CHAPTER X

WHY GOVERNMENT HELPS IN HOME MAKING

Our nation requires healthy citizens, intelligent citizens, prosperous and happy citizens. The home can do more to produce them than any other community agency. Therefore the nation is wise to look after its homes.

RELATION OF HOME CONDITIONS TO INDUSTRY

People cannot do their work well if they live in unwholesome or unpleasant homes. This was made clear during the recent war. The lack of suitable living places for workmen and their families was one of the chief obstacles to shipbuilding and munitions manufacture during the early part of the war. England found this out as well as the United States, and one of the first things both countries had to do was to take measures to provide proper home conditions for those who were engaged in supplying the nation's needs. During the first year of the war our Congress appropriated $200,000,000 to build houses for industrial workers.

The problem of securing good physical conditions of home life has naturally been greatest in crowded industrial centers, but it is by no means absent in small communities, or even in the open country. One writer describes a certain farmhouse where five people were accustomed to sleep in one not very large bedroom, which had only one small window, and even that was nailed shut, one of these five had incipient tuberculosis. These people were well-to-do farmers, living in a large twelve-room, stone house and simply crowded into one room for the sake of mistaken economy— presumably to save coal and wood.

Many such cases could be described, not only in the more remote and backward regions, but even in prosperous farming communities.

What is the result of this overcrowding and lack of proper housing in the country? Just exactly the same as in the great cities—lack of efficiency, disease, and premature death to many … While the great majority of people subjected to overcrowding and bad housing conditions do not prematurely die, yet they have a lessened physical and mental vigor, are less able to do properly their daily work, and not only become a loss to themselves and their families, but to the state … [Footnote: Bashore, "Overcrowding and defective housing in the rural districts," quoted in Nourse, AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS, pp. 118, 119, 121.]

STRENGTH OF THE NATION DEPENDS ON THE HOME

Some of our states and many of our cities have laws to regulate housing conditions, but such laws seldom apply to small communities. In cities where people live crowded together in closely built city blocks, unsanitary conditions in one home endanger the health of the entire community. There is also danger from fire, and vice and crime may breed and spread quickly and unseen. The community is driven, therefore, in its own defense, to regulate the people's housing. In small communities, and especially in rural communities, where homes are more widely separated and in some cases quite isolated, it has seemed of little concern to others how one citizen builds his home and what he does in it. Thoughtful consideration of such cases as that described above, however, must convince us that it IS a matter of national concern what happens even in remote homes. Both the physical and the economic strength of the nation are undermined by unwholesome conditions in the separate homes of the land.

COMMUNITY PLANNING

Economic loss to the community may result not merely from UNWHOLESOME home conditions, but also from INCONVENIENCE of location and arrangement of the homes. A good deal of attention is being given to "community planning" in the United States and especially in England and other European countries. Community planning includes not only provision for the proper location and construction of public buildings and streets, for water supply, lights, parks, etc., but also for the convenient, as well as wholesome and pleasant location of homes. Large cities, like London, New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago, have spent enormous sums of money in city planning after they have already grown up without plan. It has necessitated destroying old structures and widening streets. Villages and small towns are in a position to introduce a plan for future growth without this needless expense. Our beautiful capital city of Washington has grown according to a plan that was carefully laid out before a building was erected. But even in Washington one of the greatest problems the city had to face during the war was that of providing homes for the enormous number of workers who came to the city to do the work of the government.

PLANNING THE FARMSTEAD

"The need of careful arrangement in country homes is much more urgent than in city homes for the reason that country people use their homes as the business center of their profession," says Prof. R.J. Pearce, of Iowa State College. "The farmer in his business center must not only produce enough raw material to provide for him self and family, but he needs to produce enough to feed and clothe the entire human race." "CONSERVATION OF SPACE must be taken into consideration to obtain the greatest results from our high-priced land; CONVENIENCE must be a prime factor when expensive labor is at a premium; and ATTRACTIVENESS must be one of the chief motives not only to make farm property more saleable but to give greater enjoyment to the owner and his family…" "A farmstead is, but a unit in a farming community, yet travelers form an impression of the entire community by individual farm homes which they see in passing. Therefore, not only financial consideration but personal pride and a feeling of community spirit and enterprise should urge the farm owner to develop his farmstead according to the best of modern methods."

What facts can you find in regard to what the government did to provide homes for workers in shipbuilding or munitions plants during the war?

In many of the war industries preference was given to men with families in employing workmen. Why was this?

In some rural communities in the United States a "teacherage" (home for the teacher) is provided. Of what advantage to the community is this?

Is there a "housing problem" in your community?

Are there any laws in your state regulating the building of homes? If so, what are some of them? Do they apply in your community? Are they carefully observed and enforced?

Make a study of the arrangement of the buildings on farms with which you are familiar, drawing diagrams, and report whether or not they are well planned with reference to ECONOMY OF SPACE occupied, CONVENIENCE, and ATTRACTIVENESS. Consider

(a) Are they properly placed with reference to the highway?

(b) Are they conveniently placed in relation to one another?

(d) What makes them attractive or unattractive?

(e) Are the stables properly situated to protect the health of the family? How?

Must a home be large and costly to be attractive?

What impression would a stranger get in regard to the "community spirit" of your community from the appearance of its homes? Would he be right?

THE HOME AND COMMUNITY STABILITY

Home ownership is one of the strongest influences that give permanence and stability to the community. The census taken by the United States government every ten years shows that home ownership has been decreasing throughout the country as a whole. The decrease has been greatest in cities, but it is true also of farmhome ownership. In 1880 only 25% of the farms of the United States were occupied by tenants (renters); in 1910, 37% were so occupied. It is true that in the ten years from 1900 to 1910 there was a slight increase in the proportion of farms owned by their occupants in the New England and Middle Atlantic states, and in a large part of the West; but the increase in these parts was more than overbalanced by the decrease in the South Atlantic and Gulf states and in the Mississippi Valley. The smallest proportion of farm tenancy is found in New England (8%), and the largest in the southern states (45.9% in the South Atlantic states, and more than 50% in the South central states). A large part of the farming in the South is done by negroes, most of whom are either laborers on the farms of the white population or tenants on small farms which they usually work on shares. And yet the number of negro farm owners in the South has been rapidly increasing in the last few years, though not so rapidly as the number of tenants. In 1910 negro farm owners cultivated nearly 16,000,000 acres of land in the South, all of which they have acquired since the Civil War.

EFFECTS OF DECLINE OF HOME OWNERSHIP

The decline in home ownership both in the cities and in the rural districts of the United States has been observed with considerable anxiety because of the effect upon our national welfare and upon the citizenship of the country. One writer says:

Farming is a permanent business; it is no "fly by night" occupation. … No man can pull up stakes and leave a farm at the close of the year without sacrificing the results of labor which he has done … The renter who ends harvest knowing that he will move in the spring, will not do as good a job of hauling manure and fall plowing as he would were he to stay; nor does he take as good care of the buildings and other improvements …

The cost to the farming business of the country each year for this annual farm moving-week mounts into the millions of dollars. And the pity of it all is that practically no one is the winner thereby … The renter loses, the landlord loses, the general community and the nation at large lose. [Footnote: W.D. Boyce, in an editorial in THE FARMING BUSINESS, February 26, 1916, quoted in Nourse, AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS, p. 651.]

Tenant farming also places obstacles in the way of community progress in other ways.

The tenant takes little interest in community affairs. The questions of schools, churches, or roads are of little moment to him. He does not wish to invest in enterprises which will of necessity be left wholly … to his successor. In short, he is in the community, but hardly of it. [Footnote: B.H. Hibbard, "Farm Tenancy in the United States," in Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, March, 1912, p. 39.]

A family that owns its home feels a sense of proprietorship in a part of the community land. The money value of a home increases in proportion to the prosperity of the community as a whole; its owner will therefore be inclined to do all he can to promote the welfare of the community. A community that is made up largely of homes owned by their occupants is likely to be more prosperous and more progressive, and its citizens more loyal to it, than a community whose families are tenants.

THE TENANT AS A CITIZEN

While all that has been said in the preceding paragraph is true, it must not be thought that tenancy is necessarily a bad thing in all cases, nor that a man who does not own his home cannot be a thoroughly good citizen. There are circumstances that make it necessary for many families to live in dwellings that they do not own. Tenancy may be a step toward home ownership. A citizen may have insufficient money to buy a farm, but enough to enable him to rent one. By industry, economy, and intelligence, he may soon accumulate means with which to buy the farm he occupies or some other. The increase in the number of tenants in the Southern States is due in large part to the breaking up of many larger plantations into small farms which are occupied by tenants, many of them negroes. That many of these tenants are on the road to home ownership is indicated by the facts stated on page 117.

It is as much the duty of the home renter as it is of the home owner to take an interest in the community life in which he and his family share, and to cooperate with his neighbors for the common good. While he lives in the community he is largely dependent upon it, like any other citizen, for the satisfaction of his wants. Its markets and its roads are his for the transportation and disposal of his produce and stock. He gets the benefit of its schools for the education of his children. He may share in its social life if he cares to do so. His property is protected by the same agencies that protect that of his neighbors. He cannot, therefore, escape the responsibility of contributing to the progress of his community to the extent of his ability.

TEAMWORK BETWEEN LANDLORD AND TENANT

It is as much the duty of the man who rents a farm as it is of the man who owns one to make his farm produce to its full capacity, to protect the soil from exhaustion and the buildings and fences from destruction. But on the other hand, it is the duty of the landlord, both as a good business man and as a good citizen, to make such terms with his tenant that the latter will take an interest in the farm and will find it profitable to farm properly. There must be team work.

The landlord must be interested not only in his land but in his tenant. The tenant must be interested not only in himself but in his landlord and his land. A system that favors the tenant to the injury of the land is bad. A system that favors the land to the injury of the tenant is equally harmful. Either system will result in the poverty of both the landlord and the tenant. [Footnote: Dr. Seaman A. Knapp, quoted by Dr. Thomas Jesse Jones in "Negroes and the Census of 1910," p 16. (Reprint from THE SOUTHERN WORKMAN for August, 1912.)]

The fact remains, however, that home ownership contributes to the permanence, the stability, and the progress of a community. It is also a fact that conditions have developed in our country, both in cities and in rural communities, which make home ownership increasingly difficult. In another chapter (Chapter XIV) we shall see what some of these conditions are, and what our government has done and may do to overcome them.

THE HOME A SCHOOL OF CITIZENSHIP

One of the most important services performed for the community by the home is that of training its members for citizenship. The family has been called "a school of all the virtues" that go to make good citizenship. It is a school in which not only the children, but also the parents, not only the boys and men, but also the girls and women, receive training by practice. In the home are developed thoughtfulness for others, a spirit of self- sacrifice for the common good, loyalty to the group of which the individual is a member, respect for the opinions of others of long experience, a spirit of teamwork, obedience to rules which exist for the welfare of all. If these and other qualities of good citizenship are not cultivated in the home, it is not in a healthy condition nor performing its proper service to the community.

Moreover, the exercise of these virtues in the home is not only training for good citizenship; it IS good citizenship. If the home is as important a factor in our national life as this chapter has indicated, then one of the greatest opportunities for good citizenship, and one of the greatest duties of good citizenship, is that of making the home what it should be; and in this each member of the family has his or her share.

Make a study of farm tenancy in your locality (neighborhood, township, or county).

How many of the farms of the locality are occupied and operated by their owners? how many by tenants? What is the percentage of tenancy?

To what extent are the tenants men who were formerly farm laborers, but who by renting farms are making a start on their own account? Is this a sign of progress?

What percentage of the tenants are white? negro?

To what extent are the tenants foreigners who have recently come to the locality?

Are the tenant farms usually rented for long periods or for short periods?

What is the system of tenancy in your locality (i.e. cash rental, working on shares, partnership with the owner, etc.)? If more than one exists, which seems to work best? Why?

Is tenancy increasing or decreasing in your locality? What reasons are given for this?

Does experience in your locality support the statement that tenant farmers are less likely than others to interest themselves in community progress?

If you live or go to school in town, make a study of home ownership in the town. (If a small community, the class may study the entire area; if large, different sections may be studied by different groups of pupils.) How many homes are occupied by their owners? how many by tenants? What is the percentage of tenancy? Is tenancy increasing or decreasing? For what reasons?

Is there some section of the community where most of the people own their homes, and another section where most of the people rent? If so, do you notice any difference in the general appearance of the two sections? Do you think that the difference, if any exists, is due in any part to the fact that some own and others rent their homes?

Is there a tendency for the farmers of your locality to move into town? If so, why? What becomes of their farms?

Review the points made in the discussion of topics 4 and 5 on page 38 (Chapter III). Continue to develop plans for cooperation in the home and school.

What does it mean to be "in training" for athletics? In the light of your answer to this question, what would it mean to be "in training" for citizen ship?

READINGS

See Readings for Chapter IX. Also:

"Housing the Worker on the Farm," Department of Agriculture Year
Book, 1918, pp. 347-356.

"What the Department of Agriculture is Doing for the Housekeeper,"
Department of Agriculture Year Book, 1913, pp. 143-162.

"The Effect of Home Demonstration on the Community and the
County," Department of Agriculture Year Book, 1916, pp. 251-266.

"Farm Tenantry in the United States," Department of Agriculture
Year Book, 1916, pp. 321-346.

Lessons in Community and National Life: Series C, Lesson 32,
"Housing for Workers."