Agency overview | |
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Formed | August 23, 1933 |
Dissolved | May 15, 1935 |
Superseding agency |
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Agency executive |
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Parent agency | United States Department of the Interior |
Website | https://www.archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/groups/096.html |
The Subsistence Homesteads Division (or Division of Subsistence Homesteads, SHD or DSH) of the United States Department of the Interior was a New Deal agency that was intended to relieve industrial workers and struggling farmers from complete dependence on factory or agricultural work. [1] The program was created to provide low-rent homesteads, including a home and small plots of land that would allow people to sustain themselves. Through the program, 34 communities were built. [2] Unlike subsistence farming, subsistence homesteading is based on a family member or members having part-time, paid employment. [3] However the new residents were not allowed to purchase the new homes.
The subsistence homesteading program was based on an agrarian, "back-to-the-land" philosophy which meant a partial return to the simpler, farming life of the past. Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt both endorsed the idea that for poor people, rural life could be healthier than city life. Cooperation, community socialization, and community work were also emphasized. [4] However, going "back-to-the-land" did not always sit well with people stuck in outlying "stranded communities" without jobs. [5] According to Liz Straw of the Tennessee Historical Commission, the most controversial were those rural communities of long-unemployed miners or timber workers whom opponents of subsistence homesteading thought unlikely to thrive without better job opportunities. [4]
In response to the Great Depression, the Subsistence Homesteads Division was created by the federal government in 1933 with the aim to improve the living conditions of individuals moving away from overcrowded urban centers while also giving them the opportunity to experience small-scale farming and home ownership. [6] Subsistence Homesteads Division Director, Milburn L. Wilson, defined a "subsistence homestead" as follows:
A subsistence homestead denotes a house and out buildings located upon a plot of land on which can be grown a large portion of foodstuffs required by the homestead family. It signifies production for home consumption and not for commercial sale. In that it provides for subsistence alone, it carries with it the corollary that cash income must be drawn from some outside source. The central motive of the subsistence homestead program, therefore, is to demonstrate the economic value of a livelihood which combines part-time wage work and part-time gardening or farming. [7]
DSH projects "would be initiated at the state level and administered through a nonprofit corporation. Successful applicants were offered a combination of part-time employment opportunities, fertile soil for part-time farming, and locations connected to the services of established cities." [7] The homesteads were organized to combine the benefits of rural and urban living - communities meant to demonstrate a different path towards a healthier and more economically secure future. [6]
The Division of Subsistence Homesteads was created by the Secretary of the Interior as an order to fulfill the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933. Milburn Lincoln Wilson, then belonging to the USDA's Agricultural Adjustment Administration, was selected by President Frank D. Roosevelt to lead the new Division under Secretary of the Interior, Harold Ickes. [8] Wilson and his advisory committee determined that they wanted the project to prioritize areas hit especially hard by Depression. Initially, the cost of the houses was not to exceed $2,000 and the homesteads would fall under the administration of the Division and local non-profit corporation created specifically for the community. [8] The same year, Carl Cleveland Taylor, the 36th President of the American Sociological Society, was appointed sociologist with the SHD. [9] Some of the subsistence homesteading communities included African Americans; Assistant Supervisor John P. Murchison wrote to W. E. B. Du Bois in April 1934 for advice on racial integration and how to incorporate African Americans into the program. [10] [11] Eleanor Roosevelt took personal interest in the project, and became involved in setting up the first community, Arthurdale, WV after a visit to the stranded miners of Scotts Run. [12]
There was strong opposition to the idea of subsistence homesteads, as undercutting agricultural prices, unions, and the labor supply for manufacturing. Nonetheless, as of 2011, some communities, such as Arthurdale, West Virginia, in which Eleanor Roosevelt was personally involved, maintain an active memory of the program. [13] By March 1934, 30 projects had been started. Twenty-one were considered garden-home projects, two were full-time farming projects near urban areas, five were for unemployed miners and two were combinations of the aforementioned types. [8] In June 1935, the powers granted to DSH under the National Industrial Recovery Act expired. On April 30, Executive Order No. 7027 had created the Resettlement Administration ; part of their mandate gave them authority "to administer approved projects involving resettlement of destitute or low-income families from rural and urban areas, including the establishment, maintenance and operation, in such connection, of communities in rural and suburban areas." [14] By another Executive Order (No. 7530), the Subsistence Housing Project was transferred from the Department of Interior to the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 1936. By the next year, the program had been transferred once again, this time to the Federal Public Housing Authority, where it was formally abolished. Various architects including Mary Almy, helped design the buildings and homes built under the project. [15]
These communities were planned and built: [16]
Name | Locale | State | Notes |
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Aberdeen Gardens | Hampton | Virginia | |
Arthurdale | Arthurdale | West Virginia [17] | |
Austin Homesteads/Austin Acres | Austin [18] | Minnesota | |
Bankhead Farms | near Jasper | Alabama | |
Beauxart Gardens | Jefferson County | Texas | Near Beaumont, Texas |
Cumberland Homesteads | Cumberland County [19] | Tennessee | |
Dalworthington Gardens | Tarrant County | Texas | |
Dayton Homesteads | Dayton [20] [21] | Ohio | |
Decatur Homesteads | Decatur | Indiana | |
Duluth Homesteads | Duluth | Minnesota | |
El Monte Homesteads | El Monte | California | |
Eleanor | Eleanor | West Virginia | |
Granger Homesteads | Granger | Iowa | |
Greenwood Homesteads | near Birmingham | Alabama | |
Hattiesburg Homesteads | Hattiesburg | Mississippi | |
Houston Gardens | Houston | Texas | |
Jersey Homesteads | Roosevelt | New Jersey | |
Lake County Homesteads | Chicago | Illinois | |
Longview Homesteads | Longview [7] | Washington | |
Magnolia Homesteads | Meridian | Mississippi | |
McComb Homesteads | McComb | Mississippi | |
Mount Olive Homesteads | near Birmingham | Alabama | |
Palmerdale Homesteads | Pinson | Alabama | |
Penderlea | Pender County [22] | North Carolina | |
Phoenix Homesteads | Phoenix | Arizona | |
Piedmont Homesteads | Jasper County | Georgia | |
Richton Homesteads | Richton | Mississippi | |
San Fernando Homesteads | San Fernando | California | |
Shenandoah Homesteads | Rappahannock County | Virginia | |
Three Rivers Gardens | Three Rivers | Texas | |
Tupelo Homesteads | Lee County | Mississippi | |
Cahaba Homesteads/"Slagheap Village" | Birmingham | Alabama | |
Tygart Valley Homesteads | Dailey | West Virginia | |
Westmoreland Homesteads | Norvelt | Pennsylvania | |
Wichita Gardens | Wichita Falls | Texas | |
Of the communities listed, five are considered national or local historic districts, including Aberdeen Gardens (VA), Arthurdale (WV), Phoenix Homesteads (AZ), [23] Tupelo Homesteads (MS), [24] Cahaba Homesteads/ Slagheap Village (AL), [25] and Tygart Valley Homesteads (WV).
96.2.4 Records of the Subsistence Homesteads Division and its successors
History: Subsistence Homesteads Division organized in the Department of the Interior, August 23, 1933, under provisions of EO 6209, July 21, 1933, implementing the subsistence homesteads program of the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 (48 Stat. 205), June 16, 1933. [26] Transferred to Resettlement Administration by EO 7041, May 15, 1935. [27]
Textual Records: Correspondence with the general public ("Requests for General Information"), 1933-35. Correspondence concerning proposed subsistence homestead projects, 1933-35. Correspondence concerning a census of part-time farming, 1933-34. Records relating to wages of workers employed on subsistence homestead projects, 1934-35.
Architectural and Engineering Plans (2,500 items): Paper tracings and blueprints of "subsistence homesteads" and "experimental villages" built by the Subsistence Homesteads Division (Interior), Division of Subsistence Homesteads (Resettlement Administration), and FSA, including plans of the Arthurdale Community and Reedsville, WV, projects, 1933-38.
The Civil Works Administration (CWA) was a short-lived job creation program established by the New Deal during the Great Depression in the United States to rapidly create mostly manual-labor jobs for millions of unemployed workers. The jobs were merely temporary, for the duration of the hard winter of 1933–34. President Franklin D. Roosevelt unveiled the CWA on November 8, 1933, and put Harry L. Hopkins in charge of the short-term agency.
The Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) was a United States federal law of the New Deal era designed to boost agricultural prices by reducing surpluses. The government bought livestock for slaughter and paid farmers subsidies not to plant on part of their land. The money for these subsidies was generated through an exclusive tax on companies which processed farm products. The Act created a new agency, the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, also called "AAA" (1933–1942), an agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, to oversee the distribution of the subsidies. The Agriculture Marketing Act, which established the Federal Farm Board in 1929, was seen as an important precursor to this act. The AAA, along with other New Deal programs, represented the federal government's first substantial effort to address economic welfare in the United States.
Dalworthington Gardens is a city in Tarrant County, Texas, United States and a suburb of Arlington.
Homesteading is a lifestyle of self-sufficiency. It is characterized by subsistence agriculture, home preservation of food, and may also involve the small scale production of textiles, clothing, and craft work for household use or sale. Pursued in different ways around the world—and in different historical eras—homesteading is generally differentiated from rural village or commune living by isolation of the homestead. Use of the term in the United States dates back to the Homestead Act (1862) and before. In sub-Saharan Africa, particularly in nations formerly controlled by the British Empire, a homestead is the household compound for a single extended family. In the UK the terms smallholder and croft are rough synonyms of homesteader.
The Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) was a program established by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933, building on the Herbert Hoover administration's Emergency Relief and Construction Act. It was replaced in 1935 by the Works Progress Administration (WPA).
The Farm Security Administration (FSA) was a New Deal agency created in 1937 to combat rural poverty during the Great Depression in the United States. It succeeded the Resettlement Administration (1935–1937).
In his twelve years in office, United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt did not appoint or nominate a single African American to be either a secretary or undersecretary in his presidential cabinet. Denied such an outlet, African American federal employees in the executive branch began to meet informally in an unofficial Federal Council of Negro Affairs to try to influence federal policy on race issues. By mid-1935, there were 45 African Americans working in federal executive departments and New Deal agencies. Referred to as the Black Cabinet, Roosevelt did not officially recognize it as such, nor make appointments to it. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt encouraged the group. Although many have ascribed the term to Mary McLeod Bethune, African American newspapers had earlier used it to describe key black advisors of Theodore Roosevelt, Taft, Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover.
Rexford Guy Tugwell was an American economist who became part of Franklin D. Roosevelt's first "Brain Trust", a group of Columbia University academics who helped develop policy recommendations leading up to Roosevelt's New Deal. Tugwell served in FDR's administration until he was forced out in 1936. He was a specialist on planning and believed the government should have large-scale plans to move the economy out of the Great Depression because private businesses were too frozen in place to do the job. He helped design the New Deal farm program and the Resettlement Administration that moved subsistence farmers into small rented farms under close supervision. His ideas on suburban planning resulted in the construction of Greenbelt, Maryland, with low-cost rents for relief families. He was denounced by conservatives for advocating state-directed economic planning to overcome the Great Depression.
The Resettlement Administration (RA) was a New Deal U.S. federal agency created May 1, 1935. It relocated struggling urban and rural families to communities planned by the federal government. On September 1, 1937, it was succeeded by the Farm Security Administration.
Arthurdale is an unincorporated community in Preston County, West Virginia, United States. It was built in 1933 at the height of the Great Depression as a social experiment to provide opportunities for unemployed local miners and farmers. Arthurdale was undertaken by the short-lived Subsistence Homesteads Division and with the personal involvement of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, who used her influence to win government approval for the scheme.
Norvelt is a census-designated place in Mount Pleasant Township, Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, United States, founded in 1934 as Westmoreland Homesteads. In 1937 it was renamed to honor Eleanor Roosevelt. The community was part of the Calumet-Norvelt CDP for the 2000 census, but was split into the two separate communities of Calumet and Norvelt for the 2010 census. Calumet was a typical company town, locally referred to as a "patch" or "patch town", built by a single company to house coal miners as cheaply as possible. On the other hand, Norvelt was created during the Great Depression by the federal government of the United States as a model community, intended to increase the standard of living of laid-off coal miners. Award winning writer Jack Gantos was born in the village and wrote two books about it
Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was an American political figure, diplomat, and activist. She was the first lady of the United States from 1933 to 1945, during her husband President Franklin D. Roosevelt's four terms in office, making her the longest-serving first lady of the United States. Through her travels, public engagement, and advocacy, she largely redefined the role of First Lady. Roosevelt then served as a United States Delegate to the United Nations General Assembly from 1945 to 1952, and took a leading role in designing the text of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In 1948 she was given a standing ovation by the assembly upon their adoption of the Declaration. President Harry S. Truman later called her the "First Lady of the World" in tribute to her human rights achievements.
The New Deal was a series of programs, public work projects, financial reforms, and regulations enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United States between 1933 and 1938. Major federal programs and agencies, including the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), the Works Progress Administration (WPA), the Civil Works Administration (CWA), the Farm Security Administration (FSA), the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 (NIRA) and the Social Security Administration (SSA), provided support for farmers, the unemployed, youth, and the elderly. The New Deal included new constraints and safeguards on the banking industry and efforts to re-inflate the economy after prices had fallen sharply. New Deal programs included both laws passed by Congress as well as presidential executive orders during the first term of the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt.
My Day was a newspaper column written by First Lady of the United States Eleanor Roosevelt (ER) six days a week from December 31, 1935, to September 26, 1962. In her column, Roosevelt discussed issues including civil rights, women's rights, and various current events. This column allowed ER to spread her ideas, thoughts, and perspectives on contemporary events to the American public through local newspapers. Through My Day, Roosevelt became the first First Lady to write a daily newspaper column. Roosevelt also wrote for Ladies Home Journal, McCall's, and published various articles in Vogue and other women's magazines.
Colonel Lawrence Westbrook was a Texan politician and official in the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. A 1908 graduate of the University of Texas and later the University of Texas Law School. Colonel Westbrook also served as a member of the Texas Legislature representing Waco, Texas. During World War I he attained the rank of lieutenant colonel in the Army Signal Corps. He was among the pallbearers of Felix Huston Robertson, a war-criminal known for the Saltville Massacre of black soldiers and as the last surviving general of the Confederate States of America. He married Mrs. Martha Wootton Collings in Hot Springs, Arkansas in March 1937. During World War II Colonel Westbrook returned to active duty and was wartime president of the United States Purchasing Board in the South Pacific theater where he was awarded the Order of the British Empire from New Zealand. While serving in the South Pacific he was responsible for a survey of all defense resources for this region. Colonel Westbrook died January 24, 1964 in San Angelo, Texas.
Cumberland Homesteads is a community located in Cumberland County, Tennessee, United States. Established by the New Deal-era Division of Subsistence Homesteads in 1934, the community was envisioned by federal planners as a model of cooperative living for the region's distressed farmers, coal miners, and factory workers. While the cooperative experiment failed and the federal government withdrew from the project in the 1940s, the Homesteads community nevertheless survived. In 1988, several hundred of the community's original houses and other buildings, which are characterized by the native "crab orchard" sandstone used in their construction, were added to the National Register of Historic Places as a historic district.
Tygart Valley Homesteads Historic District is a national historic district located near Dailey, Randolph County, West Virginia. It encompasses 337 contributing buildings, three contributing sites, and three contributing structures, associated with a resettlement community established during the Great Depression by the Roosevelt administration. It was the largest of the three resettlement communities in West Virginia, the others being Arthurdale and Eleanor. The first dwellings were constructed in 1934, and the Civilian Conservation Corps built the public water system, draining systems, and culverts. The houses have modest Colonial Revival architecture details and have either a side gable or gambrel roof, referred to as either an "A-Frame" or "Barn House." Other notable buildings include the Dailey Community Center (1937), gas station (1940), The Homestead School (1939), The East Dailey Bridge (1938), Community Farm, The Warehouse, The Woodworking Shop, and The Weaving Shop.
Scotts Run is a geographical division of the Cass District in Monongalia County, West Virginia, United States. Currently, it encompasses thirteen small, unincorporated communities. Located a few miles from Morgantown, this area's predominant industry in the early twentieth century was coal mining and production. Scotts Run became well known nationally during the years of the Great Depression, when photographers and the relief efforts of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt publicized the impoverished conditions faced by the community. Since the decline in the coal industry in the area, Scotts Run's population has rapidly decreased. However, the current community is active in revitalization efforts to promote new businesses and heritage tourism.
The She-She-She Camps were camps for unemployed women that were organized by Eleanor Roosevelt (ER) in the United States as a counterpart to the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) programs designed for unemployed men. ER found that the men-only focus of the CCC program left out young women who were willing to work in conservation and forestry and to sign up for the six-month programs living away from family and close support. She lobbied for a sister organization to the CCC that would be for young women. Eleanor Roosevelt proposed that this would consist of camps for jobless women and residential worker schools. The She-She-She camps were funded by presidential order in 1933. Labor Secretary Frances Perkins championed one such camp after ER held a White House Conference for Unemployed Women on April 30, 1934, and subsequently ER's concept of a nationwide jobless women's camp was achieved. While the public largely supported the New Deal programs and the CCC was a huge success, the women's version barely topped 5,000 women annually by 1936 and overall served 8,500 as a result of ER's support. This compares to more than 3 million men who participated in the CCC.
Milburn Lincoln Wilson was an American Undersecretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) under Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman under the New Deal and Fair Deal. His main interest was social justice for farmers. He made major contributions to federal agricultural policies, including creating the first domestic allotment plan for the Agricultural Adjustment Act and helping to create the first agricultural commodity programs and for the United States. He also convinced the Millers' National Federation and others to begin enriching bread and cereals.