The Wilmington morning star., 1940-03-24

land. Such dispense bad housing does not con-
form to the fixed understanding of what consti.
tutes a slum but slum such housing is never
theIess, perhaps the most dangerous slum in
the United States because of the predominance
of children in the rural population. If slums
make bad citizens, such citizens are developing
in slum dwellings far from the crowding of
cities.
But the solution of the rural housing prob.
lem will not be easy. In an article in Survey
Graphic, Edith Elmer Wood says that ito call
80 per cent of our farmhouses sub-standard is
an understatement." That indicates the prob
lem. John Graham, Jr., in Housing in Scandi.
navia" University of North Carolina Press)
says that 'the Scandinavian countries have long
recognized that the problem Of rural housing
cannot be solved apart from the interrelated
factors of improved agricultural living and in.
come" He adds:
"They considered it impossible to attempt to
rehouse landless tenants and agricultural work
ers as an isolated measure. Their objective, the
setting up Of Independent familysized farms,
led to the extensive development of the small
farm holding movement. This movement may
be said to rest on two fundamental aims: a
secure land tenure and a sound agricultural
economy"
We can learn much from sensible Scandi-
navia. Undoubtedly such secure tenure and
sound economy as Scandinavians insisted upon
must underlie any final and complete solution
of the rural housing problem in America also,
just as secure employment and decent wages
must in the long run underlie any final solu.
ton of the whole problem of Slums in the cities.
But if Americans must wait for the solution
of the problems of tenure, income and security
before any action is taking to alleviate the
housing situation in town and cNuntry, we will
have a long time to wait. Indeed, almost all
our social problems in town and country would
move toward disappearance if we could attain
with some dispatch greater income and secur.
ity for all.
may be only a symptom of a faulty economic
and social order. 1t may be symptom rather
than disease. But the symptom itself in too
many cases has reached malignant proportions.
What developed in an imperfect economic or
der becomes itself a perpetuator and promoter
of sickness in our social order. And certainly
If there is going to be public housing in the
cities as a palliative of urban problems we can
not solve, there must in justice also be efforts
to minimize the grimmest aspects of rural liv-
ing without waiting for any ultimate rural re-
arrangement under which, maybe, every
body would be secure.
A good many people talk contemptuously of
palliatives. What they want, they say, are
sound cures. So do the rest of us. But until we
find the cure, the palliative may be precious.
We don't leave a man to die in a ditch because
his malady by present standards of knowledge
is incurable. And efforts in the direction of de-
cency in rural housing should not wait until
the whole rural problem is neatly solved. More
children are growing in the country shacks
than in the city Sums, and all of them grow
to make our civilization. Every effort to make
all of them better citizens is an effort also to
solve the fundamental problems which make
us all bewildered citizens today.