Homesteaders—New Style
By: Charles R. Walker
Farm Security Administration's experiment in resettling southern tenants on land of their own, here described by a recent visitor to several projects, demonstrates that, given a boost by government, America's poorest pioneers can rise from relief to self-support.
IN THE SPRING OF 1935, RICHARD McKay sat in the office of an ex-county agent who had just been made project manager of "Roanoke Farms," North Carolina. Mr. McKay was worried. He had been a tenant farmer for eighteen years, and today he was broke, in debt, discouraged and hungry. But he still had his nerve with him. He wanted to buy a farm on the government's tenant-purchase plan. The project manager looked him over. He knew that he had been a tenant for the past seven years on a 500-acre North Carolina cotton farm. On a 40-acre lot McKay had been raising a $750 cash crop a year in cotton. The landlord took two thirds, and with the balance McKay bought groceries and clothing for his family of seven. (Average southern tenant family's income is $73 per person for a year's work.)…
…The project manager accepted the McKays for his tenant purchase project for the same reason he had accepted most of the other applicants, because they worked hard and didn't drink; in his judgment were smart farmers who had been licked by unscientific farming methods, soil exhaustion, and an indefensible system of land tenure. Because, too, in the opinion of the home supervisor, Mrs. McKay had the instincts of a good housekeeper…
…Today, the size of Mr. McKay's farm almost exactly equals the one he farmed as a tenant, but the crop allocation has been worked out by an agronomist. Three acres are in tobacco, and five in cotton, eight in peanuts—the rest in woodland and pasture—meaning a cash crop of around $800…But even more significant in the eyes of Farm Security is the fact that the McKays, except for coffee, bread and sugar, are raising all the family's food on the farm—which they didn't before.
…The last three years haven't been easy, especially the budgeting ahead for a whole year which is required by the project, but McKay says he thinks he's "getting somewhere" and feels good. A Negro farmer who has made a go of it on the project expressed his feelings the other day rather more emotionally: "I wake up in the night sometimes," he said, "and think I must be half dead and gone to heaven."
Homesteaders - New Style
Classification: Farm Security Administration
Publication: Survey Graphic
Date: June, 1939
Author: Walker, Charles R.
Type: Article
Publisher: Survey Associates, Inc.
Notes: Vol. 28, No. 6, p. 377.
From: The New Deal Network - http://newdeal.feri.org/survey/39a06.htm