“Submarginal” Land Purchase Program
From 1933 to 1935, an even more ambitious effort was underway in the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) headed by Harry L. Hopkins, another of the Roosevelt "Brain-Trusters" and the head of relief work in New York when FDR was governor. FERA was a new, independent agency established specifically to combat poverty and unemployment brought on by the deepening economic depression. In the early months of its operations, no distinctions were made among the types of needy people to be helped, but its leaders soon realized that it would be necessary to tailor some programs specifically for unemployed farmers and rural people. 从1933年到1935年，一项更加雄心勃勃的工作正在哈里=霍普金斯领导下的联邦紧急情况与救灾管理局内展开。
At the end of February 1934, President Roosevelt, at Hopkins’ urging, issued a press release announcing that the relief program would be specialized to assist three categories of people: (1) distressed families in rural areas; (2) stranded populations, such as those families left helpless in single-industry towns after employers had permanently departed; and (3) unemployed urban workers.
For the urban unemployed, general economic revival and large-scale public works were
thought to be the answer, but farmers living in dispersed communities could not easily be given
public works employment. They needed rehabilitation assistance so they could support
themselves on the land.
In June 1934, Administrator Hopkins issued a policy statement that set the course for all
future rehabilitation activities. In his statement Hopkins proclaimed the goal of all programs to
be the promotion of self-support among destitute farm families, "on a plane consistent with
American standards, and preferably on the family's own farm."35 For families already working
productive farm land, rehabilitation would be offered "in place." For those, however, who had
been displaced by crop failure, erosion, foreclosure, or government purchase and retirement of
their so-called "submarginal" lands, FERA would provide rehabilitation "on the wing". Several
specialized programs were to be used, including financial credit, technical assistance and
supervision, relocation, subsistence gardens, community farmsteads for urban families who
wanted to return to the land, and community work centers for farmers to supplement agriculture
with part-time industrial employment.36
These programs were administered by State agencies, but it was soon found more
efficient to handle the financial operations of the programs through State rural rehabilitation
corporations. Congress provided funding for the programs through regular appropriations and the
monies were then disbursed to the State corporations following procedures established by the
Washington office of FERA. By June 1935, the FERA had disbursed approximately $50 million,
most of it going as loans to about half a million farmers.
During its nearly 2 years of existence, FERA developed three main types of programs for
farmers. First was the standard rural rehabilitation program offering "supervised credit" for
farmers on productive land. The loan agreement required the enrolled farmers to operate in
accordance with an approved farm and home budget, which was subject to regular inspection. In
the first year nearly $50 million were advanced to farm families, most in the South.
Secondly, FERA supported the development of new communities for "stranded" rural
populations that were to combine part-time industrial employment with subsistence agriculture.
This program was similar to that being carried out by the Subsistence Homestead Division in the
Department of the Interior but was more successful. By June 1935, FERA had planned or begun
10 communities in the South, 11 in Nebraska, Minnesota, and the Dakotas, 1 in New Mexico,
and 1 in Arizona, designed to house nearly 2,500 families at a cost of $21 million.
The third FERA program was carried out in cooperation with other agencies, and was
part of a general land reform movement during the Depression. It involved the purchase of
millions of acres of "submarginal" land and in some cases the "resettlement" of those farmers
whose lands had been bought by the government. This idea was championed especially by
Rexford Tugwell, until 1935 an assistant and then undersecretary of USDA, who believed that
American agriculture needed to be restructured by transferring small, inefficient farmers working
poor land to more productive employment.
For 10 years USDA and, especially its Bureau of Agricultural Economics (BAE), had
been accumulating data on land use in the United States. Mordecai Ezekiel, Secretary Wallace's
chief economist, was aware of this work and feared that if planning for submarginal purchases
was turned over to other agencies, this might “produce further danger of conflicting objectives
between different Government agencies such as existed in the past between Interior and
Agriculture, . . .” If, on the other hand, USDA oversaw planning, there would exist “complete
consistency between the operations in controlling agricultural production and in controlling land
use.”37
Secretary Wallace agreed with Ezekiel and mobilized his bureau chiefs to give the Land
Policy Section of the AAA prompt and complete cooperation in its effort to centralize land use
planning. As a result of Wallace's strong advocacy, the FERA reached an agreement with USDA
under which the latter would plan and select the areas while FERA would administer the
program. Lewis Gray, chief of the AAA's Land Policy Section, headed the planning effort. Gray
realized that the $25 million appropriated by the Public Works Administration for submarginal
land purchases would "enable him to make only a very small beginning in dealing with a very
large problem, but he assumed that the acquisition of any amount of poor land would represent
progress. . ."38
Wallace, Tugwell, and Gray, however, had a more ambitious objective and urged
Congress to authorize a long-range program. They discussed this idea with President Roosevelt,
but before it could be sent to Congress it was blocked by the Bureau of the Budget on grounds
that such a bill would commit the government to “a long-time land policy, the scope and annual
cost of which is wholly indeterminate” and “directly in conflict with the Administration's
financial program.”39
Roosevelt did not override his budget chief but, consistent with the experimental style of
his administration, he searched for other ways to act. The drought in the Great Plains produced
an additional appropriation to purchase lands in those States and resettle their occupants. In June
1934, he sent a message to Congress expressing his desire to present to the next Congress a
national plan covering the development and use of natural resources. A few days later Roosevelt
created the National Resources Board to replace the National Planning Board and authorized the
new agency to prepare a report for him by December 1.
M.L. Wilson had recently returned to the USDA as assistant secretary and chaired the
board's Land Planning Committee, thus giving him an opportunity to shape a program that he
had been thinking about since his arrival in Washington in 1933. His ideas were similar to those
of Tugwell, who made room for him in USDA by moving up to the position of undersecretary.
According to Richard Kirkendall:
"[Wilson] did not look upon this land policy as a substitute for Triple-A's efforts at
production control but as a supplement, designed to deal with a different problem. As the
submarginal lands contributed little to production, withdrawing them would not solve the surplus
problem. But if the two million farm families who occupied such land tried to remain farmers,
they could hurt the other four million. The poor land could not provide a decent income for a
farm family unless the government forced farm prices to an unreasonably high level. This would
cause consumers to rebel and would lead to drastic reductions in production that would harm the
farmers employing good lands, good systems of farm management and capable of earning a good
income with fair instead of exorbitant prices.”40
Despite the lack of a national resource inventory, the Land Planning Committee
completed its work in less than five months. Gray's Land Policy Section and Land Economics
Division took the lead, but other agencies, including the agricultural colleges and experiment
stations, were also involved. While USDA economists and social scientists planned the program,
FERA administered it from June 1934 to April 1935. Operating in all but three States, it
recommended the purchase of more than 18 million acres and granted final approval to 82 land
improvement projects encompassing more than 5 million acres. Three million more acres were
later purchased after the program was transferred to the Resettlement Administration in 1935 and
then to USDA’s Bureau of Agricultural Economics in 1937. The Southern Appalachians was one
of the regions targeted by Gray and his staff. Historians have found it difficult to trace the
operation of the program in specific areas, but in eastern Kentucky its development can be
followed in at least one group of counties.
In the spring of 1934, a University of Kentucky professor of agriculture recommended
four counties where most of the farmland was submarginal and where nearly nine out of 10
families were on relief. He pointed out that citizens of Knox, Clay, Leslie, and Bell counties
previously had off-farm sources of income but these had disappeared. There was no way they
could make a decent income from their farms, even in good economic times.
Local leaders in Knox County favored the purchase of some submarginal land in their
county and plans for land acquisition were begun in 1934. The Stinking Creek watershed in
Knox County was designated as part of a proposed Kentucky Ridge Forest Project which also
included purchase areas in Bell and Harlan Counties. There were plans to create State forests in
1934, so it was hoped that the land eventually would be transferred to the Cumberland National
Forest. From the viewpoint of local politicians, the only problem with this idea was the possible
loss of county tax revenue if the land remained in Federal ownership.
In August 1934, land acquisition agents began to visit the people of Stinking Creek.
Some of these agents were familiar to the people from their earlier incarnations as federal
"revenuers," and were treated with suspicion until the local people were satisfied that they were
not simply disguising themselves in order to catch illegal moonshiners.
The families of Stinking Creek were understandably cautious about the new program,
wondering if they would get a fair price for their lands. They were emotionally attached to their
homes and anxious to remain close to family and friends. They realized that resettlement plans
were vague and the compensation they might receive would not buy a better farm unless they
were to receive Government help in obtaining new land. Also, those who owned the best land
near the creek, and whose actions were most closely watched by their neighbors, soon realized
that if the Government bought most of the land, the tracts remaining in private ownership would
become more valuable. Therefore, nobody wanted to be the first to sell.
The situation was further complicated by the Kentucky custom of separating ownership
of the land from the minerals underneath it. Land acquisition agents were not sure whether they
could purchase only the surface rights, while leaving the minerals (usually coal) in the hands of
the others. In February 1935, it was finally decided that the Federal Government could take
options for surface rights while allowing others to own the coal and timber needed for facilities
to remove the coal.
The cautious people of Knox County missed their chance to sell their land to the Federal
Government. Some of their neighbors in Bell County had been quicker to sign options to
purchase agreements, and when funds for submarginal land purchase became available in 1936
the money went to those who had previously agreed to sell.
The land actually acquired was not contiguous to the Cumberland National Forest, as it
was finally established, but the Federal Government kept the 14,000 acres of Bell County land as
a demonstration area or Land Utilization Project. It was eventually transferred to the State of
Kentucky and is now known as the Kentucky Ridge State Forest. According to the historians
who have investigated this purchase area:
"The fate of the families who lived in the Bell County area actually purchased for the
Kentucky Ridge Forest indicates that the mountain people on Stinking Creek may have been
wise when they decided to hold onto their land. In September 1936, a resettlement report showed
115 families on the land purchased by the Federal Government. All but one of the families were
tenants. Only 30 families qualified for rural resettlement. The report noted that the project area
contained no farm land and that it was difficult to find good farm land in the area at a price the
Government would pay. The people were right when they wondered where they would be able to
find farms to replace those they were asked to sell."41
In 1938, the local project manager was required to move the remaining people off the
Land Utilization Project lands. A year later he reported that 116 families had moved themselves
without any Government assistance. The final result of the submarginal land purchase and
relocation programs in eastern Kentucky was the purchase of some farms, the eviction of the
former owners and tenants, and the establishment of one resettlement project, Sublimity, that
functioned as a de facto way-station for people who eventually moved on.
Measured against the 100 million submarginal acres that planners had originally
identified nationwide, the amount actually purchased in the Appalachians and elsewhere was
relatively small. But, according to Sidney Baldwin, it was nevertheless "one of the truly
reformative efforts of the New Deal."42 Not satisfied with simply doling out relief, reformers
such as Tugwell, Wilson, and Gray were attempting to attack what they saw as a fundamental
cause of chronic rural poverty -- imbalances in man-land relationships.
It is difficult to say what impact the submarginal program had on overall rural poverty
during the Depression -- its effects on the people of Appalachia was certainly somewhat mixed --
but its legacy today is tangibly embodied in millions of acres of submarginal land that are now
parts of National Parks and Forests in the East and Midwest, and that led to the creation of the
National Grasslands in the Great Plains.
Rural Electrification
The effort to provide electricity to rural America was one of the unalloyed successes of the New Deal. Like the agricultural adjustment program, it initially encountered some resistance, but by the end of the 1930s it was almost universally acclaimed as one the decade's signal achievements.
The absence of electricity contributed greatly to two of the great drawbacks of rural
living -- isolation and drudgery. In 1930 only 1 in 10 farmers nationwide were wired for
electricity, while in Mississippi the ratio was fewer than 1 in a 100. The high cost of extending
power lines to low-density farm communities (usually two to five dwellings per mile in the
country) discouraged most power companies from investing outside profitable urban markets.
By the 1930s, urban residents enjoyed the benefits of street lighting, trolleys and
subways, elevators, electric fans, radios, and motion pictures. On the other hand, the absence of
electricity in the countryside meant that many rural inhabitants had to do without such modern
amenities as refrigerators, washing machines, freezers, sewing machines (except for footpowered
ones), and electric lighting for the home, and such labor-saving devices as chicken
brooders (some farmers had oil-fired brooders), feed grinders (unless pulley-operated by a
tractor), and milking machines. Instead:
"Kerosene lamps provided light, women did laundry and bathed their children outdoors,
and men relied on mules and human energy for power. Without electricity and with the cost of
windmills prohibitive for most farmers, water had to be carried by hand from the nearest streams
or wells. With the average farm family of five using an estimated two hundred gallons of water
daily for various purposes, hauling buckets back and forth consumed hours every day. The
majority of American farmers continued to function in the ‘dark’ ages."43
FDR got his first lesson in the realities of rural electrification in 1924 when he discovered
that he was paying four times as much for electricity in Warm Springs, GA than he was in Hyde
Park, NY. Pressure for nationwide rural electrification came from the Farm Bureau Federation
and the National Grange as well as southern politicians. In 1928, New York, followed by North
Carolina in 1931, began campaigns to electrify their rural areas.
At first, private power companies did not welcome the prospect of Federal intervention.
They argued, contrary to what seemed obvious to most everybody else, that farmers who wanted
and needed electricity had already gotten it and that there was no economic justification for
Federal subsidies. To them the prospect of Federal intervention was just another "socialistic"
scheme like the Tennessee Valley Authority.
The Rural Electrification Administration (REA), an independent agency until its transfer
to USDA in 1939, was originally established by executive order in May 1935 as a relief agency,
but its first administrator, Morris L. Cooke, quickly concluded that this status was insufficient to
carry out its purpose. Rather, it was necessary to have an agency that could lend money on an
orderly, interest-bearing, and self-liquidating basis. A major step forward was taken on August 7,
1935 with the issuance of an executive order freeing the REA from many of the requirements
that applied to relief expenditures.
REA’s initial attempts to work with electric power companies to construct power lines
were rebuffed. As a result, REA and Congress decided that a new approach was needed.
Consequently, on May 20, 1936 the Rural Electrification Act was passed, authorizing REA to
make loans for rural electrification and to furnish electric energy "to persons, corporations,
States, Territories and subdivisions and agencies thereof, municipalities, people’s utility districts
and cooperative nonprofit, or limited-dividend associations organized under the laws of any
State or Territory of the United States. . . ."
The act authorizing loans to nonprofit or limited dividend associations organized under
State laws ushered in the era of rural electric cooperatives, but first some legal and technical
problems had to be overcome. John M. Carmody, an industrial engineer who followed Cooke as
REA Administrator, asked his legal staff to draw up a model law for States called the Electric
Cooperative Corporation Act.
The act gave States the necessary legal authorization to foster cooperatives, but
prospective borrowers also needed technical guidance in the organization and design of projects.
Carmody hired personnel to provide this assistance and established relations with individual
cooperatives rather than work through State or regional associations. He also promoted the
application of scientific management techniques in the processing of loan applications.
Contrary to popular opinion, the REA only considered applications that gave clear
evidence of economic feasibility. Furthermore, the prospective cooperative had to guarantee
"area coverage" to all farmers under its jurisdiction, including the poor. Area coverage was an
important principle with REA because private utilities had ignored it in their attempt to "highgrade"
only the most profitable lines. The agency exercised close control over the cooperative
once it was in operation, scrutinizing engineering and management details, annually auditing
accounting data, maintaining veto power over the selection of managers.
Another governing principle of REA was to apportion loans to States based on how much
electrification they needed. Thus a state such as Georgia, where only 3 percent of the farms were
electrified, got more loans than did California, which had 54 percent of its farms already
electrified.
When the private power companies realized that REA constituted a potential threat, some
moved quickly into some rural areas and strung so-called “spite lines” that served the more
lucrative customers in the hopes of preempting REA. The Rural Electrification Act prohibited
REA from entering areas already served by private utilities. Most of the spite lines were built
between 1937 and 1940, harassing some of the cooperatives but not seriously threatening REA’s
program. Disputes were usually settled in court or through State public service commissions, and
in some cases cooperatives bought the lines of private companies in particular areas.44
By the time the REA had been incorporated into USDA in 1939, it was generally
recognized as being one of the most efficiently and economically administered agencies of the
Federal Government. For instance, REA engineers devised new designs and equipment, which
reduced the prevailing cost of rural lines from nearly $2,000 per mile to around $800 per mile.
By the beginning of the 1940s, relations with private power companies had improved
considerably and agreements had been reached by which REA and the companies agreed not to
trespass on each other's territories.45
Construction of rural lines continued rapidly after the REA became a part of USDA. The
advantages of electrification to housewives and the benefits it offered in making farm operations
more efficient were frequently mentioned by farmers to representatives of other USDA agencies.
By June 30, 1940, more than 30 percent of U.S. farms were receiving central station electric
service, and on September 12 of that year a loan was approved to serve the millionth rural
consumer (fig. 4). Extension of rural electrification to virtually all farm families in America had
become the objective of USDA. Twenty years later that had largely been accomplished.46
Figure 4--Percentage of Farms with Electricity, Source: Bureau of the Census, U.S. Dept of Commerce, Historical Statistics of the United States, 1975, and Statistical Abstracts, 1956-1971.
The activities of REA improved living conditions for those people still remaining on
farms. On the other hand, like the AAA, its work contributed to the modern American "enclosure
movement." By helping to bring more electric-powered machinery to farms, it improved the
prospects of those who operated efficiently and on a large scale. After electrification, small,
inefficient farmers were under greater economic pressure to change occupations. But this, of
course, had been one of the goals of New Deal land planners, such as Rexford Tugwell.
