily average of more than 75,000 men under the work-relief program. This process of land adjustment is the basis of a long-time program and must be judged as such, and not as an emergency relief measure to be aban- doned with the first economic upturn. But more than a million rural families have been on relief. This means that land, have had to depend upon outside sources to provide them with food, and helping them is our emergency task. Many of these were farmers on land which ordinarily would support them. Depression, drought, flood, foreclosure had robbed them of their live stock and equipment, often forcing them into tenancy and sharecropping. It was obvious that a small amount of finan- cial aid would tide them over their emergency and prevent them from be- xioolrnlnl permanently dependent on re- lef. For example, a farmer with a good | record behind him—let'’s call him Homer Grant—lived in the corn and hog country. His small farm had supported himself and family. There was & mortgage on the place, but he had been paying interest regularly and, until 1930-31, had even been able to lay a little money aside. He was counting on sending his children to the State university. But farm prices fell disastrously and Grant had to go to the bank, not to deposit money, but to withdraw his savings. Soon his money was exhausted and the mortgage holder began prodding him for overdue payments. You know the rest of his familiar story. It has been re-enacted in hundreds of thou- sands of farm homes in the United | States. His resources became com- pletely exhausted and he had to ask for public relief. $600 Loan Recommended. A visit from the county rehabilita- tion agent prevented his misfortune from becoming a tragedy. Sitting down with Grant, this resettlement agent worked out & budget and farm man- agement plan, and recommended him for a rehabilitation loan of $600. With this money Grant was able to buy live stock, tools, fertilizer and seed. Re- settlement gave him a chance to get back on his feet. Once more his farm is yielding him a profit and he is re- paying, not only his rehabilitation loan, but his mortgage as well. Inci- dental to his economic rehabilitation, he has learned better methods of farming, and his wife has learned more | economical methods of home manage- ment. A good farmer has been saved to continue the efficient cultivation of his own farm by & small loan, which will be repaid to the Government, as MEANS fwice AS MUCH AS EVER BEFORE! \UNTHER'S has always been a dependable name for beer, and now, you can say GUNTHER'S for ALE and expect an equally | gratifying pleasure. * You'll like GUNTHER'S ALE because of its 'distinctive and full-bodied flavor. ‘You'll like it because it’s made as! 'only GUNTHER’S can make it, from a famous old English formula, It} lhas to_be GOOD to be GUNTHER'S, Tune in WRC Every Wed. and Fri., 7:45 P.M. GUNTHER'S i le. iUNTHER'S DR. REXFORD a result of this typical case of re- settlement activity. For, through the Resettlement Ad- ministration, the Federal Government is extending similar help to half a million farm families. They are off relief. ‘They are becoming self-sup- porting. They have regained their self-respect. They are once more useful members of the community. They are already paying back to the Government their rehabilitation loans and the only cost to the country is the cost of administering and super- vising this program for individual re- covery. How is this program working? Let me read you what some of the farm families say: “When you found me I was crawlin’, Now I'm walkin'” “We would have had a bare existence from hand to mouth.” “We would have lived, but food would have been scarce.” “My family would have probably gone hungry.” “We just couldn’t have lived and kept our self-respect.” “I guess we would have gone to the dogs.” “I have more faith in Uncle Sam than ever before.” This rehabilitation program is not a relief program. Instead, it is de- signed to take farmers off relief and to make them permanently indepen- dent. It is also helping other farmers to avoid the necessity of asking for relief. One way in which we do this is through our voluntary debt adjust- ment committees. More than 15,000 volunteer workers, under the direction of the Resettlement Administration, are seeking to prevent farm bank- ruptcy and foreclosure by settling the differences between debtors and cred- itors. Already 150,000 farm homes have been saved to their present own- ers in this way. The Resettlement Administration | is, as you see, doing precisely the op- posite to relief as it is generally con- sidered. We are preventing farm families from going on the relief rolls and are taking them off the relief rolls. Under our present program of rehabilitation we expect to provide for more than 525,000 farm families— two and a half million men, women and children. In addition to this program of re- G. TUGWELL, ~=S8tar Staff Photo. habilitation and land adjustment, we have a third activity—the improve- ment of rural and suburben hous- ing. At the present time we have completed or are completing 61 com- munity projects. These are of various types. Some are in agricultural areas, where the families engage in farming. Others are near industrial centers and afford low-income workers an oppor- tunity to have decent housing. Slums Also In Country. Slums are generally associated with the tenement districts of our larger cities and most of us do not realize that in poverty-stricken parts of our countryside familles with seven and eight children live in bleak one and two room shacks. Rags are stuffed in holes in the walls and windows. Pov- erty, as expressed in bad housing, is just as detrimental to health in the country as it is in the city. So we are now utilizing workers from the relief rolls to help families acquire better homes, both in agricultural and sub- urban communities. Often it is pos- sible to group farms together in such & way that schools, electricity, roads and other public services can be more economically provided. We are de- veloping a number of these agricul- tural communities and are, in addition, building four large suburban housing projects accommodating a total of 5,000 low-income families. These proj- ects are located near large industrial centers where steady employment is assured. Of the need for better housing there can be no dispute, for it has been estimated that we shall have to build 14,000,000 new dwellings in this country in the next 10 years; and studies show that over one-third of all our present houses are obsolete. The suburban housing projects which we have started obviously cannot do more than demonstrate the possibility arey which will not support life. t our program runs a single clear pattern which marks it as a part of our national tradition. We are moving in the wake of our dreams and trying to bring reality s little closer. The free lands of the boundless West were a national dream from the dawn of our history on this continent. Men struggled, fought, faced torture, starvation and death to win the right of our people to the lands which lay beyond the Alleghenies. Although for 40 years the frontier has gone, its memory and its motives still control our national feeling about the land and the people who make their living from the land. For the land, in part, we revolted against the Eng- lish King, and for the land our own people waged a bitter four-year war, on the issue of whether slave or free labor should develop our national heritage. Land use is, you see, a fighting question and has been since the dawn of time. The victorious sweep of our people across the con- tinent was as complete and as un- planned as most victories. Another dream—perhaps the most tragically frustrated in our history— centers around the Great Valley and the Father of Waters which gives it its name. The Mississippi River pro- vided an artery north and south which has marked out its basin as the seat of power and clvilization in our natignal future. To secure the mouth of the Mississippi, even the pacific Jefferson was ready to ally himself with England, and the bellig- erent Jackson led the men of the West to battle at New Orleans in or- der that the river might remain in American hands. Spaniard, Prench- man and Englishman have fought us to control this gigantic artery of wealth and commerce. The issue of whether the West would join the North in the War Between the States was decided when the Con- federates barred traffic on the Mis- sissippl before ever Fort Sumter was fired ‘The war was fought to able to say “The Father of Waters flows unvexed to the sea,” he was announcing the success of more than the Union Armies. He was giving voice to a national dream, which seemed to have achieved reality. Yet for 70 years, that Great Valley, free the river, and when Lincoln was | rich, through: high wages and low costs possible as a result of techno- logical advance, This was the dream which drained our best people from the farms, from all over the world, into the metiopolitan and industrial areas. For 4C years and more we in- vested our wealth, our men and our energy in the most marvelous flower- ing of human ‘ingenuity applied to in- dustry within sur history. That dream all but destroyed itself in 1929 and | the years which followed, leaving be- | hind it men and women without em- ployment, Rope, shelter or food—be- | yond a niggardly dole or charity. Yet | the dream Hac substance, for it repre- | sented what was practically passible | if we could only master the techniques | of lving and working together, in | ourselves to the realities of the age and cease to reply upon the ou worn shibboleths of internatiopdl ° finance and the pet formulas of nineteenth century economists who thought in terms of feudal privilege and vested interests. This, the most recent and mat hopeful of our great dreams, must not be allowed to lapse into industrial serfdom, in which the only right a worker has is to sell hig labor if another man desires to hire .| him; and the farmer labors in pere petual slavery to a landlord or a morte gage. And it will not if such a proe gram as we have begun can go on over the years. It is the least contro- versial job I know. Every one agrees that it needs doing. For myself and my fellow workers, I can only say that we hope to do our share of it wisely and well. y . 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