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
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
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
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 |
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
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
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-
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
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- |
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.
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.
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.
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