BORSODI: Flight From The City, ch. 10

Prelude to the First Edition
1. Flight from the City
II. Domestic Production
III. Food, Pure Food, and Fresh Food
IV. The Loom and the Sewing-machine
V. Shelter
VI. Water, Hot Water, and Waste Water
VII. Education--The School of Living
VIII. Capital
IX. Security versus Insecurity
X. Independence versus Dependence

HOMESTEADING CATALOG
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CHAPTER TEN
INDEPENDENCE VERSUS DEPENDENCE

    IT IS a simple dictate of the heart which says: If a man is hungry, feed him; if he is naked, clothe him; if he is homeless, shelter him.

    But it is a dictate neither of the heart nor of the head, which says, if a man is unemployed, support him.

    Yet in one way or another, most of what is being done to relieve the distress and suffering of the millions who are unemployed as a result of the depression amounts to nothing more than that those who are employed shall support those who are not. Most relief, and most plans for relief, are merely measures for supporting (or tiding over) the unemployed for that indefinite period of time which they will have to spend looking for work or waiting for work to turn up. That home relief, and food tickets, and bread lines, are measures for supporting the unemployed is obvious. It is not so obvious--but it is nevertheless the same thing--to "make work" for them; that is, to invent such work as cleaning the parks of a city as a mere excuse for doling out cash to them. And it is still the same thing--supporting the unemployed--to make those who are employed "share" their work with them so that both shall be partly employed and partly unemployed. And many of the remedies for unemployment, such as unemployment insurance, however ingeniously they may be dressed up, are still merely measures for supporting the unemployed. For unemployment insurance is merely a device by which contributions from those employed, from the employers, and from the government are doled out to support those who are unemployed.

    My first point, therefore, is this: I am utterly opposed to all measures for relief which upon analysis show themselves to be mere measures for supporting the unemployed. I am opposed to them on three grounds.

    First, because they are evasions of the problem of the unemployed. They are not solutions of their problem. The public gives for relief, and the public pays taxes for relief, and the public hopes, just like Mr. Micawber, that "something will turn up" to end the depression and that the problem will then vanish.

    Secondly, I am opposed to mere support of the unemployed because of the financial drain which such support inflicts upon their friends and relatives (to whom they first turn); to the financial drain which it puts upon industry to whatever extent industry and commerce try to support them; and to the drain upon taxpayers to whatever extent municipal, and state, and national funds are used to support them.

    Finally, I am opposed to them because they are demoralizing to the unemployed. They break down their self-respect. They destroy their sense of responsibility and self-reliance; in short, they pauperize them.

    There is, however, in my opposition to supporting the unemployed, and what I said in the beginning about the imperious duty of feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and sheltering the homeless, no contradiction. What we do for the temporary assistance of unfortunate fellow creatures, particularly when their misfortune is not of their own contriving, is true charity. I do not like the word charity, though it is the only one that I can think of in this connection. For this sort of assistance is really a species of hospitality; when we give this sort of temporary assistance we are only doing, indirectly, what used to be the universal custom for us to do for every stranger who knocked at the doors of the pioneer homesteads of America's past.

    But if we are not to support the unemployed--beyond giving them what I have spoken of as temporary assistance--what then are we to do for them at this time?

    I have an answer for this question. And unlike most of the answers to it, it is so completely the obvious answer that I dare not state it until some sort of background for it has been prepared. For my answer cannot be fully appreciated, it cannot be fully understood, its complete practicality cannot be realized, until we have first thought through completely what the problem of unemployment really is.

    We have in this country at present about fifteen million men and women, formerly employed, who are today unemployed. In the aggregate, this army of ex-factory-workers, ex-farm-laborers, ex-railroad-workers, ex-office and store workers, has created such a stupendous and complex problem that it is easy for us to forget that in its fundamentals the problem of every one of these fifteen million human beings is exactly the same. If we consider it from the standpoint of the individual unemployed workers, we shall avoid the danger of being deceived by the sheer size of the problem. Now if we consider it this way, here is what we find: John Doe, who was formerly employed--perhaps in an office, perhaps in a factory--is now no longer employed by that office or that factory. What is more, he cannot find employment in other offices or factories.

    What, now, is the difference in John Doe's situation before unemployment and after? Before unemployment and while he was still employed, he received every pay day a certain sum of money as wages or salary for the time he spent working for the firm which employed him. John Doe, if he was the breadwinner of a family, took this money and with it his family bought food and clothes and entertainment; they paid for housing in the form of rent (or if they owned their own home, in the form of taxes or interest), and they paid the installments on debts which they had contracted in buying their furniture, their automobile, their home, and if they were thrifty, they saved a part of the pay for a rainy day by depositing it in a savings-bank, paying for insurance, or in some cases actually investing it in stocks and bonds.

    After unemployment, John Doe no longer received any wages or salary. If the family had been fortunate and thrifty up to that time and had accumulated something in the way of savings, these savings were drawn upon to meet current expenses. When the savings were exhausted, they began to sell their investments, their automobile, their home, their furniture, in order to get the money with which to maintain the family. Then they began to borrow from friends and relatives in order to do so; they bought on credit from the merchants whom they had formerly been able to pay regularly; finally, when all these means of securing the things they needed to keep body and soul together were exhausted, they turned to the charitable and relief agencies. Then these agencies began to give them the money directly with which to buy them or they gave them indirectly--by paying it to those stores upon whom John Doe and his family were given orders for food or by paying it to the landlords who furnished the shelter for the family.

    In the meantime, what had John Doe been doing? He was doing what he was expected to do--spending his time looking for employment; going from one factory to another, from one employment agency to the next, answering one help-wanted advertisement after another, and trying to find odd jobs for which he could gee some money to help in the emergency.

    And when physically or spiritually too exhausted to spend his time looking for work, he spent it waiting for business to pick up, so that he could get back to his old job, whatever it may have been. And in doing this, and spending his time in this way, he is encouraged by virtually all the relief agencies established to cope with the depression up to the present time.

    But not only the relief agencies. He is encouraged in the course outlined by the whole commercial world. All our big industrial and financial leaders tell him that he has only to wait--that in time a readjustment will be effected and that then employment will again become normal. And they tell him to remember that while he is unemployed their capital is unemployed. While he has to worry about himself and his family, they have the burden not only of trying to manage their plants and to employ as many people as possible, but also the worry of protecting the investors in their business. So he is assured that everybody is in the same boat; that it is only necessary to avoid rocking the boat and sooner or later the pilots will get it back safely into harbor.

    And of course the "pilots" or political leaders tell him substantially the same thing. Great economic forces about which they are often extremely vague have upset the markets of the world. For the moment, they are just as powerless in coping with these economic forces as they used to be powerless in the face of natural forces such as famines and plagues. While the government and Congress experiments with one expedient after another in its efforts to create a revival of trade, a feeling of confidence among business men, and a rise in prices, there is nothing for John Doe and the millions like him to do but wait until things pick up again.

    But what is even worse, our social reformers in slightly different words tell him virtually the same thing. There is nothing particularly wrong, according to them, with the complex industrial system which had formerly employed him. It is still a marvelous system, far superior to any which had ever previously been relied upon by mankind for supplying it with its needs and desires. What is wrong is the control or ownership of the system. It is the profit system, not the industrial system, which is responsible for his plight. According to them, all that is necessary is to establish a plan board--to adopt a five-year plan of our own--or to have the state take over the ownership of industry altogether and run it for use and not for profit. In the meantime, while we are still struggling with the follies of capitalism and individualism, all that can be done as a sort of stop-gap for the emergency is to establish government employment agencies, increase the numbers employed directly or indirectly by the government, and adopt a system of unemployment insurance.

    I disagree with all of them. The unemployed, if they can't be given work here and now by our industrial system, should not be asked to live half hungry, half naked, half cold, while waiting for business to pick up. Above all they should not be fed upon promises of blissful security in the distant future--after our reformers have finished tinkering with the industrial system and remolding all our institutions nearest to their heart's desire.

    When a family cannot support itself, and secure the food, clothing, and shelter it needs by getting employment in a factory, or an office, or a store, the only sensible thing for it to do is to support itself by producing these things for itself on its own homestead. If the unemployed are to be made secure at least as to the needs of life, nothing short of this is adequate. They surely cannot be made secure by shifting their dependence for their livelihood from the business cycle to the political cycle, neither of which is capable of coping with the inherent insecurity of industrial production.

    Let us not fool ourselves about what the future holds in store for us. There are at present no grounds whatever for expecting any return to normal business very soon. No responsible student of business conditions expects any complete solution of the problem of unemployment during the coming year. Eventually another period of expansion may come, but as in the depression of 1873, it may take ten years to get back to full employment again.

    These facts are so generally recognized that everywhere plans are being made for the continuation of direct relief programs. In New York City, where the situation is in many ways typical of that in all our industrial cities, there are over 200,000 unemployed families. Without including the uncounted number of destitute single men and women, this means that over 1,000,000 human beings are now dependent upon relief and charity for their food, clothing, and shelter. With no prospects of business improvement, plans are being made to support this number of families for the whole of 1933. It is true that from time to time some of these families secure work and so become self-supporting, but others are laid off to take their place. The same issue of the New York which carried a story about a slight improvement in business in the fall of 1932, carried another story about the laying off of 2,800 men by a single corporation in New York City.

    At the request of the Emergency Home Relief Bureau, the New York City Welfare Agencies prepared a budget covering the merest necessities for these families. On the basis of that budget, the taxpayers, the contributors to relief funds, and the relatives of the unemployed, are faced with the appalling problem of raising $161,370,000 for the support of these families for the single year of 1933.

    Now what does this sort of relief mean to the individual family?

    While the breadwinners of the family are supposed to be out looking for work, each family of five is to receive a bare subsistence ration of $6.8 5 in food each week; a minimum clothing budget of $2.45 per week; a fuel and light budget of $2.95 per week; a minimum rent budget of $4.50 per week. This is a total for each family, each week of $15.85, without provision for accident and illness, birth and death. In the course of one year, even on this minimum basis, $824.20 will have to be expended on each unemployed family consisting of five persons.

    Eight hundred dollars, at the present purchasing power of the dollar, is a lot of money. Yet I know, upon the basis of my own experience, that it is more than is required as the initial capital with which to establish a self-sufficient homestead.

    It is much more than the amount with which many of our pioneer forefathers established themselves in the country and supported themselves indefinitely.

    If even half that sum--not more than five hundred dollars--were to be intelligently laid out for land and lumber, for seeds, livestock, and implements, the average family could produce for itself the bare essentials of living, and have plenty of time left for part-time or seasonal employment in industry. With proper instruction and leadership, not much more than half the sum which is now being spent to support a family for a year would be sufficient to take one family permanently off the relief list. It would do more. It would not only enable them to support themselves; it would ultimately make it possible for them to repay the money and materials furnished them.

    The problem of unemployment would for them have been solved. The drain upon the community for their support would have been ended, the self-respect of the unemployed restored.

    We have raised hundreds of millions already for unemployment relief. Since we have used it merely to support the unemployed, we now find ourselves face to face with the necessity of doing the same thing over and over again. Instead of spending more and more millions to support the unemployed while the depression is dragging its weary way over the years, why shouldn't we use the public's "will-to-give" to enable the unemployed to support themselves? Why shouldn't we furnish them land, tools, lumber, seed, livestock, wool, leather, raw materials of all kinds to enable them to establish themselves once again in the homesteads which they should never have abandoned as many of them did perhaps generations back? Above all, while doing so, let us use our universities and our social agencies for the purpose of guiding and instructing those of them who may have forgotten, or never learned, how to wrest the necessities of life directly from their own land and their own efforts.

    We should not only relieve them temporarily.

    If we did it on a sufficiently large scale, we would end the problem of unemployment for the whole country, and end it permanently.

    ----------------

    For a hundred years America has been developing its factory system.

    Year after year we have been building up our cities; steadily we have been shifting our population from the country (where they used to at one time support themselves) into cities (where they became wholly dependent upon industry for their livelihood). And while doing this, we have boasted about the glorious conquests of the machine age. The machine age was shortening the hours of labor; it was annihilating space and enabling us to fly; it was furnishing even the humblest of us magical amusements--"pictures" which moved and talked, and "radios" which brought song and speech on the waves of the air.

    Yet today, millions of the beneficiaries of this machine age are no longer worrying about maintaining the high standard of living about which we have been boasting. They have lost their aspirations for two-car garages, and new models each year. They are no longer trying to keep up with the Joneses.

    We have dotted the landscape with our factories. We have filled the cities with skyscrapers. We have covered the continent with a network of rails and roadways, But in spite of all these things, we have been unable to furnish the American people security even as to such bare essentials as food and clothing and shelter.

    During the depression of 1837 they were told that the Central Bank of the United States was responsible for the country's depression. So they abolished it.

    During the depression of 1854 they were told that the state banks and their wild-cat currency were responsible for the country's depression. So they established national banks and a national currency.

    During the depression of 1907, they were told that the lack of a central banking system was responsible for the country's depressions. So they established the Federal Reserve system.

    Today they are being told that the lack of balance between production and consumption is responsible for the country's depression, and that economic planning will end the country's depressions.

    During the last few years they have read endlessly in books and magazines and newspapers about the wonders of the Russian five-year plan. They have been told that planning was not only the way out of the depression, but also the way to security and a better way of life.

    Once again they are pricking up their hopes. Once again they are asking themselves whether at last the doctors haven't found the one thing which will tame the machine age and furnish the country the security it has long been denied. But suppose they establish a plan board for industry. Suppose America adopts a five-year plan of her own. Suppose it tries out economic planning. It has tried nearly everything else. I have no doubt that it will try planning, too.

    And then it shall be once again disappointed.

    After all, the planning board will have to be composed of human beings, and human beings are all too human. They make mistakes. Even if the members of the Supreme Economic Council, or whatever the planning board would be called, prove all to be chaste, incorruptible, and without ambition (which I refuse to believe a reasonable expectation), there is no guarantee that even the most virtuous board will not make mistakes.

    The Russians, in spite of their revolutionary zeal, have made them. Their five-year plan called for the socialization of agriculture. Farming was to be mechanized. Farming was to be collectivized. The little, inefficient farms of the peasants were to be merged into giant, efficient farms run by machinery, and transformed into wheat factories.

    Within a year and a half from the time they started to carry out their plan, the Russians socialized more of these farms than they expected to take over in five years. The plan was hailed as a tremendous success, not only by the Russians, but by the advocates of planning everywhere in the world. But, unfortunately, something went wrong. The planners miscalculated. With that sublime indifference to the human equation which they borrowed from engineering, the Gosplan overlooked how the peasants would react to this appropriation of what had been their personal property. During the process of converting the little farms into giant farms, millions of horses and cows and pigs and chickens were slaughtered by the peasants who couldn't see eye to eye with the agents of the Soviet. Within a short time, not only was there a shortage of meat for the table, there were no horses for plowing and cultivating and harvesting. The effect upon food production was cumulatively bad. Today, in spite of their five-year plan, in spite of their pathetic faith in the efficacy of socialism, the whole of Russia is on a starvation diet. True, some sections of the population--the proletariat--are specially favored. But then so are certain sections of the population with us, only we call them the rich. And as for the unfortunate fact that with us some of the unemployed are subjected to inhuman suffering--the Russians match that by subjecting the kulaks, the nobles, and the clergy to similar inhuman suffering.

    The truth about the matter is that neither the things proposed in previous depressions nor the economic planning proposed in this one is capable of ending the insecurity from which we suffer.

    Insecurity and industrialism are Siamese twins. You cannot have one without having to accept the other.

    Insecurity is the price we pay for our dependence upon industrialism for the essentials of life.

    A very old Biblical story makes it clear that when one man becomes dependent upon another for the opportunity to secure the food with which to keep himself alive, he may be forced to sacrifice his birthright of freedom and happiness. Isaac, it will be remembered, was a wealthy man. He had rich lands, large flocks, and many servants. Esau was his oldest son and favorite. Custom made him his father's exclusive heir. But he was a reckless hunter, while his more conservative brother Jacob, who coveted Esau's birthright, was a farmer. The story of what happened to Esau, as the Bible tells it, runs as follows:

    And Jacob had pottage.

    And Esau came from the hunt, and he was faint.

    And Esau said to Jacob: "Feed me, I pray thee, with that same pottage for I am faint."

    And Jacob said, "Sell me this day thy birthright."

    And Esau said, "Behold I am at the point to die, and what profit shall this birthright do me?"

    And Jacob said, "Swear me this day."

    And Esau swore to him and sold his birthright unto Jacob.

    Then Jacob gave Esau bread and pottage of lentils, and he did eat and drink and rose up, and went his way.

    Thus Esau lost his birthright.

    Surely it is unnecessary to draw a moral. Surely it is plain that no man can afford to be dependent upon some other man for the bare necessities of life without running the risk of losing all that is most precious to him. Yet that is precisely and exactly what most of us are doing today. Everybody seems to be dependent upon some one else for the opportunity to acquire the essentials of life. The factory-worker is dependent upon the man who employs him; both of them are dependent upon the salesmen and the retailers who sell the goods they make, and all of them are dependent upon the consuming public, which may not want, or may not be able, to buy what they may have made.

    What the depression has done has been immensely to increase the evil effects of this interdependence. What difference does it make to the man who is unemployed why the demand for coal, or for automobiles, or for cotton goods has fallen off? All he knows is that for some reason beyond his control he has been laid off. If being laid off merely resulted in his having to curtail his enjoyment of the luxuries of life, the situation would be bad enough, but at least it would not be tragic. But when being laid off means that he and his wife and children may be deprived of food, when it means that they may find themselves without a roof over their heads, when it means that they may be ragged and cold and sick, except in so far as charity helps them--then you have stark, staring tragedy.

    Compare the position of the millions of men who are today unemployed to the position of our pioneer forefathers of a hundred years ago. At the beginning of the last century, Brillat-Savarin, the famous Frenchman who wrote The Physiology of Taste, made a long visit to the United States. In the fourth chapter of his book he tells the story of a visit of several weeks which he made to a farm which is now within the densely populated region of Hartford, Connecticut. As he was leaving, his host took him aside and said:

"You behold in me, my dear sir, a happy man, if there is one on earth; everything you see around you, and what you have seen at my house, is produced on my farm. These stockings have been knitted by my daughters, my shoes and clothes came from my herds; they, with my garden and my farmyard, supply me with plain and substantial food. The greatest praise of our government is that in Connecticut there are thousands of farmers quite as content as myself, and whose doors, like mine, are never locked."

Today the farm on which that happy man once lived is cut up into city streets and covered with city buildings. The men and women of Hartford no longer produce their own food, clothing, and shelter. They work for them in stores and offices and factories. And in that same city, descendants of that pioneer farmer are probably walking the streets, not knowing what to do in order to be able to secure food, clothing and shelter.