NOTES
SUBSISTENCE
HOMESTEADING IN DAYTON, OHIO, 1933-1935
1. Richard Hofstadter, The Age of
Reform: From Bryant to F. D. R. (New York,
1955), 23.
2. Paul Keith Conkin, Tomorrow a New
World: The New Deal Community Pro-
gram (Ithaca, N.Y., 1959), 12-13.
3. Ibid., 23-25; William H.
Issel, "Ralph Borsodi and the Agrarian Response to Mod-
ern America," Agricultural
History, XLI (April 1967), 155-156. One of the clearest ex-
pressions of this agrarianism was I'll
Take My Stand, a ringing manifesto published in
1930 by twelve men associated with
Vanderbilt University. The group included Donald
Davidson, Andrew Lytle, Allen Tate, John
Crowe Ranson, and Robert Penn Warren.
Though not one of these Southern
Agrarians, the Ohio novelist Louis Bromfield also
represented the agrarian viewpoint.
4. Dayton Daily News, March 7,
April 25, 1934. Himself the product of rural life
and values, Ford spoke favorably of
achieving widespread self-sufficiency on small farms
and in rural communities, after which
industry would follow people to the smaller
towns and "many of our problems
will be solved." By avocation a gentleman-farmer,
Roosevelt cherished the ideal of finding
a new "balance" between country and city. A
brief account of subsistence homesteads
and of Roosevelt's interest in them is in Arthur
M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Coming of
the New Deal (Boston, 1959), 361-368.
5. Conkin, Tomorrow a New World, 35.
6. Council of Social Agencies, What
We Do and Why (Dayton, 1933), 19-21; Council
of Social Agencies, Social Service
Directory for Dayton and Montgomery County, Ohio
(Dayton, 1938), 17, 21.
7. Dayton Daily News, April 9,
15, 1933; Dayton Review, January 27, 1933; Ralph
Borsodi, "Dayton, Ohio, Makes
Social History," Nation, CXXXVI (April 19, 1933), 447-
448. A contemporary comparative study of
production units in Dayton and elsewhere is
L. H. Grinstead and Willis Wissler, Barter
Scrip and Production Units As Self-Help De-
vices in Times of Depression (Columbus, Ohio, 1933), 46-66.
8. Dayton Daily News, October 12,
November 22, 24, 1933.
9. Ralph Borsodi, "Subsistence
Homesteads: President Roosevelt's New Land and
Population Policy," Survey
Graphic, XXIII (January 1934), 11-14, 48; "Meeting of Board
of Directors, May 24, 1933," Board
and Budget Minutes, 1929-1934 (Dayton Community
Chest Association, typed, bound volume,
courtesy of the United Fund, Inc.); "Minutes
of Unit Committee," January 3, 9,
14, 1933, Virginia P. Wood, recording secretary (Pro-
duction Unit Committee, 1933-1934,
typed, loose-leaf volume, courtesy of Dayton Health
and Welfare Planning Council),
hereinafter cited as "Minutes of Unit Committee." For
Borsodi's own account of his move to
Suffern, see his Flight From the City (New York,
1933).
10. Conkin, Tomorrow a New World, 26.
11. Especially in Issel, "Ralph
Borsodi and the Agrarian Response to Modern Amer-
ica," 155-166.
12. Ralph Borsodi, This Ugly
Civilization (New York, 1933), xiii-xiv; Borsodi,
Education and Living (2 vols.; Suffern, N.Y., 1948), I, vii; Dayton Daily
News, May 21.
1933.
13. Borsodi, This Ugly Civilization,
1, 7, 10, 33-39.