Help for Million Farm Families on Federal Emergency Relief, 1935

“A Million Farmers On Relief” by Whitney Tharin, Carolina Co-Operator, October, 1935

A million farmers on relief and to take them off the government gave us the Resettlement Administration. What it aims to do is told here by the regional information officer.

Orators and writers for generations have pictured the advantages of farming so glowingly that many persons received a severe shock in the summer of 1934 when they discovered that more than a million farm families were on the Federal Emergency Relief Rolls.

These shocked citizens, however, had listened too long to the pleasant platitudes about the advantages of fresh country air and bright sunshine. They had forgotten that agriculture, like all other great economic enterprises, has for a long time included persons who for various reasons have been marginal in their capacity to earn. These people were so near the borderline of poverty that the coming of the depression brought them quickly below the line.

A million families meant that at least 4.5 to 5 million rural inhabitants had to be aided. They were kept from starvation by handouts from state, local, and federal governments or by such rural rehabilitation work as had already been started. With so large a portion of our farm population on relief, the government became convinced that more fundamental causes than the depression were responsible for this situation and that some more permanent economic solution had to be found for a great many of these people.

Are Victims of ____

Investigation proved that it was not merely the depression and the years of low farm prices which have brought these people to their present plight. Many of them, through no fault of their own, are more fundamentally the victims of:

1.       Mistaken agricultural policies of the last hundred years, especially the homesteading upon lands incapable of yielding a decent standard of living.

2.       Overfarming and overgrazing policies, aggravated by war demands and later the struggle to make a living by producing more commodities to offset low prices.

3.       Failure to adopt adequate methods of soil conservation.

4.       Exhaustion of lumbering, mining, and oil areas.

5.       Failure to conserve forest lands, thereby accelerating the destruction of millions of acres through erosion and floods.

In an effort to concentrate study of this problem, and to work out its solution carefully, President Roosevelt established the Resettlement Administration, naming as its head Dr. Rexford G. Tugwell, the Under Secretary of Agriculture. At the same time, the President transferred to the Resettlement Administration the Rural Rehabilitation Division of the FERA; the Subsistence Homesteads Unit of the Department of Interior; and the Land Policy Section of the Agricultural Adjustment Administration.

North Carolina In Region Four

In the national administrative set-up approved by Doctor Tugwell, the nation was divided into 11 regions. North Carolina, with Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee, makes up Region IV, with Raleigh as regional headquarters. The work in this region is under the supervision of two specialists in their respective fields—Homer H. B. Mask, Regional Director of Rural Resettlement, and James M. Gray, Regional Director of Land Utilization.

The present goal of the Resettlement Administration is to put 350,000 destitute or low-income families on a self-sustaining basis. To do this properly will require much time and patient work. After land has been acquired for the use of those who should move to new locations, steps must be taken to assure that the persons so resettled will be enabled to earn a subsistence and raise the standards of their home life. Ideal functioning of the program involves careful social studies of the groups concerned, and the acquisition of land not too far removed from the places where the families are already accustomed to conditions.

There is nothing arbitrary about resettlement. In no case will any family be removed to another location without that family’s voluntary acceptance of the plan. As a matter of fact, the overwhelming majority of the families assisted will be resettled, insofar as possible, “in place,” that is, in the community or neighborhood in which they are now living. There will be established, however, a few rural agricultural communities to which selected families will be permitted to move.

Is Not Relief

There is nothing about resettlement that smacks of relief—as such. Money advanced by the Resettlement Administration for the purchase of farm lands and necessary equipment by farmers, tenants, share-croppers, or farm laborers is to be repaid within a reasonable time.

The work of the Land Utilization Division of the Resettlement Administration is directed towards the better use of land resources. Some of the projects under this division involve the purchase of lands now in agricultural use which should be placed in public ownership as forest or grazing lands in order to conserve the soil and native cover and to correct unsatisfactory conditions of human life and public finance. Other projects are concerned primarily with the public reservation of needed areas for recreation or wild life protection when such use is justified by the location and physical characteristics of the land.

Three major objectives comprise the purpose of the land utilization projects. First is the conservation of land resources, and the use of them to the fullest public advantage. Second is the assistance of families bound to a poverty-stricken dependence on unproductive land to sell out their poor holdings and move to a more profitable location. The third objective is to make possible a reorganization of the finances of local governments by relieving them of the necessity of expending large sums for the maintenance of roads, school, and other public serves in areas of poor land which do not contribute their fair share of taxes to the public treasuries.

In addition to the close-knit cooperation with which the two major divisions—Rural Resettlement  and Land Utilization—of the Resettlement Administration must operate, there must be inter-governmental cooperation with a number of other federal departments, administrations, and services.

Chief among the agencies with which the Resettlement Administration will co-operate are the Extension Service of the United States Department of Agriculture, the Land-Grant Colleges, and Experiment Stations. The Extension Service has agreed to cooperate in appraising the resources of families proposed for rehabilitation or resettlement, in the development of specific plans for each family, and in the supervision of the execution of these plans. In this manner, all families aided by the Resettlement Administration will have available the expert services of Extension Service workers, including those of county farm and home agents and their assistants.