1 Figures in this column do not include land cost. 3 To be developed on the basis of loans to individual clients. 2 Figures in this column include costs for community facilities, planning, land acquisition, management, and other development costs. To be developed from Minnesota State Corporation funds. Rural and suburban resettlement program-Continued GROUP 1. PROJECTS INITIATED BY DIVISION OF SUBSISTENCE HOMESTEADS-Continued Mr. WOODRUM. What other types of projects besides house building projects are in this? Mr. ALEXANDER. I think it is well to understand that this is not only a house bulding project; it is the development of a farm community. It involves bouses, fences, barns, and some improvements on the land. The house is only one incident in it. Mr. WOODRUM. I will accept whatever name you want to give it. Mr. LUDLOW. Can you tell us how many of those units there are in all the projects? Mr. BALDWIN. Yes, sir. There are 10,777 units. PURPOSE AND OBJECTIVES OF SUBSISTENCE HOMESTEAD PROJECTS Mr. LUDLOW. What is the purpose back of this? It is obvious. that you cannot begin to take care of any appreciable percentage of all the people who might be qualified for this particular thing. Mr. ALEXANDER. To go back to the subsistence homestead, when these people were drawn out of industrial employment it was assumed that they had to supplement their industrial employment by parttime farming, where they could earn part of their living by having some land on which they could earn their food, and thus they would have a better economic base. These subsistence homesteads were built largely for industrial workers. Mr. LUDLOW. Is it your thought that industry will take it up? Mr. ALEXANDER. You will be interested to know that one of the great steel industries in the South is now waiting, and very seriously considering the rearrangment of their own housing in line with this; and a few of the cotton mills have also begun to scatter their units over an enlarged area, giving their cotton mill owrkers these 2- or 3acre farms. Mr. LUDLOW. That was the hope when this idea was conceived, was it not? Mr. ALEXANDER. That, plus the desire to give employment. We built and are building about a thousand of these houses in the Birmingham area, where there was a complete break-down of employment in the building trades, and that has given employment to the building-trades people, as well as throwing some light on the problems of these people who had been stranded. Then we had another group of people where the question of submarginal lands had been under discussion, and the people on the submarginal lands, and the Resettlement Administration was instructed to make submarginal land purchases and resettle the farmers who were on these poor lands. We purchased 9,000,500 acres of submarginal farm lands. The families on those lands had to be moved and relocated. The best of those families perhaps had a small equity in, or owned farm machinery, or stock, or had experience enough to indicate that if they had a chance to get on a piece of good land they could pay for it. Our first obligation in these communities was to take many of these families off of the submarginal lands. There were a considerable number of people on relief who, with a little bit of help, might get on a little piece of land and demonstrate their ability to care for it and use it. It is out of that that these people have come. |