Resettlement Administration
After the convening of the new Congress of 1935, it became apparent that many
legislators were critical of the experimental, improvisatory nature of several of the New Deal
rural agencies. President Roosevelt was "no worshiper of consistency," but he also began to
believe that the time had come to centralize programs which had been dispersed throughout the
government. FDR was also aware that some legislators, with the support of social scientists,
southern agrarians, and lobbyists, had been drafting proposals to help impoverished tenants and
sharecroppers and that bills would soon be introduced in Congress.65
FDR and Tugwell believed that the creation of a new agency that centralized several New
Deal programs would dramatize the administration's commitment to combating rural poverty.
Tugwell was the natural choice to head it. There was also a consensus that it should be located
outside the USDA where it would be free of an old-line executive department, "where ossified
administrative procedures, preoccupation with the commercial farmer and his problems of price
and production, and entrenched conservatism would probably stifle the energy and imagination
needed for launching bold new programs."66 Tugwell, however, deliberately held onto his
position as Undersecretary of USDA so that the channels of communication would remain open
between the Department of Agriculture and the proposed new agency.
In March, Congress enacted the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act of 1935 that
allowed funds to be spent at "the discretion of the President" for loans "to finance, in whole or in
part, the purchase of farm lands and necessary equipment by farmers, farm tenants, croppers, or
farm laborers." There was no explicit mention of the need for a new agency but Tugwell and his
assistants thought it was sufficient authorization to create one anyway. Roosevelt issued an
executive order in April establishing the Resettlement Administration (RA) and specifying its
three basic functions: (1) a land-use program; (2) resettlement of destitute low-income families
from rural and urban areas and the construction of model communities in suburban areas; and (3)
a program of rural rehabilitation loans and grants to help small farmers purchase land,
equipment, and livestock. Roosevelt authorized an initial funding of $25 million and transferred
to RA the rural rehabilitation and land-use programs of FERA, the Subsistence Homestead
projects, AAA's land-use planning program, and the farm debt adjustment program that had been
financed by FERA and managed by the Farm Credit Administration.
Believing that RA would be a permanent agency, Tugwell and his associates structured it
much more elaborately than its predecessors with 15 divisions and a unified administration
structure linking Washington to rural communities. Divided into 12 regional offices, each having
delegated authority, RA was to be a truly national organization, unlike FERA or the Subsistence
Homestead Division.
The leaders of the RA worked quickly and within a year had assembled a nationwide
staff of nearly 15,000, making it one of the largest civilian agencies in the Federal Government.
Also, it had perhaps the most varied professional staff of any agency in the history of the Federal
government, ranging from anthropologists, agronomists, accountants, economists, sociologists,
to thespians, taxidermists, weavers, and zoologists. Its personnel were now responsible for four
distinct programs: (1) land reform, embracing nearly 300 land acquisition projects providing for
the eventual purchase of approximately 20 million acres [less than one-half was ultimately
purchased] from small, submarginal farmers and the resettlement of more than 20,000 dislocated
farm families; (2) rural resettlement, involving a variety of model rural communities, individual
farms, small garden home projects for farm laborers, and migratory labor camps; (3) suburban
resettlement, consisting of model suburban communities for families with “modest” incomes --
$1,200 to $2,000 per year -- called Greenbelt, outside Washington, DC; Greenhills near
Cincinnati, OH; Greendale, near Milwaukee,WI; and Greenbrook, near Bound Brook, NJ
(Greenbrook was blocked by court order and was never completed); and (4) rural rehabilitation
encompassing five different but closely related types of activity -- a standard loan program,
based on combining credit and farm and home planning; an emergency grant program for
subsistence needs; a feed and seed loan program; a farm debt adjustment program designed to
help farmers and creditors reach equitable settlements; and a cooperative loan program to assist
client families in organizing or participating in various kinds of cooperative endeavors.67
Within a few months of the creation of the RA, Tugwell reluctantly scaled back
purchases of submarginal land because it was becoming more difficult to convince the people for
whom the program was intended that it would actually benefit them. Field personnel were
discovering that;
"Farm people on submarginal lands may have been imprisoned and victimized by their
barren acres, but their subjective attachments to home and community and their terror at the
prospect of being uprooted made them reluctant to participate in resettlement. Some of the lands
that had been classified as substandard proved capable of supporting productive agriculture, if
adequate adjustments were made in farming methods, while many small-scale farm operators
were proven to be technically and emotionally unprepared to readily operate larger farms or to
adopt different farming methods."68
In addition, the program was subjected to charges of government coercion,
collectivization, and regimentation. As the election of 1936 approached, allegations that the RA
was engaged in a plot to socialize American land were heard with greater frequency. Rather than
allow the RA to become a lightning rod for all the anger directed at the New Deal, Tugwell and
his assistants decided to place more emphasis on the less controversial rural rehabilitation
program. By June 1936, the RA had more than a half million active client families on its rolls, a
figure that represented nearly 8 percent of the American farm population at the time. The agency
had spent almost $100 million on the program, or about 60 percent of its total budget.69 A large
number of grants were made to families in drought-affected areas, many of whom received
special feed and seed loans. Special loans and grants also enabled low-income farmers to
cooperatively purchase purebred sires, tractors, combines, and other equipment they could not
afford individually.70 This trend had become so pronounced by January 1937 that Secretary
Wallace felt impelled to declare that "it would have been better if [the Resettlement
Administration] had been given a name more accurately describing it - Farm Security
Administration, or the Tenant Security Administration, or something like that."71
One of RA's more far-sighted projects was an effort to improve rural health care. Aware
that disease and physical disability contributed to economic difficulties, the RA began assisting
needy farmers to organize group medical care services. To support this work, the RA established
a Public Health Section headed by a physician detailed from the United States Public Health
Service. During the first year of experimental development, RA helped borrowers in eight
counties organize medical care associations, which allowed them to obtain affordable medical
care by prepaying annual fees into a pooled fund. Participation was voluntary and the members
could choose their own physicians.72 In later years, this work expanded to include several
hundred counties throughout the United States.
The RA and its successor the Farm Security Administration (FSA) also became involved
in a minor way in the operation of migrant labor camps, which were transferred to them from the
California Emergency Relief Administration. They were operated in an efficient and fair manner
and were thus superior to many privately owned camps. Although these camps were only a very
small part of the RA's operation, they incurred the ire of private owners who resented the
comparison that could be drawn between their camps and those of the RA.73
Called by historian Paul Conkin "one of the most open breaks with individualistic
tradition in American history," the resettlement communities managed by RA and FSA were also
convenient targets for criticism.74 They encompassed an infinitesimal percentage of rural
Americans but, like the submarginal purchases and government-run migratory labor camps, they
became symbols to conservatives of New Deal "collectivism".
In general, RA and FSA were more efficient managers of these communities than FERA
or the Subsistence Homestead Division had been but many of their operations were also plagued
with problems. There were a few "cooperative" communities in which families owned and
worked the land together. These were the type favored by Administrator Tugwell, a critic of
competition and individualism in American economic life and of the agrarian "myth" of the
virtuous small family farm. Tugwell believed that poor farmers needed security more than
ownership because as owners they would be saddled with mortgages and faced the possibility of
foreclosure. Despite his views, the great majority of the resettlement communities consisted of
low-income families who, through cooperative associations, were assisted in individually
purchasing their homes and land with long-term, low-interest loans.75 One of the problems,
however, was attracting enough people who would or could make an extended commitment and
who looked at the community as more than just a form of temporary employment.
With the passage of time and the cooling of ideological emotions, historians have come
to see the resettlement communities as "interesting experiments" that laid the groundwork "for
building constructive cooperatives for farm and urban dwellers."76 While recognizing this aspect
of the communities, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. also saw in them:
"…a tendency in American life which in another decade and a half would be compelling
- the flow of population from the cities to the suburbs. The Greenbelt idea of the thirties found a
kind of distorted realization in the suburban developments of the fifties. Ironically, for the
Resettlement planners, when success at last took place, even in their own projects, it only
completed the defeat of the original conception of an autonomous community. Many of the
Resettlement projects were bailed out by the war; in time, the government got back good returns
on the original investment. But such communities, instead of laying the basis for a new type of
civilization, only saw the reabsorption of their inhabitants into the main pattern of American
life."77
Winding Down
By the time of the 1936 presidential election, Tugwell ("Rex the Red" to his enemies) was tiring of the constant attacks against him. He had been kept out of the campaign and now began to feel that his continued presence might damage the Resettlement Administration's relationship with Congress. Consequently, following the big election victory and just after accompanying Roosevelt on a well-publicized trip to a Greenbelt town, Tugwell resigned.78
Just as Tugwell was preparing to leave government service, the Resettlement
Administration began to test a special tenant purchase program under which the agency bought
farms for resale to tenants over a 40-year period at 3-percent interest. For 2 years, the Southern
Tenant Farmers' Union and other organizations had pressured Congress to enact legislation that
would help tenants and sharecroppers obtain land. Bills had passed the Senate but had stalled in
the House. In early 1937, following an executive order transferring the RA to USDA, Secretary
Wallace convened a Special Committee on Farm Tenancy to nudge the process forward. The
committee endorsed virtually all of the activities of the RA and then recommended that the
agency administer a tenant purchase program with the Federal Government buying land to be
sold under long-term contracts at low interest to disadvantaged farm families.
A few months later, the Bankhead-Jones Farm Tenant Act gave legal authority to carry
out some of the committee's recommendations. Title 1 of the act authorized an amount not to
exceed $10 million for an experimental beginning of the tenant purchase program during the first
fiscal year. In the second year the appropriation was to be raised to $25 million, and thereafter
was not to exceed $50 million per year. Title IV of the act authorized continuation of the
resettlement program only to the extent necessary for the completion and liquidation of the
projects already underway.79
On September 1, 1937 Secretary Wallace announced that the Farm Security
Administration (FSA) would replace the RA and would carry out the provisions of the
Bankhead-Jones Farm Tenant Act. The Administrator was to be responsible for the tenant
purchase program, while authority for submarginal land purchases and land utilization projects
was transferred to the Bureau of Agricultural Economics. Except for submarginal purchases, the
FSA continued the programs of the Resettlement Administration.
The new tenant purchase program soon became the most popular one assigned to the
FSA. However, it could reach only a very small percentage of the farm tenants, sharecroppers,
and laborers who wanted to apply for farm ownership loans. For instance, during the first year of
operation only 2,000 out of 38,000 applications were accepted. Usually only the best prospects
were selected and preference was given to farmers who could make a down payment and had the
equipment and wherewithal to manage a farm. The Farm Security supervisor then assisted
borrowers in working out farm and home management plans. The result was a conservative
program with few delinquencies.80 It had little effect on the poorest tenants and sharecroppers,
whose problems were resolved only when they left agriculture altogether. Nevertheless, for
several years after the passage of the Bankhead-Jones Farm Tenant Act in 1937, the FSA played
an important role in American life. Its rehabilitation programs gathered new supporters and
increasingly larger appropriations, resulting in it having a "significant impact upon rural life."81
FSA Replaced by FmHA
Although it no longer purchased submarginal land nor began new resettlement projects, FSA, like its predecessor, acquired many enemies. Southern landowners and large farm corporations depended on labor from people who were the agency's clients, and as FSA befriended tenants, sharecroppers, and migrant farm laborers, large farm interests began to worry about the availability of cheap labor. Bankers, merchants, and processors also began to resent FSA's loans to farm cooperatives, which they saw as competition. Even during World War II large interests "were contemptuous of the productive capacities of small farmers." Most importantly, the Farm Bureau, which mainly represented large commercial farmers, and its ally, the Agricultural Extension Service, "feared any independent power structure with thousands of clients not under their control."82
The FSA had difficulty combating this hostility because, unlike other USDA agencies, it
had not dared organize its clients into a cohesive special interest capable of exerting political
pressure on its behalf. When its existence was placed in jeopardy, the agency found itself
politically bereft.
"In terms of sheer numbers the agency's clientele was impressive, but they came from a
class with little experience in political action. Most of the farm corporations and processors had
powerful backers in Congress. . . True, the FSA had its friends, a schizophrenic collection of
groups ranging from the National Farmers Union and Southern Tenant Farmers' Union to the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and several church-related
organizations. But the agency never sought the kind of relationship that existed between the
Agricultural Extension Service and the Farm Bureau."83
From 1937 on, the New Deal was subjected to increasing attack from a coalition of
Republicans and conservative Democrats, and the FSA became a target for all of its wrath. In the
budget debates of 1940, the tenant purchase program was almost eliminated and was only
restored in the final Appropriation Act for Fiscal Year 1941. Politicians such as Senator Harry F.
Byrd of Virginia held hearings which sought to expose the supposed inept and "socialistic"
activities of the FSA. The Farm Bureau led the charge against the FSA, alleging, among other
things, that the agency was meddling in the political affairs of its clients. With the country
preoccupied by war, it became increasingly difficult to generate support for the FSA. For the
time being at least, wartime demands for labor obscured the problems of rural poverty.
In 1943, the FSA's appropriation was drastically cut and during the next 2 years its staff
went from nearly 20,000 to less than 9,000. Bills to abolish FSA were introduced in 1944 and
1945. Finally, Congress abolished the FSA in 1946 and replaced it with the Farmers Home
Administration (FmHA). The tenant purchase program became the core of the new agency and
although some of the more acceptable techniques of rural rehabilitation, such as supervised
credit, were continued, "anything that suggested ‘sociological experimentation’ [such as planned
communities or organizing the unorganized] was vigorously avoided."84
Conclusion
By the second Franklin Roosevelt administration most of the creative energy had gone out of the New Deal. For 5 years the economy had gradually been recovering from its 1932 nadir of 25-percent unemployment, but in 1938 many of these gains were reversed in a recession that left 18 percent out of work. Even to some of its ardent supporters, the New Deal appeared to be an inadequate response to structural economic problems. Two years later war mobilization began to return the United States to a condition approaching full employment, something that the social and economic experimentation of the New Deal had failed to accomplish.
Just before the war, USDA experienced one final creative flourish under the Bureau of
Agricultural Economics (BAE), which until that time had been strictly a research organization.
The BAE and its newly created field staff began to organize county planning committees
throughout the country. They were modeled on the AAA committees but considered a wider
range of topics -- conserving soil, improving medical facilities, revising tax systems, developing
farm-to-market roads, and establishing cooperatives, among other matters. This new planning
work of the BAE, which initially received the blessing of the land-grant universities, had begun
to show promise but ran into trouble when its sociologists attempted to enlarge committee
membership beyond the traditional rural elites that had controlled the AAA committees. BAE
moved cautiously and slowly in broadening membership procedures, but not slowly enough. The
leadership of the Farm Bureau, which had grown from 150,000 members in 1933 to 450,000 in
1940, reacted to what it perceived as a threat to its dominant role in rural communities. In 1942
Congress, responding to Farm Bureau pressure, stripped the BAE of its planning function.85
Certainly one of the lessons learned from the experiences of the FSA and the BAE
planning committees was that agencies of the Federal Government would encounter almost
insuperable difficulties if they tried to intervene directly in rural social structures. In the 1950s
and 1960s, even the most activist planners remembered this history and, consequently, preferred
to use indirect approaches to rural development.
1. Donald Holley, Uncle Sam’s Farmers: The New Deal Communities in the Lower
Mississippi Valley (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1975), p. 20.
2. Broadus Mitchell, The Depression Decade: From New Era Through New Deal, 1929-
1941 (New York, NY: M.E. Sharpe, Inc., 1975), p. 183
22.Van L. Perkins, Crisis in Agriculture: The Agriculture Adjustment Administration and
the New Deal, 1933 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1969), p. 43.
23. Roger Biles, A New Deal for the American People (Dekalb, IL: Northern Illinois
University Press, 1991), p. 37.
24. Mitchell, The Depression Decade, p. 188.
25. Theodore Saloutos, The American Farmer and the New Deal (Ames,IA: Iowa State
University Press, 1982), p. 98.
26. Hurt, American Agriculture, p. 297.
27. Paul K. Conkin, Tomorrow a New World: The New Deal Community Program
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1959), p. 37.
28. Richard S. Kirkendall, Social Scientists and Farm Politics in the Age of Roosevelt
(Ames, IA: Iowa State University Press, 1982), p. 71.
29. Saloutos, The American Farmer, p. 153.
30. Kirkendall, Social Scientists, p. 73.
31. Ibid.
32. Holley, Uncle Sam’s Farmers, p. 53.
33. Ibid., p. 55.
34. Ibid., p. 61.
35. Sidney Baldwin, Poverty and Politics, (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North
Carolina Press, 1968), 62.
36. Ibid., p. 62.
37. Ibid., p. 81.
38. Kirkendall, Social Scientists, p. 82.
39. Ibid., p. 83.
40. Ibid., p. 94.
41. Shelley Mastran Smith, Mountaineers and Rangers (Washington, DC: U.S. Forest
Service, 1983), p. 50
42. Baldwin, Poverty and Politics, p. 66.
Federal Rural Development Policy in the Twentieth Century
24
43. Biles, A New Deal, p. 73.
44. Saloutos, The American Farmer, pp. 218-219.
45. Biles, A New Deal, p. 74.
46. Century of Service, pp. 219-221.
47. The Edmund Muskie School of Public Service, University of Southern Maine,
“Regional Development Policy in the United States,”
http://www.muskie.usm.maine.edu.csc/650web/Federal%Development.htm
48. Paul K. Conkin, “Intellectual and Political Roots,” pp. 3-34 in TVA: Fifty Years of
Grassroots Bureaucracy, ed., Erwin C. Hargrove and Paul K. Conkin (Urbana, IL: University of
Illinois Press, 1983), p. 35.
49. Richard Lowitt, “The TVA, 1933-45,” pp. 35-65 in TVA: Fifty Years of Grassroots
Bureaucracy, p. 35.
50. Ibid., pp. 49-54.
51. Ibid., pp. 39-44.
52. Edwin C. Hargrove, “The Task of Leadership: The Board Chairman,” pp. 89-121, in
TVA: Fifty Years of Grassroots Bureaucracy, pp. 89-96.
53. Bruce J. Schulman, From Cotton Belt to Sunbelt: Federal Policy, Economic
Development and the Transformation of the South, 1938-1980 (Durham, NC: Duke University
Press, 1994), p. 91.
54. Erwin C. Hargrove, Prisoners of Myth: The Leadership of the Tennessee Valley
Authority, 1933-1990 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), p.99.
55. Ibid., p. 102.
56. Robert J. Samuelson, The Washington Post, 1/19/00.
57. Century of Service, p. 167.
58. Ibid., p. 170.
59. Ibid.
60. Ibid., p. 193.
61. Ibid., p. 197.
62. Ibid., p. 199.
63. Ibid., p. 180.
64. Ibid., p. 213-217.
65. Baldwin, Poverty and Politics, p. 90.
66. Ibid., p. 91.
67. Ibid., p. 106.
68. Ibid
69. Ibid., p. 108.
70. Century of Service, p.206.
71. Baldwin, Poverty and Politics, p. 108.
72. Century of Service, p. 206.
73. Century of Service, p. 207.
74. Conkin, Tomorrow a New World, p. 6.
75. Holley, Uncle Sam’s Farmers, pp. 105-106, 135-131.
76. Century of Service, p. 210.
The New Deal
25
77. Quoted in Century of Service, p. 210.
78. Kirkendall, Social Scientists, p. 122.
79. Century of Service, p. 212.
80. Ibid., p. 213.
81. Kirkendall, Social Scientists, p. 130.
82. Holley, Uncle Sam’s Farmers, p. 243.
83. Ibid.
84. Baldwin, Poverty and Politics, p. 402.
85. Kirkendall, Social Scientists, pp. 192-212.
