The New Deal Dennis Roth
新政——Dennis Roth
The rural programs of the New Deal have been a favorite subject of agricultural historians because agricultural policymaking was enlivened by a dramatic clash of ideologies and personalities, and New Deal farm and rural programs profoundly influenced all succeeding programs. Thus, they continue to be of interest to historically minded policymakers as well.
新政里的农村工程被农业历史学家们极力推崇，因为这项农业决议源于观念和反观念的热烈争辩，而新政里农业和农村政策对随后的各项政策有着深远的影响。于是，学者们也对政策的历史推动者有着浓厚的研究兴趣。
Since the heyday of the Country Life movement, rural American had been fading in public awareness as the Nation became increasingly urbanized. Even so, in 1930, 44 percent of the U.S. population still lived in rural areas and more than half of that number was farmers. But, by throwing millions of people out of work and into poverty, the Great Depression exposed the fragilities of the industrial economy and inspired in many a yearning for a rural past of small farms and towns. In the early 1930s, a second back-to-the-land movement began to gain converts among urban intellectuals and industrial workers alike. On the other hand, the collapse of farm prices, farm strikes, and near revolution in some rural areas showed how dependent farmers were on the rest of the economy. Stark images of Dust Bowl refugees trekking to California and starving sharecroppers eking out livings on minuscule plots in the South were impressed on the public's consciousness.
经过了农村生活运动的全盛时期，随着国家越来越城市化，社会对乡村美国人的关注程度不断下降。即便如此，1930年依然有44%的人口居住于农村地区，超过半数的人是农民。但是，大萧条暴露了工业经济的弱点，上百万人失业，陷入贫困，有人开始怀念和向往过去小村小镇的农村生活。20世纪30年代早期，第二次回归土地活动在城市知识分子和工人内部酝酿开来。另一方面，农场价格的下跌，农民开始罢工，在某些农村地区还发生了类革命暴动，这些状况也表明了农民对其他经济的依赖程度。在Stark的作品里，他生动的描述了黄尘地区的难民艰辛的向加州走去，饥饿的佃农们以南部这一小块土地勉强维持生存。这些描述触动了人们。
Franklin Roosevelt was an urban aristocrat but, like his cousin Theodore, he valued rural areas and natural resources. While recuperating from polio in Georgia in the 1920s, he had learned much about the cotton culture of the South and had developed a sympathy for the region's poor sharecroppers and tenant farmers. Growing up on his Hyde Park estate in New York, he had acquired a love for the land, which in adulthood developed into a general concern for the conservation of natural resources.
Franklin Roosevelt是一名城市贵族，但如同他堂兄Theodore一样，他也关注农村地区和自然资源。20世纪20年代因脊髓灰质炎在乔治亚州做休养，他接触了很多南部棉花种植的知识，并建立了对该地区贫穷小佃农和租户的同情态度。在纽约海德公园定居时，他对土地的热爱已经众所周知，并致力于对自然资源的保护工作。
As Governor of New York from 1928 to 1932, he appointed Morris L. Cooke, later known as the "father of rural electricity," to head the New York Power Authority, which began a vigorous effort to extend electric power throughout the state. During the Presidential campaign of 1932, Cooke drafted Roosevelt's "Portland Power Speech," which promised to do for the rest of the Nation what had already been largely accomplished in New York.
在担任纽约州长的1928年到1932年间，他任命Morris L. Cooke，后来被称为“农村电力之父”的家伙，领导纽约电力局，开始花重资投入扩大州内电力系统的工作。1932年的总统选举过程中，Cooke起草了Roosevelt的《波特兰电力演讲》（Portland Power Speech），该演讲承诺在全国范围内推广纽约州已大面积完成的这项工程。
The deepening of the Depression persuaded Roosevelt that there were too many people in the cities. Rexford Tugwell, one of Governor Roosevelt's advisors and a future presidential "Brain-Truster," later said of Roosevelt that he "always did and always would think people better off in the country and would regard the cities as rather hopeless." Roosevelt believed in marrying agriculture and industry to form what he called “rural industrial groups” -- a broad program for decentralizing industry and giving families an opportunity to combine factory employment with rural living. Therefore, in 1932, while still Governor, he sponsored a program to establish 244 "stranded" industrial families on subsistence farms in various parts of New York State.1 Agriculture had been depressed for much of the 1920s despite boom times in the rest of the economy. The favored solution to America’s agricultural difficulties was the McNary-Haugen bill. Under it, tariffs would be imposed on imports and a government corporation would purchase sufficient stocks of U.S. production to raise the prices of staple commodities, and would then resell them in world markets. Any losses incurred would be paid for by an “equalization” fee assessed against farmers on each unit of the commodity they marketed. As a result, it was believed domestic prices could be raised to the level of the tariff. Unfortunately for its advocates, President Calvin Coolidge twice vetoed the bill.
大萧条的恶化让Roosevelt认识到城市人口过多的问题。Roosevelt总统顾问“智囊团”成员之一的Rexford Tugwell在谈论Roosevelt时说，他“总是这么做，总是希望农村人口能过得更好些，也关心城市里绝望的人们。”Roosevelt希望把农业和工业结合起来，组成被他称为“农村工业组织”的结构——这是项大工程，分散了工业，给家庭一个机会让工厂运作与农村生活结合起来。因此，1932年还在职期间，他发起了一项工程，让244个“进退两难”的工业家庭在纽约州各地建立了生活农场。[注1]因为20世纪20年代对农业的忽视，相比起其他经济领域来说，农业还处于低迷状态。为美国农业困境打开局面的是《麦柯纳里-豪根草案》（McNary-Haugen bill）。根据草案，将增收进口税，政府部门也会对富余美国产品进行收购并在世界市场进行出售，以此来提高原料产品的价格。因此而招致的任何损失，都会“平均”分配到税收里，从农民手中得到补偿。所以，人们认为国内的价格会提升到关税水平。不幸的是，Calvin Coolidge总统两次否决了这一草案。
With the onset of the worldwide economic depression and the resulting decline of exports another idea began to attract adherents. Dubbed the "domestic allotment", it called for limitations on crop production in order to raise prices.2 During the 1932 Presidential campaign, Roosevelt met M.L. Wilson, a noted agricultural economist and philosopher, who convinced him of the need for the domestic allotment as opposed to approaches, such as McNary-Haugen, that did not limit production.
随着全球性经济衰退的开始，出口额缩减，这时另一主张开始受人们关注。被称为“国内配给制”的主张，呼吁对作物生产进行限制以提高商品价格。[注2]1932年的总统选举，Roosevelt认识了M.L. Wilson，一名农业经济学家和理论家。他说服Roosevelt相信国内形势对配给制的需要，反对如《麦柯纳里-豪根草案》（McNary-Haugen）对生产不设限的做法。
During his inaugural and the Governor's Conference held 2 days later, Roosevelt referred to problems of rural-industrial "imbalance" and the cultivation of "submarginal" lands. Once in office, the new administration's first task was to do something about low agricultural prices, but as Roosevelt and his advisors saw it, this could not be done without a broad economic recovery program that covered all parts of the economy. Therefore as the farm bill was being drafted, legislation for public works, the National Industrial Recovery Act, the development of the Tennessee Valley, and currency manipulation was also being prepared.22 Since the recovery of the rural economy was central to the general economic recovery, USDA became one of the principal architects of the New Deal, attracting able and enthusiastic people to the Department’s expanding headquarters in Washington, D.C. The New Deal would do far more than offer economic assistance. It would transform the face of rural America.
完成就职演说，召开内部会议后仅两天，Roosevelt就总结了农村工业发展的“不平衡”和“边境”土地开垦等问题。一就职，新总统案头的首要工作就是处理农产品低价问题，但是正如Roosevelt和他的顾问们看到的那样，除非实施一个大范围的覆盖所有经济领域的复苏政策，否则无法解决问题。因此，随着农业法案的草拟，公共工程的立法、《国家产业复兴法》（National Industrial Recovery Act）、田纳西流域的发展以及货币管理都列入议程。[注22]农村经济复苏被列为整体经济恢复计划的中心内容，美国农业部成为了新政的主要执行部门，吸引了大批能干和热情的人们加入位于华盛顿的中心司令部。新政的作用远不限于处理经济问题。它让美国农村起了翻天覆地的变化。
Agricultural Adjustment Administration
农业调整政策
After 2 months of debate, the farm bill was passed in 1933 by large margins in both houses of Congress. According to historian Roger Biles:
"The Agricultural Adjustment Act contained something to please -- and frustrate -- everyone. Domestic allotment remained the heart of the bill, but it also contained elements of McNary-Haugenism such as marketing agreements and export-inducing government subsidies. To appease conservative critics and ensure that the administrative agency would be self-financing, the allotment payments to farmers would be provided by taxing the processors of farm products. Reliance on such a regressive tax, which would no doubt be passed along to consumers in the form of higher prices, reflected Roosevelt's fiscal conservatism. Finally, the bill included an emergency farm mortgage act . . ."23
经过两个月的讨论，1933年众议院和参议院通过了农业法案。历史学家Roger Biles曾写道：
“《农业调整法》的具体措施取悦——也打击——了人们。国内分配制依然是法案的核心，但它还包含了《麦柯纳里-豪根草案》提出的一些原理，例如买卖协议和出口政府津贴等内容。为了安抚保守派，法案规定行政代理必须自行融资，对农民的分配管理必须以对农产品生产过程课税为前提。依靠这种将价格负担加载到消费者身上的落后税收进行管理，反映了Roosevelt在财政上的保守立场。最后，法案还包括了一个紧急农业抵押法令……”[注23]
The act, which represented the first Federal Government attempt at "planned scarcity,"covered seven "basic commodities" -- wheat, cotton, field corn, hogs, rice, tobacco, and dairy products. Other commodities were added later.24 To administer the act, the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA) was created within the Department of Agriculture, the only early New Deal program which was placed within an already existing department.
法令表现了第一届联邦政府试图“规划缺额”的意图，包含如下7个“基本商品”——小麦、棉花、玉米、猪肉、大米、西红柿和奶制品。其他商品也陆续加入名单。[注24]为管理法令实施，农业部内设立了农业调整署（AAA），只有早期的新政项目被放置在已有部门。
The AAA was led and staffed by professional agronomists and economists whose principal goal was to give farmers better prices. They did not see themselves as reformers of agrarian social structures. The idea of plowing up crops and killing baby pigs was anathema to many of its production-minded agronomists, including Secretary of Agriculture Henry A.Wallace, but there seemed no other alternative at the time. Distributing some of the surplus commodities as relief aid to the poor ameliorated the contradiction of creating scarcity in a time of need, but it certainly did not eliminate it.
农业调整署由专业的农学家和经济学家组成和领导，他们主要工作就是为农民提供理想的价格。他们并不自视为土地社会结构改革家。控制耕种农作物和宰杀小猪的行为被一些致力生产的农学家反对，包括农业部部长Henry A.Wallace，但是当时似乎别无选择。向穷人分发富余商品作为救济，尽管缓解了创造需求带来的矛盾，但是它不可能根除这一矛盾。
In addition, the agricultural depression highlighted other paradoxes in American agriculture, including the almost medieval living conditions endured by many southern tenants and sharecroppers in the most agriculturally advanced nation in the world. With one-third of all farmers involved in cotton cultivation, the policies of the AAA were bound to affect that region disproportionately.
另外，农业萧条还暴露了美国农业的其他矛盾，如在这个农业生产达到世界先进水平的国家，一些南部的租户和小佃农的生活环境还处于中世纪水平。约有三分之一的农民从事棉花种植，而农业调整署的政策必定会影响这一畸形的比例。
In many cases cotton growers in the South reacted to crop reductions by expelling tenants and sharecroppers, thus shifting the burden of agricultural adjustment almost entirely onto those least able to support it. Tenants countered by forming the Southern Tenant Farmers' Union(STFU) and other organizations, which organized strikes, suffered landlord violence, and attempted to make their voices heard in Washington. For the most part, AAA officials sympathized with the plight of the tenants but were reluctant to assist them. Participation among southern landowners was high in the voluntary cotton subsidy program and any effort to intervene on behalf of tenants, it was felt, would encourage landowners to drop out.
在很多情况下，南部棉农通过压榨租户和小佃农来应对作物减产控制，这样农业调整的重担全都转移到那些根本承受不起这些的人们身上。租户们组织了南部佃农联盟（Southern Tenant Farmers' Union）和其他团体，组织罢工，反对地主压迫，并试图将自己的声音上传到华盛顿。大多数农业调查署官员都很同情租户的处境，但是并不愿意提供帮助。这样，南部地主加入计划就可以得到高额的棉花津贴，看起来，政府部门担心似乎任何试图介入租户利益的事件都会使得地主逃离计划。
There were, however, dissident voices in the AAA, especially in its legal division headed by Jerome Frank, a young New York lawyer, who was a favorite of Secretary Wallace. From 1933 to 1935, Frank and his colleagues attempted to institute a policy requiring landowners to keep their tenants once they had voluntarily signed onto the program. The AAA leadership resisted this effort, thinking it the impractical scheme of urban lawyers, but finally agreed to issue a directive requiring landowners to keep the same number of tenants that they had before entering the program. Under this system, however, landlords could punish recalcitrant tenants by hiring substitutes and so Frank wanted landlords to be required to keep the same tenants. When Administrator Chester Davis was on a trip, Frank took it upon himself to issue an interpretation of the directive, which called on landlords to do precisely that. Frank's precipitous action brought to a head a long-simmering conflict within AAA between urban social progressives and agricultural conservatives. Davis, with the reluctant support of USDA Secretary Wallace, fired Frank and rescinded his interpretation of the directive. With Frank's departure in 1935, AAA became even more firmly established as an agency that managed the mechanics of production and price control. Looking back on these events, historian Theodore Saloutos concluded that:
但是，在农业调整署内部也有不同意见，特别是法律司司长Jerome Frank，一名年轻的纽约律师，很受部长Wallace的重视。从1933到1935年，Frank和他的同事试图制定一项政策，在自愿加入计划以后，要求地主保持原有租户。农业调整署高层反对这项决定，认为不过是城市律师们不切实际的想法而已，但是最后还是同意制定了一项指令：要求地主在加入计划后保持计划前的租户数量。但是，在这个指令规范下，地主可以通过另雇租户来惩罚佃农，所以Frank希望地主能够保持原有租户。趁署长Chester Davis休假旅行，Frank自行发布了一条对指令进行解释的声明，要求地主们严格执行这项声明。Frank急躁的行为引发了农业调整署内部，社会激进分子和农业保守派的长期争辩。农业部部长Wallace迫于压力，同意Davis开除Frank，收回发布的声明。随着1935年Frank的离开，农业调整署显得更为保守，只是机械地从事生产和价格控制。回顾这些事件，历史学家Theodore Saloutos如此评价：
"The sharecroppers and tenants were the closest the United States came to having a peasant class; and in a reformist-oriented period it comes as no surprise that they were the focus of perhaps the most dramatic and explosive phase of AAA history. They fared badly in part because the AAA programs were built around commodities instead of people. Poor farmers who struggled to make a living on the land were not the AAA's prime concern. Many in the agricultural establishment believed there were too many people on the land; and one way of eliminating distress on the farm was by getting people off the land and into the cities. Furthermore, the USDA had never pursued a policy of helping marginal farmers, especially in the South where many of the rural folk were black and where the large producers supported the AAA more solidly than producers in other parts of the country."25
“在美国，租户和佃农相当于农民阶级；在改革导向时期，他们成为了农业调整署历史上最具戏剧性和影响力的焦点，这一点都不奇怪。由于农业调整署工作重心是商品而不是人，他们在过去的生活状况十分恶劣。靠土地为生的穷农户们并不是农业调整署的主要考虑对象。在农业机构工作的一些人们认为依附于土地的人口过多；消除农村贫困的方法之一就是让人们脱离土地，去往城市。此外，农业部并没有追加政策，帮助边远地区农民。特别是南方，那里的农民大部分都是黑人，何况这个地方的地主们对农业调整署的支持力度远高于其他地区。”[注25]
Assistant Secretary for Agriculture Rexford Tugwell had supported Frank, but, like Secretary Wallace, he believed that in the long run U.S. agriculture would have to lose many farmers to the city if it was to become a modern, efficient sector of the economy. A Columbia University economist with no direct farm experience, Tugwell was not an agricultural fundamentalist and viewed the back-to-the-land movement as an escapist fantasy. The only question for him was how agricultural change was to be rationalized and who would bear the burden of change. In the South, that burden fell almost entirely on tenants and croppers, despite the best intentions of liberals like Frank and Tugwell, and out of that decade-and-a-half of uprooting and suffering came a regional agricultural economy more transformed than any other in the country.
农业部助理部长Rexford Tugwell曾支持Frank，但是，同部长Wallace一样，他认为依长久之计，美国农业部将会失去很多农民，因为他们去往了更现代化、更高效的经济区域——城市。作为一个并无直接农村研究经验的哥伦比亚大学经济学家，Tugwell并不是一名农业原教旨主义者，他认识到回归土地运动只是一个逃避现实的梦想。他面临的唯一问题就是，农业改革怎样才能合理进行，而要由谁来承担改革的重担？在南方，这种重担几乎全都施加在租户和小佃农身上，尽管自由主义者Frank和Tugwell的意图并非如此，15年来的移民和痛苦让该地区农业经济相比其他地区来说更为畸形。
By rewarding large landowners with bigger price support payments and by extending low-interest loans, the AAA and other USDA agencies quickened the pace of land consolidation and mechanization in the South, ushering in what one historian has called a "modern enclosure movement." During the 1930s, 30 percent of the sharecroppers and 12 percent of the tenants left farming in the 13 cotton States. The number of tractors nearly quadrupled from 1933 to 1945 when 417,000 tractors, or 17 percent of the national total, plowed southern fields.26
给予大地主们更大数额的价格津贴，延长低利率贷款时间，农业调整署和农业部各代理处加快了南方的土地合并和机械化速度，有位历史学家称之为“现代圈地运动”。20世纪30年代期间，13个棉花种植区一共有30%的小佃农和12%的租户离开了农村。从1933年到1945年，用于耕种南方土地的拖拉机数量增长了四倍。到1945年，当时一共拥有417,000辆拖拉机，占全国总数的17%。[注26]
The New Deal was above all a time of experimentation. President Roosevelt thought of himself as a quarterback who tried new plays if the old ones did not work. Perhaps more appropriately he should be compared to a coach who let his departmental and agency "quarterbacks" compete for playing time. The AAA was an experiment in stabilizing agricultural prices that worked almost immediately. Therefore, it underwent few major changes in the following years. Many other problems were more intractable and required different experiments, none of which were as successful as was the AAA in accomplishing its large but limited objective.
重要的是，新政还处于试验阶段。Roosevelt总统把自己定位为四分卫，如果先锋队员被干掉的话，就让后备上。可能比喻为教练更合适一些，他让手下的部门和代理处自由“操纵”游戏时间。农业调整署的工作在于稳定农产品价格，这一点做的很到位。因此，在随后的几年里，该部门变动很少。其他部门的问题更为棘手，并需要改革。尽管工作规模庞大，但也目标明确，几乎没有任何部门的工作如农业调整署这样成功。
Subsistence Homesteads
生活家园
Underlying almost all of the rural New Deal experiments in community development was a belief in planning. Three related but separate movements influenced government planners. One concerned the development of a policy of planned settlement centered around organized rural communities containing many urban advantages. A second was an element of the city planning movement that emphasized the need for developing wholly new towns or communities in a spacious, rural environment. Finally, and perhaps most significant, was the movement, at first primarily among university-based economists, for a broad program of national economic planning that encompassed land-use and agricultural planning.27
几乎所有的农村新政政策都表现出自己对分配制的贯彻。三个有联系但相对独立的运动影响了政府规划者。第一个关于住宅区规划政策的发展，认为有组织的农村社区的建设可以吸收一些城市建设的优点。第二个是城市规划运动的一部分，强调了在广阔的乡村环境下建设崭新的城镇和社区。最后，可能也是最有意义的是这项运动，首先由大学派经济学家提出，设定了一个宽泛的国家经济政策，包含土地使用和农业计划。[注27]
The National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 appropriated $25 million to the Public Works Program of the Department of the Interior for the development of subsistence homesteads aimed "at a redistribution of population in the interest of providing greater economic stability and a higher standard of living for working men's families."28 The idea was to build communities that provided their citizens both with small subsistence farms and off-farm employment opportunities. Emphasis was placed on the term "subsistence," lest it appear that the government was encouraging commercial agricultural production on newly established homesteads while at the same time attempting to drastically curtail it on already-existing farms.
1933年《国家工业复苏法》（The National Industrial Recovery Act）拨款24,000,000美元注入内政部公共设施建设工程，为生活家园发展助力。该工程目标是“通过为劳动者家庭提供更稳定的经济条件和更优越的生活条件，来吸引人口重新分配”。[注28]该计划打算建立若干社区，可以为公民提供小型生活农场，还提供离开农场后的工作机会。重点在于这个词——“生活”，看起来政府似乎在鼓励农业生产在崭新的家园基础上商业化，与此同时彻底削弱现有的农村状态。
The first Director of the Division of Subsistence Homesteads in the Department of the Interior was M.L. Wilson, one of the fathers of "domestic allotment" and the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933. Secretary Wallace had selected him to be an assistant secretary in USDA, but Wilson asked instead to head the Wheat Section of the Agricultural Adjustment Administration because of his long experience with that crop as a professor of agricultural economics at Montana State University. A few months later he accepted Interior Secretary Harold Ickes' offer to assume leadership of the Division of Subsistence Homesteads.
内政部生活家园部门第一位领导者是M.L. Wilson，“国内配给制”和1933年《农业调整法》的发起人之一。农业部长Wallace曾任命他为农业部助理部长，但是Wilson以曾是蒙大拿州立大学农业经济学家，长期从事小麦研究为由，申请到农业调整署小麦管理部门任职。几个月后，他收到了内政部长Harold Ickes的调令，要求他领导生活家园部门工作。
The philosophical roots of subsistence homesteads go back to the utopian, communitarian experiments of 19th-century Americans such as the Shakers, Rappites, New Harmony, Oneida, and others. But Wilson claimed that at least part of his interest in them came from his graduate work at the University of Wisconsin where he heard anthropology lectures in which Freudian concepts were used to explain behavior and social change, and his residency at the faculty club where he met younger faculty members with whom he carried on wide-ranging and stimulating conversations.29 The work of the American Friends Service Committee in helping unemployed West Virginia miners establish subsistence homesteads during the early days of the Depression was a more direct influence on Interior’s program, as was the subsistence homestead program then-Governor Roosevelt had begun in New York.
生活家园构想的哲学根源可以追溯到19世纪美国人的乌托邦共产主义实验，如震颤派、Rappites、New Harmony、Oneida等等。但是Wilson提出，至少他对这项工作的部分兴趣来自于在母校威斯康辛州大学的经历，在那里他听了很多讲座，弗洛伊德概念被用于解释行为和社会变革；并且在教职工俱乐部实习期间，他接触了很多年轻的教职人员，自己通过与他们的交流开阔了视野，接触了新鲜的思想。[注29]大萧条早期，美国教友会（American Friends Service Committee）帮助西弗吉尼亚矿工重建生活家园的工作，直接影响了内政部的这一计划；与此同时，还在纽约州任州长的Roosevelt就已经开始了生活家园项目的部署。
Wilson's division was beset almost immediately by difficulties, not the least of which was Secretary Ickes' lack of support. Wilson wanted to establish semi-autonomous local corporations to run the communities and handle their finances. Having worked as a journalist in Chicago during the most corrupt period in the city’s history, Ickes balked at that idea. He was supported by the U.S. Attorney General who ruled that all local government-funded entities had to be strictly audited by the General Accounting Office. Wilson resigned from the Division in June 1934, believing this decision and Ickes' growing hostility had hamstrung the program.
Wilson的部门差不多从成立之初就开始被重重困难包围，他们所面临的困境不仅是缺乏部长Ickes的支持。Wilson想建立一个半自治的地方部门来运作社区建设，并独立操纵财务。因为曾在芝加哥历史上最腐败的时期担任过记者，Ickes本能地反对这个计划。他的建议得到了美国总检察官的支持，要求所有的地方政府财务实体帐目都要严格地通过美国审计署审计。1934年六月，Wilson辞去部门职务，认为部门和Ickes日益增长的敌意阻碍了机构的运营。
During Wilson's brief tenure, 32 communities were planned but funds were advanced to only 27. By 1934, 50 families were living in the communities and more than 100 additional homes were under construction.30 The Division of Subsistence Homesteads continued for a year after Wilson's departure, and concentrated during that time on the construction of the communities already underway. Nearly 700 houses were completed in the next several months and more than 1,300 others were being built. This social experiment, however, was continually plagued by legal and administrative delays and less than one-third of the original $25 million was actually spent.
在Wilson简短的任期内，有32个社区按计划设立，但是只有27个项目的资金投入到位。到1934年，有50户家庭迁入社区居住，而超过100户的家园还在建设中。[注30]在Wilson离开以后，生活家园的运作又持续了一年，并集中进行已经开始运作的社区的进一步建设工作。在接下来的几个月里，大约有700栋房屋完工，超过1300栋建筑也开始建设。但是，这个社会实验频繁地遭遇到困境，因法律和行政原因工程常遭受延迟，最初拨下来的25,000,000美元只有不到三分之一投入了使用。
Despite the program's meager accomplishments, Wilson did not lose faith in the idea of subsistence programs. Even after he left the Division to become Undersecretary of Agriculture, he continued to promote the decentralization of industry and the development of a “rurban [a now forgotten neologism] pattern of life in America - a life based upon a combination of industrial employment and agricultural activities.”31
尽管这个项目成效不高，Wilson并没有丧失对生活工程的信心。在他离开部门担任农业部次长后，他继续推进工业的分散经营，发展“美国化的城郊（一个现在已经被时代忘记的新词）生活模式——一种结合了工业就业和农业活动的生活方式。”[注31]
In Mississippi, the Division of Subsistence Homesteads began five projects that were similar to those in other States. A subsistence homestead, according to the official report, was “a house and outbuildings located upon a plot of land on which can be grown a large portion of the foodstuffs required by the homestead family.” The report stressed that a homestead “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.”32
与其他州类似，生活家园部门在密西西比州开设了5个项目。按官方报告所说，生活家园“配备了房子，在周边附有相应土地，可以进行大面积地种植满足家庭生活所需。”该报告强调，家园项目“带来了这样一个概念，现金收入会因为其他外部来源而得以增加。因此，中央运作生活家园项目的动机是，展示将兼职工薪工作和兼职园艺或田园工作结合起来的这一生活方式的经济价值。”[注32]
The five Mississippi homestead communities all followed similar development paths and were also virtually identical when completed. First, the Federal Subsistence Homesteads Corporation incorporated the five projects, assigned them general managers, and released funds to cover development and management costs. Division personnel cooperated with chambers of commerce and other local sponsors in selecting the actual project sites. Next, the general manager began clearing and surveying the land for division into individual plots and concurrently opened bidding on the homesteads, outbuildings, and roads. As originally planned, each homestead was to cost between $2,500 and $2,800, including land and improvements.Community facilities were not planned since all of the Mississippi projects were close to towns. The general manager supervised the selection of future homesteaders.33
这五个密西西比州家园社区都遵照相似的发展轨道运作，几乎是同时完工的。首先，联邦生活家园管理处整合了这五个项目，分配了相关的管理人员，并配给发展和管理资金。部门选择项目用地的工作，是通过各地管理人员和地方投资者的合作完成的。接着，地方管理人员开始按照部门对用地分配规定进行土地的清扫和测量，与此同时开始田产、附属建筑和道路的招投标工作。按原计划，每处建筑花费在2,500美元和2,800美元之间，包括土地购买和改造费用。社区工厂并没有纳入计划，因为在密西西比州这些项目实施地点的发展都已经近似于城镇水平了。地方管理人员最后的任务就是监督未来入住人员的挑选。[注33]
Most projects began with high hopes but poor planning, shoddy construction, the failure to explain costs adequately to prospective homesteaders, and other problems doomed them to a limbo of ineptitude. None were close to completion when the Division was abolished in April 1935 and its projects absorbed by the newly created Resettlement Administration. According to historian Donald Holley, the Division, with a minimum of prior experience, had launched a rather ambitious program in Mississippi, but like many of its projects elsewhere, "they possessed an amateurish quality; and in the long run, they were among the most unsuccessful of all New Deal community projects. . . For the perceptive observer, they gave a hint of the difficulties similar efforts might later encounter."34
大多数项目在实施前都被寄予了很高的期望，最后却因脱离计划、劣质建筑、费用入不敷出等等其他问题收场，这些项目终被废弃。在1935年四月，部门被撤销时，没有一项能够看到胜利的曙光，这一工程被移交新建的联邦迁居管理处（Resettlement Administration）管理。历史学家Donald Holley评价说，毫无经验的生活家园部门在密西西比州勾画了一个宏伟的蓝图，但是正如在别处的其他项目一样，“他们只是被业余的热情烧晕头脑；并且在长期的运作中，他们一直处在最不成功的所有新政社区项目的包围圈里……他们的失败向观察者们暗示出以后可能遇到的困难。”[注34]
