Community Civics and Rural Life Part 16

Gilman, Charlotte P., The Home (Doubleday, Page and Co.).

Talbot and Breckenridge, "The Modern Household" (Whitcomb and Barrows, Boston).

Addams, Jane, The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets (Macmillan).

Ellwood, Charles A., "Sociology and Modern Social Problems,"

chapters on the family (American Book Co.).

Scott, Rhea, "Home Labor-Saving Devices" (Lippincott).

Foght, H. W., "The Rural Teacher and his Work," Part I, chap. iii.

U. S. Department of Agriculture, Office of the Secretary, Reports 103, 104, 105, 106:

"Social and Labor Needs of Farm Women."

"Domestic Needs of Farm Women."

"Educational Needs of Farm Women."

"Economic Needs of Farm Women."

These reports can be obtained only from the Superintendent of Doc.u.ments, Government Printing Office, 15 cents each.

"The American Farm Woman as She Sees Herself," U. S. Department of Agriculture Year Book, 1914, pp. 311-318.

"Selection of Household Equipment," Department of Agriculture Year Book 1914, pp. 330-362.

Dunn, Arthur W., "The Community and the Citizen," chaps, v, vi.

CHAPTER X

WHY GOVERNMENT HELPS IN HOME MAKING

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

RELATION OF HOME CONDITIONS TO INDUSTRY

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

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

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

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

STRENGTH OF THE NATION DEPENDS ON THE HOME

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

COMMUNITY PLANNING

Economic loss to the community may result not merely from UNWHOLESOME home conditions, but also from INCONVENIENCE of location and arrangement of the homes. A good deal of attention is being given to "community planning" in the United States and especially in England and other European countries. Community planning includes not only provision for the proper location and construction of public buildings and streets, for water supply, lights, parks, etc., but also for the convenient, as well as wholesome and pleasant location of homes. Large cities, like London, New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago, have spent enormous sums of money in city planning after they have already grown up without plan. It has necessitated destroying old structures and widening streets. Villages and small towns are in a position to introduce a plan for future growth without this needless expense.

Our beautiful capital city of Washington has grown according to a plan that was carefully laid out before a building was erected.

But even in Washington one of the greatest problems the city had to face during the war was that of providing homes for the enormous number of workers who came to the city to do the work of the government.

PLANNING THE FARMSTEAD

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

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

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

In some rural communities in the United States a "teacherage"

(home for the teacher) is provided. Of what advantage to the community is this?

Is there a "housing problem" in your community?

Are there any laws in your state regulating the building of homes?

If so, what are some of them? Do they apply in your community? Are they carefully observed and enforced?

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

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

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

(c) Are they suitably protected from the prevailing winds? How?

(d) What makes them attractive or unattractive?

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

Must a home be large and costly to be attractive?

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

THE HOME AND COMMUNITY STABILITY

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

EFFECTS OF DECLINE OF HOME OWNERSHIP

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

Farming is a permanent business; it is no "fly by night"