A Living from the Land

( Frontispiece ) Country homes backed by intensive types of agriculture serve modern human needs.
Secretary of Agriculture, State of New Jersey
WHITTLESEY HOUSE McGRAW-HILL BOOK COMPANY, INC. NEW YORK AND LONDON 1934
Copyright, 1934, by the Mcgraw-Hill Book Company, Inc.
All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission of the publishers.
THIRD PRINTING
PUBLISHED BY WHITTLESEY HOUSE A division of the McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc.
Printed in the United States of America by The Maple Press Co., York, Pa.
To my friend Henry W. Jeffers

Homesteading days are here again. The present movement of people back to the land is of a different type and has different objectives from those which prevailed when a continent was to be conquered and exploited. Today we know that many urban industries will operate on a seasonal basis and we know too that periods of unemployment and shorter working days will provide more leisure and probably lower incomes for hundreds of thousands of families. The utilization of this leisure time to supplement incomes, to raise the standards of living and of health, and to attain some measure of economic security will tend more and more to settlement on the land.
In these days of rapid transportation and all the attributes and conveniences of modern country life, the hardships of the earlier period of land development are non-existent. Although urban industrial development has reached a point which will not be exceeded for many years to come, the individual who needs additional income may adjust himself to such circumstances by establishing a country homestead. Industrial activity is tending to decentralize, largely as the result of widespread power distribution, and a home in the country accessible to some form of manufacturing or business employment offers undeniable attractions.