Ohio History Journal

Subsistence Homesteading

in Dayton, Ohio, 1933-1935

 

 

by Jacob H. Dorn

 

 

 

"The United States was born in the country and has moved to the city,"

wrote Richard Hofstadter in a provocative study of modern American re-

form movements.¹ The tide of migration from rural areas to urban centers

has been, with few exceptions, continuous and irresistible since the begin-

ning of the Industrial Revolution. Driven along by a host of economic,

social, and psychological forces, it reached a symbolic watershed in the

1920's, when for the first time the majority of Americans lived in urban

areas. City dwellers, however, have often maintained a wistful longing

for restoration of the simpler, individualistic values of a rural past and

even organized movements to reshape American society through back-to-the-

land experiments. The belief that rural life--with its idealized contact with

the soil, virtuous self-reliance, and basic economic security--is superior to

urban conditions has never lacked spokesmen, many of them consciously

indebted to Jeffersonian precepts. Periods of urban-industrial crisis, more-

over, have been especially conducive to nostalgic--and sometimes reac-

tionary--revulsion against the city.² The Great Depression that followed

the stock market crash of October 1929 was one such crisis, which suddenly

and unexpectedly quickened the hopes of faithful disciples of rural life.

The intellectual foundation for the back-to-the-land movement of the

1930's was laid by a variety of individuals and groups who had developed

in the previous decade a full-blown agrarian philosophy. It may seem sur-

prising that these agrarian theoreticians turned to a rural panacea during

the 1920's, when acute agricultural depression stood in sharp contrast to

urban prosperity, but these would-be reformers retained a romanticized

vision of life on the land and, in fact, blamed urban-industrial centraliza-

tion for rural America's problems. Whether designating themselves New

Humanists, Distributists, or something else, they shared a common concern

for the preservation of a rural life that was threatened by urbanization

and industrialization, the forces they considered to be the causes of ma-

terialism, waste, ugliness, and dehumanization in American life. A unified

cry was heard in the twenties for a return to decentralized social and

economic activities.³ The onslaught of depression enhanced this appeal

 

NOTES ON PAGE 146

• 1
 

76                                                OHIO HISTORY

 

and stimulated a popular burst of back-to-the-land sentiment among un-

employed city-dwellers and among public figures as diverse as Henry

Ford and Franklin D. Roosevelt.⁴ Many of those who participated in or

endorsed the movement, however, did so for reasons of personal economic

survival or security or because of considerations of public policy (e. g., the

pressing need to counteract lengthening relief rolls), and not because

they shared fully the agrarian philosophers' antipathy to urbanization

and industrialization.

The back-to-the-land movement of the ¹⁹30's eventually enlisted the

support of a variety of public and private agencies and groups. At first,

voluntary associations, sometimes with the support of public agencies,

experimented with relocation of the impoverished and with community-

development programs as long-range solutions to the problems of un-

employment and relief. For example, beginning in 1931 at the request of

President Hoover's Commission on Unemployment Relief and of the

Federal Children's Bureau, the American Friends Service Committee under

Clarence E. Pickett, its executive secretary, began an extensive program of

relief among depressed miners in the bituminous coal fields of the Ohio

River Valley. Assisted by the Federal Council of Churches, the United

States Bureau of Education, and the Pennsylvania State Bureau of Educa-

tion, the committee began moving miners to subsistence farms located

elsewhere. For those who remained in the mining towns, a program was

launched that combined part-time farming with part-time mining.⁵ Even-

tually, in response to the varied spontaneous efforts of such private groups

and to sympathetic voices within the Roosevelt administration, the Federal

Government became directly involved in this type of aid through a pot-

pourri of programs including subsistence homesteading, resettlement and

improved land use, and the creation of garden cities or "greenbelt" towns.

One back-to-the-land effort that reflected the rural-life sentiments of

the 1930's and whose origin preceded New Deal intervention was the

organization early in 1933 of a subsistence-homestead community near

Dayton, Ohio. The brief life of this community has significance for the

social history of the 1930's for several reasons. First, the Dayton project

aroused widespread interest as a potential laboratory for homesteading

nationally, since it was the first subsistence-homestead unit under local

sponsorship to receive Federal support once the New Deal included this

type of aid in its programs. Sometimes the possibility that it might become

such a laboratory led to expansive and unrealistic hopes among its pro-

moters and members. Second, the internal tensions that contributed to

its eventual collapse illustrate the dissimilar motivations and goals that

existed in this and other back-to-the-land experiments. In Dayton at

least three separate and distinct perspectives on homesteading manifested

themselves in the administration of the community: one, that of the social

planners who held a predetermined philosophy of homesteading that was

not easily adapted to pragmatic situations; two, the viewpoint of com-

munity leaders, many of whom valued homesteading in relationship to

• 2
 

SUBSISTENCE HOMESTEADING                                        77

 

unemployment and relief rolls and not as an ultimate direction for societal

evolution; and, three, the approach of some homesteaders themselves, who

refused to sacrifice self-interest and immediate security to the visionary

demands of community solidarity and social reconstruction. And finally,

the experiment of the Dayton community provides insights into the inter-

play of interests and pressures between Federal agencies and local proj-

ects during the early years of the New Deal.

The impetus to subsistence homesteading in Dayton came from an

attempt in the summer of 1932 to deal with unemployment by organizing

within the city a network of cooperative production units. In these units

unemployed workers produced food, clothing, shoes, and other essential

commodities for their own use and for barter. Leadership and support

for these units, which were organized into the Dayton Association of

Cooperative Production Units, came from the Bureau of Community Serv-

ice, a coordinating agency and clearing-house for the city's specialized

philanthropic and welfare agencies. This bureau, an outgrowth of the

"scientific-charity" movement of the late-nineteenth century, carried on

no direct social work itself; instead, it functioned as a planning and fund-

raising body through two departments, the Council of Social Agencies

and the Community Chest.⁶ Finding both private and public welfare

inadequate in the face of massive unemployment, the Council of Social

Agencies, led by the director of its division of character building, Elizabeth

Nutting, organized the production-unit movement in order to make the

unemployed more self-sufficient and also to reduce demands on relief

agencies.⁷

Altogether about twelve production units, involving between 350 and

500 families, were organized. In addition to barter among themselves, they

had an arrangement with Dayton's welfare director, Edward V. Stoecklein,

to exchange their products (which the city distributed to relief recipients)

for raw materials. Late in 1933 the Federal Civil Works Administration

began to integrate the units into its own operations, but the production

units had by then reached a plateau of effectiveness.⁸ Apparently, a feel-

ing early in 1933 that production units within the city were not an

adequate solution to the problems of relief led members of the Council

of Social Agencies' production-unit committee to think in terms of land

colonization or homestaeding. At least one member of this committee,

Elizabeth Nutting, admired the writings of Ralph Borsodi of Suffern, New

York, and at her urging he was brought to Dayton three separate times

in January 1933 to explain a plan of subsistence homesteading, whose work-

ability he had demonstrated during the 1920's at Suffern.⁹

One of the most influential proponents of economic decentralization,

Borsodi was, in the judgment of the historian of the New Deal community

programs, "the supreme exemplar of self-sufficient farming and successful

back-to-the-land" experimentation.¹⁰ Borsodi's ideas have received careful

analysis elsewhere,11 and it is necessary here only to underscore a few of

his major ideas. He wrote numerous books and articles, both before and

• 3
 

78                                                OHIO HISTORY after his participation in the Dayton community. These included The New Accounting (1922), a work on double-entry bookkeeping, National Adver- tising versus Prosperity (1923), an analysis and comparison of the costs of his "domestic production" at Suffern with large-scale manufacturing, The Distribution Age (1927), in which he argued that producers suffered lower income while consumers paid higher prices because of the exorbitant costs of distribution and transportation, advertising, and selling required by centralized production, and Education and Living (1948), an expanded statement of his social philosophy. But the book that, by his own account and by the testimony of spokes- men in Dayton, brought him and the movement in Dayton together was This Ugly Civilization. First published in 1929, when it aroused relatively little attention, the book was reissued in 1933, when depression conditions made it more popular.12 In this work, the city-bred Borsodi revealed a profound anti-urban bias. The "ugly civilization" of "noise, smoke, smells, and crowds-of people content to live amidst the throbbing of its ma- chines," was uniquely ugly because for the first time society had the ma- chines to make life beautiful; yet, instead of using those machines to release its citizens' energies for creative living, it used them "mainly to produce factories-factories which only the more surely hinder quality-minded individuals in their warfare upon ugliness, discomfort, and misunderstand- ing." There was nothing wrong with machines as such, he argued; the mistake consisted of transferring machines to the factories and thereby destroying home production and the small workshop. The desire for ef- ficiency was the basic motive for production in a factory, but along with efficiency this method of production imposed an "institutional burden" on the economy in the form of transportation costs, general administra- tive expenses, and the demand for profits. Domestic production, Borsodi's alternative, was free from the relentless pressures for efficiency and con- tained no counterparts to the "institutional burden" of factory pro- duction.13 In addition to the disadvantages imposed on society as a whole, factory

• 4
 

SUBSISTENCE HOMESTEADING                                         79

 

production resulted in a wide discrepancy between what the producer

or worker received and what the consumer had to pay. Individual, family,

and social fulfillment were also obstructed. Among other affects on the

person, the factory reduced workmen to "mere cogs in a gigantic industrial

machine," decreased the number of those who engaged in truly productive

and creative labor, arrayed workers against employers, weakened the posi-

tion of self-reliant, skilled craftsmen, and undermined individualism and

self-esteem. The techniques and spirit of factory production had even in-

vaded the countryside, and farmers were turning to cash crops that left them

dependent upon outside sources for essential commodities. According to

Borsodi, the way out of this "ugly civilization" should be led by small groups

of "quality-minded" individuals who would organize their families into self-

suffcient units through the use of labor-saving machines within the home.

This elite, he warned, should not expect the urban masses to adopt home-

steading unless a national economic catastrophe struck, but such an elite

could at least find a richer existence for itself.¹⁴ His proposed homesteads

were essentially an escape, idyllic little pockets of "intelligence and beauty

amidst the chaotic seas of human stupidity and ugliness."¹⁵

Following Borsodi's informal visits to Dayton in January 1933, suf-

ficient interest in subsistence homesteading had developed for the Council

of Social Agencies to set up a Unit Committee separate from its committee

on production units. The Unit Committee, whose first chairman was the

Reverend Charles Lyon Seasholes of the First Baptist Church, consisted of

prominent civic figures: General George H. Wood, head of the Veterans'

Administration's facility in Dayton, and his wife, Virginia P. Wood, a mem-

ber of the Oakwood school board; Arch Mandel, executive secretary of the

Bureau of Community Service; Robert G. Corwin, an attorney; Sam H.

Thal, the owner of a downtown department store; Edward V. Stoecklein,

Dayton's Director of Public Welfare; William A. Chryst, a consulting

engineer for Delco Products Company; and several other professional and

business men. This Unit Committee began in February 1933 to solicit

community support for a homestead project and to secure suitable land

at a reasonable price.¹⁶ Borsodi continued to make special trips to Dayton

to a d v i s e the committee and to address public meetings, and by May

he had joined the project as official adviser.17

After appraising several available properties, in mid-April the committee

purchased the farm of Dr. Walter Shaw, a 160-acre tract four miles west

of Dayton on the Dayton-Liberty Road, one-half mile south of Route 35.

This farm, for which the committee paid $8,050 on a fifteen-year contract,

contained a substantial brick home and several out-buildings that could

be used as temporary quarters, and was intersected by Bear Creek, which

seemed to hold both aesthetic and functional advantages for the project.

The original plan was to divide the farm into thirty-five three-acre tracts

for as many families, and to use the remainder of the acreage for common

parks, roads, pasture and tilled fields, orchards, and woodlands. At

Borsodi's suggestion, the Unit Committee made plans to finance the entire

• 5
 

80                                                 OHIO HISTORY

 

enterprise through the sale of "Independence Bonds" worth a total of

$35,000. These bonds, issued in denominations of $50, $100, and $500

would bear interest to their purchasers of 41/2 percent for periods up

to fifteen years. Estimates of how much it would cost to provide each

homesteader with a house and supplies varied from $750 to $1,000, but

it was apparently with the lowest figure in mind that the committee

decided on a bond issue of $35,000. The total cost of $26,250 for thirty-

five families at $750 per family, added to the cost of the farm, $8,050,

would only slightly exceed $35,000.18

The homestead community was officially launched on Sunday, May 14,

1933, at a public dedication at which the principal leaders of the project,

Borsodi, Elizabeth Nutting, Sam H. Thal, and Robert G. Corwin, made

optimistic predictions. Borsodi noted that more than economic security

was at stake: "Two hundred years ago at the time of the industrial revolu-

tion, when machines moved out of homes into factories, we lost the key

to living. I believe the way is planned here to return the key."19

In the week following this dedication, several homesteaders moved into

the brick farmhouse that was to serve as temporary lodging until construc-

tion of individual houses could begin in the summer. Kenneth Butler, a

local architect, joined the unit as building adviser, and Leslie M. Abbe,

an engineer from Indianapolis who had come to Dayton with his family

after hearing of Borsodi's work, assumed the task of first-hand supervision

on the site. The homesteaders were to build their own "rammed-earth"

houses, financed by loans from the Unit Committee. The promoters hoped

to secure cooperation from local industries, which would supply part-time

work to provide a living for the homesteaders until they could become

self-sufficient, and from unions in the building trades, which would teach

the homesteaders essential contruction skills.²⁰

Whatever Borsodi's long-range dreams, it became clear in the weeks

following the dedication that other community leaders predicated their

support on differing and sometimes conflicting goals. Some supporters

were primarily interested in providing housing for local families with

reduced income to enable them to live and work near the city, the develop-

ment of an atmosphere of confidence that might stimulate economic re-

covery, or the reduction of the city's burdens of relief and dependency.

The Dayton Daily News, whose editor, Walter Locke, served on the Unit

Committee, seemed to sense Borsodi's social ideas more than many other

local supporters. In an editorial on June 9, 1933, this paper hinted at

the potential significance of homesteading:

The people who are all farmer have been for more than 10 years

in a direful state. Tied to the land, the land unable to return them a

living, they have suffered in helplessness. Now for four years the

people who are all-city have been in direful straits. Dependent wholly

upon jobs, they have lost their jobs. Their jobs lost, all was lost ....

But there is another estate, the independent farmer-laborer, which has

not yet been much thought of or much developed.

And in July, another editorial predicted that

• 6
 

SUBSISTENCE HOMESTEADING                                        81

 

This unit may be the laboratory out of which will come a serum

that will forever lay the spectre of grim want that has haunted millions

of families for the past four years and further immunize many against

the virus of technological unemployment.21

As Locke saw it, homesteaders would have a foothold in both the industrial

and agricultural worlds and would be victimized by neither. Urban jobs

would supplement subsistence farming during times of general prosperity,

while homestead plots would provide basic security during hard times.

The construction of houses and organization of the homestead unit

began in a great wave of optimism in the summer of 1933. Groundbreak-

ing for the first house occurred on June 11, plans were laid to begin work

on four additional dwellings, and a rudimentary system of committees and

officers began to function by late June. John Arbuckle, a graduate of the

Ohio State University's School of Engineering, became manager of the

unit, and Paul Cromer, a former high school teacher who had been active

in the production units, was elected president of the community.²² Ap-

parently, homesteading appealed primarily to middle-class people--Borsodi's

elite--rather than to the neediest members of society for the first group

of homesteaders accepted by the Unit Committee included two civi1

engineers, two agricultural experts, two electricians, a plumber, a mechanical

engineer, a chemical engineer, a librarian, three nurses, several teachers,

and an architect.²³

From time to time, Borsodi and Elizabeth Nutting issued promising

statements about the progress of the unit, but practical results remained

elusive. Although about thirty applications received approval and a dozen

or so families began planting small gardens on their three-acre plots, not

one house was near completion by the end of the summer. The home-

steaders found that rammed-earth construction, even though inexpensive,

required too much labor and had to be given up in favor of cinder blocks.

The few families that had moved onto the Shaw Farm lived in tents,

makeshift huts, sheds, the brick farmhouse, and, in one case, a grass shack,

while the others commuted from the city to tend their gardens. Early

in September the homesteaders' hopes received a jolt when fire destroyed

a log structure on the farm resulting in a loss of $5,000 to the building

and household goods. The building had been insured, but the household

goods had not, and several homesteaders suffered a serious setback.²⁴ An-

other financial burden was added when the promoters revised their

estimates of the cost per family upward from $750 to $1,071 very early in

the summer.²⁵ Also, by the end of the summer internal tensions had

become apparent. In Miss Nutting's report to the Unit Committee she

stated, "a weak manager and a strong personality in the group exerting a

negative influence, have combined [with other factors] to undermine

morale and reduce efficiency." Discord and bickering almost from the first

had obstructed physical progress on the unit.²⁶

Despite obstacles, Borsodi's plans for homesteading in Dayton grew more

grandiose. Although contruction moved with painful slowness and no as-

• 7
 

82                                               OHIO HISTORY

 

sistance from local builders or trade unions was forthcoming, he began

to think in terms of building a ring of fifty homestead communities around

Dayton to accommodate no less than 1,750 families. Since financing of

even one unit seemed impossible locally, as the failure of the "Independence

Bonds" drive made plain, it was clearly necessary to turn to the Federal

Government for assistance. With such an appeal in mind, Borsodi tried

again to enlist the enthusiasm of civic leaders as evidence of the viability

of his plans. He asked Arthur Morgan, who had left nearby Antioch College

in Yellow Springs to become director of the Tennessee Valley Authority,

to use his personal influence in the Roosevelt administration. Responding

to Borsodi's urgings, on May 22 the Unit Committee also voted to seek

$2.5 million from the Reconstruction Finance Corporation under the sec-

tion of the Emergency Relief and Construction Act of 1932 providing funds

for self-help and barter associations. Borsodi visited Washington and tried

to work through both Morgan and Representative Byron Harlan of Dayton.

In connection with the request for Federal aid, an advisory board of

eminent educators, consisting of Harold Rugg, Clarke F. Ansley, and Wil-

liam H. Kilpatrick of Columbia University, Boyd H. Bode of the Ohio

State University, Eduard C. Lindeman of the New York School of Social

Work, Harry A. Overstreet of the College of the City of New York, and

Arthur Morgan, agreed to oversee the cultural and adult-education pro-

grams of the proposed fifty units.

During June and early July the promoters in Dayton were buoyant in

anticipation of the creation of the prime laboratory for homesteading in

the nation. On July 13, however, the newspapers reported that Arch

Mandel of the Bureau of Community Service had received notification

that there would be no loan from the RFC. The reasons for this refusal

are unclear, but two factors may have had some bearing. First, there was

some feeling that Morgan's support of the project was less than enthus-

iastic, partly because he doubted the ability of the existing Unit Committee

to administer so much money. Second, there was overt opposition from

the Dayton Property Owners' Association, which sent letters to Washington

opposing the grant on the grounds that it would disturb local building

conditions and also possibly handicap applications from Dayton for other

types of Federal aid.27

Just as Borsodi's hopes for a loan from the RFC were fading, a new

potential source of Federal support emerged, when Congress passed the

National Industrial Recovery Act on June 16, 1933. Section 208 of Title

II of this act provided $25 million for the President to use for subsistence

homesteading, and Roosevelt chose to administer this allocation through

a new Division of Subsistence Homesteads created in the Department of

the Interior. To run this new agency, Secretary Harold L. Ickes selected

an agricultural expert, Milburn L. Wilson, who had pioneered in agricul-

tural-extension work in Montana. Wilson was sympathetic with the idea

of subsistence homesteading, partly because of his first-hand observation

of the self-contained Mormon villages in Utah, and his own attitude was

• 8
 

SUBSISTENCE HOMESTEADING                                       83 close to Borsodi's emphasis on decentralization of industry and local control of administration. Borsodi, who took full credit for eventually securing a loan from the Division of Subsistence Homesteads, later observed: "Of all the men in places in power with whom I dealt, Dr. Wilson alone understood what I meant when I said that the Dayton homestead plan was different-that it was essentially educational in nature."28 Favorably disposed toward the project in Dayton, Wilson inspected the unit on September 1, 1933, and, although a formal loan grant was not drawn up until September 29, participants in Dayton felt assured within a few days after his visit that a loan of $50,000 would be forthcoming. The Dayton unit was the first, out of an estimated five hundred applicants, to receive funds from the division. This distinction should not be considered unusual, however, for this unit was already under construction. It had originated almost entirely through local initiative and had continued to enjoy broad support in the community. It also had the considerable asset of direct association with Borsodi's reputation as a homesteading expert, and it had the backing of important politicians in Ohio, including Governor George White.29 Early in October 1933, Borsodi brought from Washington a check for $9,000 to pay for the Shaw Farm, which the Unit Committee had until then held under option. Still thinking of ultimately dotting the circumfer-

• 9
 

84                                                 OHIO HISTORY

 

ence of Dayton with homestead units, he forecast a favorable Federal

response to another request for $2.5 million for fifty units.³⁰ This expan-

sive optimism, continuing through the winter of 1933-1934, accounts for

the project leaders' distraction by ventures that were at best peripheral

to the needs of the few struggling homesteaders already on the Shaw Farm.

The first distraction was a national homesteading conference held in

Dayton on December 7-9, 1933, organized to focus attention on Dayton

as a spearhead of the back-to-the-land movement. According to Borsodi

and Miss Nutting, social workers, civic leaders, and educators elsewhere

were simply yearning to see what was going on under their leadership on

the Dayton-Liberty Road farm. Apparently, they were not at all chagrined

by the fact that the first two houses were still incomplete when the confer-

ence opened. Featuring addresses on various aspects of homesteading

(Hughina McKay, a professor of home economics at the Ohio State Univer-

sity, discussed the relative advantages of cow and goat milk and came out

emphatically for goat milk) and tours of the Shaw farm, the conference

was not a total disappointment; but it did not meet the grandiose expecta-

tions raised by Borsodi's and Nutting's publicity. Invited guests, such as

Milburn Wilson, Arthur Morgan, and Bernarr Macfadden, another popu-

larizer of homesteading, were unable to come at the last minute. The highest

ranking Federal officials in attendance were Frank Fritts, general counsel of

the Division of Subsistence Homesteads, and Clarence E. Pickett, a sec-

tion chief in the division. President George W. Rightmire of the Ohio

State University served as chairman, and the majority of the speakers were

professors from Columbus whom Borsodi had enlisted as advisers and

instructors for the unit.³1

Much of the discussion reflected the nostalgia that characterized the

diverse elements in the back-to-the-land movement. The Reverend Charles

Wesley Brashares of Dayton's Grace Methodist Church, later a bishop of

his denomination, addressed one meeting with these words:

The city presents the unsolved problems of self-government; the

village governs itself. The city suffers extreme wealth and extreme

poverty; the village is democratic. The city renders multitudes un-

employed; on the land about the village there is always work to be

done.³²

The conference also elicited expressions of interest in homesteading from

two large industries in Dayton--for quite different reasons. Both the

National Cash Register Company and the Delco Products Company, con-

cerned about the possibility of legislation shortening the workweek indi-

cated willingness to undertake homestead units exclusively for their em-

ployees to use in supplementing reduced incomes. Their motives seemed

to be somewhat similar to those behind traditional company towns.33

A second distraction from the work on the immediate needs of the first

homestead was Borsodi's growing preoccupation with securing loans for

additional units. This preoccupation was in part a response to the desire

of people in the production units to move into subsistence homesteading.

• 10
 

SUBSISTENCE HOMESTEADING                                        85

 

Their interest in homesteading grew out of their need for food and raw

materials and their deepening conviction that production units were at

best makeshifts. As early as April 1933, the East Dayton production unit

had purchased a farm on which several participating families would live

and raise produce for the majority of the members, who stayed in the

city to carry on the unit's small-scale manufactures.³⁴ Borsodi saw in this

development the beginnings of a potentially great demand for subsistence

farms and an opportunity to project his plans on a massive scale. More-

over, according to his c1aims, the Division of Subsistence Homesteads

favored the conversion of urban production units into homestead units.

By March 1934, Borsodi had made plans for four additional homestead

units, which were to accommodate about two hundred families, as a first

step toward his goal of fifty. The first additional unit, sponsored by the

North Dayton and Stillwater production units, was to be located on the

162-acre farm of T. P. Whitmore northeast of Dayton on Brandt Pike and

was to be called Willow Brook. The second and third additional units,

Rolling Acres and Miami Homesteads, were to be located on adjoining

farms bounded by Wagoner Ford Road, Needmore Road, and the Miami

River, north of Dayton. The fourth new unit, Valley View, to be composed

of Negro homesteaders, was projected for the farm of E. L. and Ira Risner on

Carrollton Road, west of Dayton. On behalf of the Unit Committee, Borsodi

placed a loan application for $309,400 for these units with the Division of

Subsistence Homesteads, and on March 3, 1934, the division's board of di-

rectors approved the request. In this same expansionist mood, Borsodi sug-

gested that Congress should appropriate about one billion dollars for the

Division of Subsistence Homesteads in 1934.35 The projection of new units

for Dayton not only diverted energies from the first unit, but also became a

source of conflict between the local movement and the Federal subsistence-

homestead program.

Just as Borsodi's efforts in Washington seemed guaranteed of success,

a cluster of troubles began the undoing of the homesteaders' dreams. The

first serious issue was the organized protest of hundreds of residents of

Jefferson, Madison, and Harrison townships, where the new units were

to be established. The center of protest was Jefferson Township, where

planners hoped to locate Valley View, the Negro unit. On March 27, 1934,

an indignation meeting of several hundred property owners raised objec-

tions on the ground that the new units would increase taxes, overcrowd

the schools, and, somewhat contradictorily, bring in both "upper crust"

people and nudists. Spokesmen for the homesteads successfully refuted the

argument about taxation by pointing out that, although homesteaders

would technically not hold title to their land (they would hold modified

single-tax leases from a unit corporation), they would make prorated pay-

ments to the unit, which would in turn pay its fair tax assessment. The

protesters continued to argue about taxation and overcrowded schools, and

through their spokesmen, Bryan Cooper, an attorney, they lodged com-

plaints with Senator Robert J. Bulkley and Representative Byron Harlan.

• 11
 

86                                                 OHIO HISTORY

 

At least for the residents of Jefferson Township, the key issue seems

to have been race. In response to a request for clarification of a petition

signed by over 1100 protesters, Cooper and two other leaders of the agita-

tion submitted to the Division of Subsistence Homesteads through Borsodi

a document preponderantly devoted to objections to a Negro unit. This

document referred to the disastrous effects on schools, property values, and

racial purity that would supposedly result from the "arbitrary implanting

of a colony of thirty-five or more families of colored people with their

lower standards of living" in the midst of white people who maintained

by "inheritance and culture the higher standards of living." It called on

the Division of Subsistence Homesteads to allow white communities to

"pursue their development without blending with the Ethiopian race,"

suggested placing the Negro unit next to existing Negro areas on the West

Side of Dayton, and threatened an appeal to the courts and "if necessary

to the court of last resort for protection."³⁶ Partly because of this protest,

but largely for other reasons, Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes

early in May sent a member of the division's staff, W. E. Zeuch, to

investigate the situation in Dayton. Ickes was not one to bend to racial

prejudice, and the protest from Jefferson Township did not influence his

subsequent decisions with respect to the projected units.37

A much more serious issue for the future of homesteading in Dayton

was the eruption of sharp internal criticism of Borsodi's management in

the unit itself, criticism taken up and turned into a sustained attack by

the Dayton Review, a weekly civic newspaper. Because of scanty records,

it is impossible to construct a complete narrative of the controversies, but

it is possible to indicate the nature of the issues. The first signs of dissen-

sion appeared in the autumn of 1933 and emanated from a young member

of the homestead, Miss Charlotte Mary Conover.38 In an open letter to

Borsodi on November 15 Miss Conover complained of delays in the con-

struction of her home (and favoritism to Elizabeth Nutting in the build-

ing of hers), constant changes in the rules and constitution of the unit,

and building costs substantially higher than Borsodi's original estimates;

she also accused Borsodi of being an interloper and questioned the source

of his salary. Miss Conover transmitted her criticisms to the Unit Com-

mittee, and eventually to Clarence Pickett of the Federal Division of

Subsistence Homesteads. Borsodi reacted by having Miss Nutting send a

letter of refutation to every member of the Unit Committee and by speed-

ing up work on Miss Conover's house.³⁹ As for Borsodi's salary, it appears

that he received at first about $200 per month from private contributions

of members of the Unit Committee and an expense account from a budget

of $1,000 allocated to the units by the Dayton Community Chest; there

is also evidence that he received some funds from the loan of $50,000 from

the Division of Subsistence Homesteads.⁴⁰ After prolonged controversy

through much of 1934 and the threat of litigation, the committee decided

to compensate Miss Conover for her actual investment in her home, which

by April 5, 1934, represented a total investment of $2,054.63, in return

for her relinquishing all claims in the homestead unit.⁴¹

• 12
 

SUBSISTENCE HOMESTEADING                                        87

 

The case of Miss Conover was just a ripple before the tidal wave of

criticism that rolled in during April and May, 1934. Beginning on April

6 and continuing almost weekly into June, the Dayton Review seized on

every bit of discontent available. Asking in front-page headlines, "What

Is the Truth About the Homestead Units?" this paper charged that

Borsodi and Nutting were "running wild" now that Federal money seemed

in the offing, that they were "mysterious figures in Dayton" whose sources

of income should be investigated, that the public knew "woefully little

about the project," and that support of homesteading was beyond the

proper scope of the Community Chest.⁴² On April 20 the Review gave

its fullest coverage to the problems of the unit, including a front-page

rehearsal of earlier grievances and a prediction of wholesale resignations

of members of the Unit Committee in protest against "czar" Borsodi's

"dictatorial usurpation of authority." The Review's specific targets included:

Borsodi's alleged attempt to make the Unit Committee a mere rubber-

stamp by reducing its membership from fifteen to five; Borsodi's and Miss

Nutting's evident desire to expel Miss Conover, the only homesteader who

had so far questioned their management; and the victimization of the

homesteaders on the Shaw Farm. After an entire year of activity on this

unit, the paper claimed, only eight families were on the land, and only

one occupied its own permanent house.⁴³

The Review on April 20 also printed, in adjacent columns, two different

replies to the questions it had raised on April 6. In a spirited defense of

the unit and its management, Elizabeth Nutting, as one respondent,

quoted extensively from its constitution to demonstrate the broad social

purposes of homesteading and from the lease agreement made with each

homesteader. The entire system of land tenure, she explained, equitably

balanced the interests of the homesteader with those of the entire unit.

In order to prevent speculation in land and houses and to preserve economic

and aesthetic unity, land tenure in fee simple had been rejected in favor

of corporate ownership.⁴⁴ Each homesteader received a lease for his plot

and paid an annual "ground rent," which included principal and interest

of 5 1/2 percent on his loan from the Unit Committee, the tax assessment

on his land and any property on it, and a share of communal and admin-

istrative expenses. This rental payment was fixed by a nine-member board

of trustees, elected from the membership of the homestead community,

there was a system of arbitration to settle challenges to the trustees' decisions,

and there was provision for voluntary withdrawal on sixty-days' notice

and for eviction by a vote of two-thirds of the members. Miss Nutting

also defended the process of accepting applicants for the homesteading

project and rejected charges that Borsodi had received any salary from

the Community Chest.

The other reply from an "unidentified homesteader," perhaps Miss

Conover, marshaled much of the same data summarized by Miss Nutting,

but differed sharply with her about the justice and equity of the project.

For example, this respondent claimed that the selection of homesteaders

• 13
 

88                                                 OHIO HISTORY

 

had been very arbitrary and that agreements made with them were easily

broken. For the first nine months, two young women in Miss Nutting's

"household"--religious-education workers who followed her from job to

job--had investigated applicants with an eye to providing the community

with varied skills, but their judgments of skill had been untrained and

overly optimistic.⁴⁵ In January 1934, when the Unit Committee finally

adopted a uniform questionnaire to be used in processing applications,

the questions had been highly personal and subjective.⁴⁶ Moreover, this

critic contended, even after homesteaders had gone through the tedious

process of admission, they were not secure from being "later forced quietly

out of the unit on one pretext or another." On the matter of land tenure,

the procedures outlined by Miss Nutting were only theoretically operative;

in practice, Borsodi had a "habit of bland disregard for all agreements

and understandings, if he feels inclined to disregard them." Plans for

housing construction had repeatedly changed, to the detriment of the

homesteaders and of architectural homogeneity. Convenience and sanita-

tion were proving elusive, as the planners failed to fulfill promises for

inside plumbing, leaving homesteaders to face the prospect of outhouses

and, at times, backyard holes for sewage disposal. Also, the community

officers were charged with discrimination in construction and in the use

of communal tools and facilities; they and their friends had preferential

treatment in getting land plowed and houses begun.⁴⁷

In subsequent issues the Review, receiving its information from dis-

gruntled homesteaders, focused on Borsodi as the cause of all the unit's

troubles. He was accused of being an interloper, posing as an experienced

homesteader. The Review claimed that his home in Suffern was three

and one-half stories high and contained a billiard room and that his

pious talk about comfort and security must have a hollow ring to people

living in huts and shacks. Essentially the same point was made in a

review of his book Flight From the City for the Nation. The reviewer

concluded that Borsodi's broad social application of his own special

experience, based on regular, reliable outside income, made his book "an

exceedingly dangerous and even a dishonest piece of propaganda."⁴⁸

A related argument by the Review was that Borsodi exaggerated his

achievements in Dayton, evidently in the interests of his own national repu-

tation. The paper cited some publicity for Flight From the City that pro-

claimed, "hundreds of families have been placed on self-sufficing home-

steads according to his methods" in Dayton. The facts were that only a

handful of persons had taken up residence on the unit. Whether or not

Borsodi was culpable, some misrepresentation did creep into reports on

the unit. One article in a national magazine included pictures of four

"typical" houses--all substantial structures, two of stone, one frame, and

one concrete or stucco. Another article by Borsodi included pictures of

a room full of looms and a large building for small-scale manufactures,

both of which were probably facilities operated by production units but

certainly not by the subsistence-homestead unit.⁴⁹ Still another criticism

• 14
 

SUBSISTENCE HOMESTEADING                                        89

 

was that Borsodi charged homesteaders for "bookkeeping costs" above

and beyond the portion of their ground rents allocated for administra-

tive and clerical expenses.⁵⁰

But undoubtedly the most telling and persistent contention made by

critics was that Borsodi's leadership was high-handed and arbitrary and that

he attempted to force homesteaders to conform to his preconceived

philosophy of homesteading. The Review reported that he and Miss Nut-

ting pressured homesteaders into purchasing looms that merely served as

window dressing for publicity and that they valued docility above crea-

tivity and self-determination. On April 27 the paper accused him of con-

spiring with Miss Nutting, Virginia P. Wood, his chief supporter on the

Unit Committee, and Paul Cromer, president of the unit, to prevent

homesteaders from communicating with the Unit Committee. One version

of the story is that when Borsodi returned from a trip to Washington and

learned that the Unit Committee had entertained a protest signed by nine

heads of families in the unit, he had reprimanded the committee for exceed-

ing its authority. On May 4 the Review quoted one homesteader as saying:

The powers and functions of the unit as a self-governing group exist

in name only, and are in reality being replaced by an increasingly

rigorous paternalism. The spirit of this paternalism [as exemplified

by Borsodi] is not benevolent. It is stubborn, somewhat ill-tempered,

and dictatorial. The spirit being engendered among the homesteaders

as a result is one of resentment. Nothing could be further from the

ideal of a cooperative community.

Another article on June 8 claimed that "practically the only piece of farm

machinery in the possession of the first homestead unit which has been

well-oiled and in good working order, and always in use during the past

year, has been the steam-roller."⁵¹

The Review also publicized an attempt to evict Leslie M. Abbe, one

of the first to move his family onto the Shaw Farm in May 1933. Some-

time in June 1934, Abbe and five other homesteaders wired Secretary

of the Interior Ickes directly to protest a new loan contract that was drawn

up by Borsodi. Their viewpoint was that the contract represented the

"culmination of his vicious domineering tactics destroying individual

initiative, self-respect and freedom" and was "subversive of all social

implications" of subsistence homesteading. Paul Cromer and the majority

of homesteaders who seem to have remained loyal to Borsodi tried to

apply the unit's constitutional provision for eviction by a vote of two-thirds

of the members. Abbe was eventually ousted after several premature at-

tempts, and when he left, several other members of the minority followed

him.⁵²

The reaction of the Unit Committee to these criticisms is difficult

to assess. There is evidence that one member of the committee, Nathan

M. Stanley of the Stanley Manufacturing Company and the Univis Lens

Company, was critical of financial and administrative procedures and of

• 15
 

90                                                OHIO HISTORY

 

the discrepancy between Borsodi's claims and the actual number of families

on the land. Making little headway with his efforts to have the committee

investigate complaints, he then corresponded with Ickes after the Dayton

Review's attack on April 20.53 Periodically, there were rumors of mass

resignations from the committee, but these may have been due to the

desire of many members to escape the burden of weekly--and sometimes

even more frequent--meetings, or even to a feeling that a smaller committee

would be more efficient.⁵4

Two developments in April 1934 were of significance in the relation-

ship between the Dayton Council of Social Agencies, the local Unit Com-

mittee, and the homesteaders on the Shaw Farm. Late in March 1934,

a special committee of the Council of Social Agencies, undoubtedly stung

by the increasingly vocal criticisms, recommended that the Unit Committee

be separated from the council and receive no further administrative funds

from it. The official reasons for the separation were that the unit had

passed the experimental stage and was now recognized by the Federal

Government, that the Unit Committee had become in effect a public

corporation administering public funds, that it was not the function or

policy of the council to administer any agency, and that the council was

not properly equipped to exercise control. But the motivation behind this

recommendation was at least partly to avoid embarrassment and to retain

public support for its other activities. Therefore, beginning in April, the

council cut off the homestead project from its most important organized

local sponsorship.55

The second significant development in April was a reorganization and

reduction in size of the Unit Committee. Reorganized as the Unit Com-

mittee of Dayton, Ohio, Incorporated, after the separation from the Council

of Social Agencies, the committee then needed a more formal structure

than it had hitherto possessed. Under some pressure from Borsodi, who

insisted that the Federal Division of Subsistence Homesteads favored hav-

ing a smaller local body in charge, the committee finally agreed on April

23 to turn over direct administration to a five-member board of directors,

which would be theoretically responsible to a larger twenty-four-member

association of advisers made up of both local and non-resident persons.

At first, Borsodi suggested that the five-member board be composed of

Mrs. Wood, Elizabeth Nutting, Walter E. Joseph, an expert in animal

husbandry from Montana State College who had become unit manager

in November 1933, Robert DeArmond, and himself. But objections to

turning policy-making over to such a committee, three of whose members

were staff personnel, were too strong; and the board finally selected on

April 23 consisted of Sam H. Thal, as president, Robert DeArmond, a

salesman, Mrs. George H. Wood, Mrs. George Shaw Greene, a leading

figure in both local and state units of the League of Women Voters and

the widow of a partner in the investment firm of Greene and Brock, and

Mrs. Scott Pierce, an active participant in civic affairs whose husband was

in insurance--none of whom were staff members.56

• 16
 

SUBSISTENCE HOMESTEADING                                        91

 

By the end of April 1934, the objections of taxpayers in Jefferson,

Madison, and Harrison townships, the criticisms by a faction of home-

steaders of delays in construction and arbitrary administration, the attacks

of the Dayton Review, and the tensions within the Unit Committee all

reached a climax and came to the attention of the Division of Subsistence

Homesteads in Washington. At this point, the fate of the project also

became entwined in a change of Federal policy that caused the final crisis

for homesteading in Dayton. The Secretary of the Interior, Harold L.

Ickes, was a man with a passion for orderly, efficient, centralized admin-

istration. In his direction of the Public Works Administration, he achieved

a singular reputation for scrutinizing the expenditure of every public

dollar. At first, he was willing to accept Milburn L. Wilson's preference

for decentralized administration of the subsistence homesteads, and the

Unit Committee in Dayton received a straight loan of $50,000 to be admin-

istered without Federal surveillance. Although the community in Dayton

was the only one where the Federal Government never owned the land,

control by local corporations was the rule in the early phases of the

homestead division's activities. Borsodi, a dogmatic advocate of decentralized

administration, found it easy to work with Wilson, who shared his funda-

mental conviction that the success of homesteading would depend on the

initiative and creativity of the local communities.⁵⁷ Increasingly, however, as

Ickes became troubled about Wilson's executive abilities and about local

problems like those in Dayton, the Secretary moved toward the decision

that all of the homestead communities should be brought under Federal

control and that the autonomy of local homestead corporations should be

checked by Federal managers appointed for each project. Local corporations,

he felt, lacked any direct financial responsibility for the projects and there-

fore might not operate them in the best interests of governmental economy

and efficiency. Consequently, on May 12 Ickes ordered complete federaliza-

tion of the entire homestead program, and in June he replaced Wilson, who

moved to the Agriculture Department on June 30, with Charles E. Pynchon,

an official in the Public Works Administration who accepted the philosphy

of Federal control.⁵⁸

The trend toward federalization, however, created a serious dilemma for

the Unit Committee in Dayton, even before the Secretary's order of May

12. The first unit on the Shaw Farm was safe from Federal intervention be-

cause there had been no strings attached to the loan of $50,000. But the

application for an additional $309,400 to finance four other units was to be

governed by the new policy. On April 11, when Ickes was apparently already

bringing pressure to bear on Wilson to federalize the projects, Wilson re-

quested authority to draw up loan contracts, similar to the first unit's con-

tract, in order to implement the decision of March 3, 1934, giving prelim-

inary approval to four additional units in Dayton. Ickes approved the request

on April 19.⁵⁹ But the Unit Committee began at once to debate the possi-

bility that it would have to choose between federalization and the $309,400.

Reorganization of the committee in late April contained overtones of some

• 17
 

92                                                OHIO HISTORY

 

disagreement over federalization, which was discussed concurrently. There

also were rumors that of the new five-member board of directors, four stood

with Borsodi against federalization and one, Mrs. Scott Pierce, opposed Bor-

sodi. After numerous meetings, the Unit Committee voted on May 28 to

reject federalization on the grounds that it would destroy what the project

stood for: a unique plan of low-cost housing, self-help through exchange of

labor, the loan basis of land tenure, land tenure free of speculation, local

selection of homesteaders, and the autonomy of each homestead group.60

Prior to making this decision, the Unit Committee attempted to obtain

through its president, Sam H. Thal, some indication of whether acceptance

of federalization would be a condition for securing the new loan of $309,400.

The answer from Washington was that no commitment could be made be-

fore completion of an investigation into local complaints by the Division of

Subsistence Homesteads. A special investigator for the division, Harry Jent-

zer, visited Dayton for two weeks in mid-May, and, accordng to the Dayton

Review, unlike the earlier investigation of W. E. Zeuch, Jentzer's report

concluded that the situation was chaotic.61 Whether Jentzer's investigation

influenced or merely confirmed Ickes' decision to insist on federalization,

the Interior Secretary was adamant in his conclusion that, while nothing

could be done to force the federalization of the first unit, no additional

loans would be made without it. Given the Unit Committee's resolution of

May 28, bargaining came to an impasse.62

Borsodi, however, thought that he saw a way out. Optimistic over a visit

to Dayton by Lorena Hickok, an investigator for Harry Hopkins' Federal

Emergency Relief Administration, the week prior to the Unit Committee's

decision to oppose federalization, he entered a request to withdraw the loan

application for $309,400 from the Division of Subsistence Homesteads in

order to seek funds from another agency. Charles Pynchon, director of the

division, approved the withdrawal on the condition that the Unit Com-

mittee understood that his agency would assume no further obligations for

the four new units. On June 14 Ickes indicated to Senator Robert J. Bulk-

ley that another governmental agency might provide financial assistance to

the Unit Committee on the committee's own terms. By June 23, however,

the Secretary was raising questions with Hopkins about the propriety of "one

branch of the Government permitting an applicant to withdraw an applica-

tion because of reasonable conditions that are objected to and then allow

[ing] that same application to be filed with another branch of the Govern-

ment."⁶³ Borsodi could not get Ickes to rescind his objection to a substitute

loan, and on June 24 the Unit Committee decided to sue the Federal Sub-

sistence Homesteads Corporation for $309,400, claiming breach of contract.⁶⁴

Borsodi subsequently attributed the failure of homesteading in Dayton to

two factors: his inability to communicate his broad goals of adult re-educa-

tion to the participants, and the original decision to seek Federal funds,

which led to the problems of "red-tape, absentee bureaucratic dictation and

politics" and to Ickes' breaking of "the solemn agreement into which he had

entered." At the time of the suit, he made substantially this same charge

• 18
 

SUBSISTENCE HOMESTEADING                                        93

 

against Ickes, despite the fact that the decision on federalization had been

reached without any binding contractual obligations on the part of the gov-

ernment to finance the new units. In his argument against federalization

Borsodi charged that it would have made the homestead community com-

parable to an Indian reservation, exempt from local and state taxes and in

danger of the loss of voting rights because of Federal ownership of the land.⁶⁵

Rather than go down fighting with Borsodi, however, the Unit Committee

arranged a conference with Pynchon on July 2 in Washington and disagree-

ments over federalization were settled harmoniously. The committee de-

clined to file its intended suit and instead accepted government control of

the four additional units.66

On July 10 Borsodi left Dayton for his home in Suffern, breaking with

the Unit Committee because of its reversal on federalization. The commit-

tee then began to lay plans, in conjunction with Homer Morris, another

Federal official, to make the transfer to Federal control. By the end of July

a new Federal manager, Harold Peterson, was on the scene to supervise the

four new units and to act as adviser to the first unit, which was to continue

on the original basis of local control. Peterson had worked in economic and

social redevelopment in rural areas in the Punjab in North India and came

to Dayton from a position as manager of the model town of Norris, Tennes-

see.⁶⁷ Peterson spoke hopefully of beginning work on four new sites in the

summer of 1935, but those projects never materialized. Throughout 1935

various governmental agencies made studies of the first unit, which was

also federalized in September 1934 at the request of the Unit Committee

and the homestead unit itself. In March 1935, A. A. Wattrous replaced

Peterson as manager, when Peterson became relief director for Uniontown,

Pennsylvania. Later, in May 1935, the unit was transferred from the Division

of Subsistence Homesteads to the Resettlement Administration, when that

agency was created to incorporate the work of earlier agencies in rural de-

velopment. And on December 30, 1935, the property was purchased by the

Ohio Rural Rehabilitation Corporation, which intended to develop it as an

experimental urban community.⁶⁸

Despite these changes in management and periodic surveys, however, the

project never became a pioneering experiment in finding a new balance

between urban and rural life, and early in 1936 those few homesteading

families still remaining finally departed.

 

THE AUTHOR: Jacob H. Dorn is an

assistant professor in the history depart-

ment at Wright State University.

• 19