Montana labor news., 1934-11-15
The Washington Scene
By Len De Caux

WASHINGTON. Up A littl'
house Of ones own, a patch OF land
some chickens and maybe a COW, MAKE
a dream of paradise far more appeal
ing to most American unemployed
workers than the poets loaf OF bread
jug of wine and singing soul-mate.
And nowadays this kind of dream
has entered politics. 1t is something
that administration leaders, from Pres
ident Roosevelt down, are ready to talk
about at length and with evident relish
upon the least %provocation. Subsis-
tence homesteads, rural rehabilitation
decentralization Of industry, these are
the %unpoetical names, the political ar
NOR, under which this tender dream
masquerades in a rough-and-tumble
world.
When the dream goes walking, it is
not a very substantial sight, to be sure,
THE Division of Subsistence Home
steads of the Department of the In
terror has placed $50 families in actual
occupancy of homesteads. Rural re-
Mobilization, under the auspices of the
Federal Emergency Relief Administra-
ton, claims to have aided $4,000 coun-
try families with small advances for
tools, farm animals and such-like. The
FERA is just starting to build some
rural communities Of its own from the
ground up. And Every so often gov
eminent publicity tells somewhat wis
fully of the advantages to industry of
establishing itself in rural centers or
small towns.
But this is just the beginning, the
dreamers say. Six hundred subsistence
houses are nearing completion and the
Department of the Interior has plans
for several thousand more. Harry L.
Hopkins, relief administrator, tells of
plans under way for II rural industrial
communities, in each OF which from $50
to zoo families taken from the relief
rolls may be established.
= + =
There is no questioning the enthusi-
asm Of Roosevelt, Hopkins and Ickes
for these projects. Their eyes light up
when they speak of them; they finger
pictures and plans with the eagerness
of children who have just decided,
Lets play housed"
Nor is there any question of the po-
litical popularity of such playing house
in the United States. The horror of
city slums, their squalor and their
noise, the bitterness of millions Of city
unemployed who may turn a hand to
make their bread, have eaten deep into
the consciousness of a people but a few
generations removed from the indie
pendence of frontier days, with memo
ries of American small-town life or of
quiet peasant existence in Europe.
With this dream dangled before
them, Americas jobless may go through
the tragedy of the coming winter with
a better heart and fewer demands for
more relief and adequate unemploy-
ment insurance, think the practical pol
iticians; though many of them have
lost the old American hope Of rising
to the business class, they may yet be
saved from radicalism by the thought
of thus going back to the land.
And this is n promise that can be
held before the jobless without antag-
onizing the businessmen. Has not
President Henry I. Hartman of the
U. S. Chamber of Commerce described
this very dream as "the real cure Of
the situation" Speaking in Memphis
recently, he said; 81 hope that future
expenditures of the federal govern
ment for relief work will take the form
of the construction of well-designed,
inexpensive homes within 10, 20 or 80.
miles of our great centers, each having
not less than two acres of land"
But the American worker and farmer
may be pardoned if they become sus-
when the big businessman be-
comes enthusiastic. In this case cheap
labor producing its own keep instead Of
the farmers produce with en-
ployer-supplied wages, is m cause for
OildlllDCI u OOllllltIEe G|uluuldSIl. In
India, for instance, m%ill-owners may
pay less than a living wage to textile
workers, since many Of them also till
the soil when not in the mill.
OF course, few practical persons will
take the dream seriously once it has
served its political purpose. There is
too great a disparity between the mil
lions of unemployed and the few thous-
and at most who are likely to be estab-
in government $65O-$16O0 homes
If money is available. More than
applications and 100000 inquiries
have already come to the Department
of the Interior for the few thousand
homesteads it has in mind.
But suppose the wheels Of centra-
large-scale industry could be
turned backward, and suppose the bill
lions we're available to build the mag
ined Gardens of Eden. Would not the
old serpent of industrialism repeat its
devilish work? Would not 1ow-wage