They’ve never had a chance—and there are many such children in the rural sections of North Carolina. Resettlement hopes to give these children and their fathers and mothers the chance they’ve never had.
“Our Forefathers Ate Too Much. . . Resettlement is the Doctor,” by N.K. Hart, Carolina Co-operator, March 1936
More than 15,000 farmers in North Carolina are being helped to self-dependency by the RRA.
Dr. Carl C. Taylor, eminent rural sociologist and former Graduate School dean of North Carolina State College, who was called to Washington to become Assistant Administrator of the Resettlement Administration, uses a homely illustration to emphasize an acute agricultural problem.
“There were six boys in my family,” says Dr. Taylor, “and one of the first problems in mathematics that I learned was how to cut a pie into six equal pieces.”
“I recall that on one occasion my parents and part of the family drove to town one day to do their shopping, leaving one of my brothers and myself at home. This time it was not necessary to cut the pie into six pieces. We simple cut it into two pieces as a short cut to the quickest consumption of the whole.
“This reminds me of a short cut the pioneers took in settling the fertile farming lands on this continent. They divided the land into ‘two pieces,’ so to speak, in order to more quickly and ruthlessly strip it of forests and fertility in the wave of speculation and rapid expansion that occurred during the nation’s adolescent period of agricultural development.”
Dr. Taylor intimates that the experiment with the pie resulted in an old-fashioned stomach ache.
There is no question, he states, but that too rapid and speculative acquisition of farm lands prior to the turn of the century left this country with an agricultural ailment not dissimilar to the pains of a adolescent youth who has undertaken too large a portion of pumpkin pie.
Our National Stomach Ache
This apt illustration lays the basis for examining some of the problems which no longer could be neglected and for the correction of which the Resettlement Administration program was conceived. The backlash from the heedless agricultural development of the past which had no thought of the future but was concerned mainly with getting the largest number of acres into cultivation in the shortest period of time included hundreds of thousands of stranded farm families who had to go on federal relief when the full force of the depression hit the country.
In the land rush of the past 150 years, huge sections of the country were carelessly farmed by land hungry pioneers and speculators who took the cream of the soil and forest crops and pushed on farther west to repeat the process. In the wake of this rush inevitably were left stranded groups. Evenutally they were to become problem groups. As long as the frontiers were open and new lands remained to be settled, the problem was not so acute. The frontiers finally vanished, but the day of calamity was postponed by two factors, namely industrial expansion in the big cities, which provided an outlet for stranded farm folk, and, a little later, the World War which opened new world markets for agricultural products. It has been estimated that 50 million acres that never should have been in cultivation were put into crops during the World War boom.
Then the depression hit the country and hundreds of thousands of farmers trying to make a living on lands impossible to farm profitably, had to turn to Uncle Sam for aid. This deplorable situation constitutes an immediate and pressing problem which the Resettlement Administration is undertaking to solve through its rehabilitation and resettlement community activities. Resettlement is trying not only to bring about a readjustment of land use to conserve the land resources of the nation and to return poor farm land to uses to which it is better adapted, such as forests and recreational areas, but also is dealing with human resources in the rehabilitation of farm families that found themselves on relief through causes for which they were not altogether responsible, and the resettlement of families located on land which should be withdrawn from agriculture.
Victims of Depression
How Resettlement is helping rehabilitate the victims of our mistaken agricultural policies in the past is described by Administrator Rexford G. Tugwell:
“During the depression, low prices and foreclosures of mortgages took away from thousands of farmers the implements of their work. Of those who did not lose their farms, many found themselves without work animals, plows, fertilizer and seed. Many tenants were unable to rent good land. There are few tragedies in life that are worse than the gradual loss of producing power to a farmer. To see a cow go, then a faithful work horse, and finally to lose the land itself. This is really to be up against it. Your hands are willing; your arms are strong. But you are still helpless. You have been good in all the ways you know. Yet you are suffering terrific punishment.
“When a farmer has to go on relief, it is because he lacks some basic tool for production. Maybe he has lost it through bad luck, or maybe because he wasn’t a skillful manager. The Resettlement Administration tries to attack both these causes of tragedy. We help farmers get the tools to earn a living and we show them how it can best be done. Sometimes the problem is good land—the government can help him find a good farm to rent. More often a farmer needs tools, machinery, or fertilizer. In that case, Resettlement helps him with a small loan to make these purchases.
“One of our most important jobs, however, is a paradoxical one. We help farmers to help themselves so that relief or a loan is unnecessary. Many thousands of the farmers who have applied to the Resettlement Administration for loans or grants did not need them; they needed advice and guidance in managing their farms, and they got it from their county supervisors. I think myself that one of our best claims for support is just these people we have kept from borrowing money.”
Helping North Carolina Farmers
Uncle Sam is now extending rehabilitation aid to thousands of deserving farmers in North Carolina whose eligibility for help was established by careful investigation and the aid of an advisory committee in each applicant’s locality.
Families living on poor land being acquired by the Resettlement Administration for retirement from agricultural use will have first preference for Resettlement communities, provided they can meet eligibility requirements, and certain others of farm background who are able to establish qualifications also will be accepted. These communities vary in size and adaptability, depending on the nature of the area in which the Government is able to buy the land, but in all cases must be a good type of farm land on which Resettlement families with necessary financial and supervisory assistance will be able to make a living and eventually to acquire homes of their own by spreading the payments over a long period.
Lands unsuited to successful farming but capable of being developed for forestry, game, and recreation areas have been purchased or are in the process of being purchased in North Carolina totaling 103,000 acres. The land cost will amount to $765,975 and the development cost is expected to run $1,186,463. Men with picks, shovels, tractors, and trucks are already at work on three of these projects.
The Sandhills project, with headquarters at Hoffman, covers 60,000 acres. On this project will be developed one of the greatest long-leaf pine forests in the country, and recreational facilities will add to the prestige of North Carolina as one of the nation’s leading winter resort areas. The Jones, Salter, and Singletary Lakes project, with headquarters at Elizabethtown covers 30,000 acres. The Crabtree Creek project with headquarters in Raleigh covers 6,000 acres.
General reforestation, nurseries, truck trails and fire lanes, dams, lake and stream improvement, park sites, 4-H Club camps, and fish hatcheries constitute some of the job projects now materializing and which form a part of the government’s plan to demonstrate better uses of these areas.
Plans for Rural Resettlement projects involving approximately 60,000 acres of land and the construction of 1,180 farmsteads are included in the North Carolina program.
Penderlea Farms, a community project near Wilmington, inherited from Subsistence Homesteads Division of the Department of the Interior, is being completed by the Resettlement Administration.
A farm-tenant project recently approved provides for the purchase of 100 individual farms in this State for worthy farm tenants. Good farms are being purchased by the Resettlement Administration and provision made whereby tenants selected may acquire them on easy terms. This project is designed to demonstrate the desirability of home ownership by tenants.
15,000 Families
Resettlement Administration has a quota of more than 15,000 rehabilitation-in-place families in North Carolina, which are being helped to self-dependency by small loans and practical supervision. About 7,000 are already under this program and the State’s full quota of Rehabilitation cases is expected to be reached by May first.
Services of Resettlement’s Farm Debt Adjustment Unit are affecting compromises and saving the homes of farmers in danger of foreclosure.
Loans for community and cooperative services, another feature of the Resettlement program, are available for such enterprises as cooperative storage houses, canneries, threshing machines, hay balers, and the purchase of purebred sires. The Federated Cooperative Exchanges, Inc., of New Bern, involving an expenditure of $25,000, was the first such project approved in the State.
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