HOMESTEAD LAND NEAR BIG CITIES NEEDED, HE SAYS

Vacant Lots Association Official Dissects Problem of Farming

Puts Question Up to Congress and Legislatures in Statement

Congress and Legislatures must create cheap homestead lands near the big cities and so give the land-hungry thousands a chance to become farmers without having to make the heroic sacrifices of early pioneers on wild frontiers in Texas or the northwest, according to Assistant Superintendent Charles Horn, of the Vacant Lots Cultivation Association, and director of the Lincoln Institution's gardens at Wayne, where its fifty boys are being taught to become farmers.

Director Horn, reviewing the cry of the Nation for more farmers and cheaper food for the city millions, yesterday made the following statement:

"The awakening of interest in agriculture by the United States government proves that the farmers' vocation is beginning to receive the proper recognition it deserves. The deep interest of the American Bankers' Association, in appointing a permanent committee on agriculture and financial development and education is encouraging. Extension of the rural credit to the farmers in helping them to meet their mortgages nad other burdens of taxation for a longer period of time than ever before given them will mean much to the farmers."

The recent movement of Secretary of the Treasury McAdoo in sending $50,000,000 to the Southern farmers to help them to meet their obligations in the harvesting of crops is significant. Another recent effort to help agriculture has been the introduction of a bill by Senator Fletcher, of Georgia, to establish in every rural district a rural bank managed exclusively by farmers and having in Washington a national rural bank, with a managing director at its head."

Farmer Now Appreciated

"All these efforts prove that the farmer is at last being appreciated and that he has in the past been in many respects neglected."

"Wonderful progress during the past fifty years of agriculture has been marked by the establishment of agricultural colleges and State experiment stations, with a staff of scientific workers. The great inventions in farm machinery, gang plows, traction engine reapers and binders, thrashing machines, electric motors and machinery have also aided advancement."

"The story of the soil, its fertility, how to grow larger yields of corn, wheat, rye, alfalfa, potatoes, feeds and feeding has had important results, and so has the high standard in egg production and the increased yield of milk and butter fats from the Holstein, Guernsey and Jersey cattle. The Illinois Bankers' Association is working to solve four of our greatest State and national problems - to check four of our greatest sources of waste, an impoverished soil, impractical educational methods, lack of farm organization and poor roads."

This statement by banker Harris, who has interested himself in the advancement and education of the farmer, raises the question: What has all the work of the Department of Agriculture amounted to? The average person may suppose that the secret of the soil and its needs has been discovered. Yet we are just beginning to lay the real foundation for agriculture.

"Greatest of all will be to keep the boy and girl on the farm to improve the social life of the farmer."

"This has been left to him and his family, and in some communities the rural church is fortunate in having a progressive pastor and the grange. In order to make life worth living in the country in its truest sense we must create social life on the farm. The burdens of the house wife should be reduced and the boy and girl induced to stay on the land by giving them the same pleasures that our city children enjoy."

"Country life at times is very monotonous, especially to the child who has to do the same thing over and over again. The government should start a systematic campaign for the social centre idea. Every rural district should have a meeting house for amusement, a dance hall, library with current magazines and agricultural literature, as well as meeting rooms for discussion."

"Every child in city schools should be given some practical training in vegetables and flower gardening. They would thus learn sequence and system and property rights. Advancing to the higher grades in public schools and obtaining the theoretical knowledge of soil formation and fertility, seeds and essentials for good farming, these city children would desire a rural calling instead of going to shops to learn a trade or higher colleges."

"The Philadelphia Vacant Lots Cultivation ahs been giving this week much needed opportunity to children and families. During the past year over 800 children of these families (numbering 442) derived valuable instruction in gardening by helping their parents to till the soil and harvest products."

"But what shall we do to help the city people who have a desire to go to farming? There are hundreds of families of my own personal acquaintance looking for the chance to go to the land. A ten-acre farm and a dwelling is their desire. But how can these workers reach the soil? Not having the necessary means to purchase a farm, the average income to the laboring man (and this is the class we desire to help) is no more than $500 a year, with the present cost of living, food necessities, rent, coal and wearing apparel, what can these people save in money to enable them to go into farming? There are hundreds of foreign born citizens having the necessary experience, but who lack capital, while others have no training whatever, but have the desire for agriculture. There are thousands in our municipalities land hungry."

"Sooner or later the Federal government must take hold of the forward-to-the-land question. Either it must break the speculative feature of selling land at high rates or purchase large tracts of good land within the radius of the built-up centres, not remote in Texas or the Northwest, for not everybody can be a pioneer. Create homestead lands near the cities."

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Notes and References

Courtesy of the Philadelphia Inquirer, 1913.08.24 Homestead Land Near Big Cities Needed, Philadelphia Inquirer p13.pdf