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
HOME PAGE

* Since this study was made, the Bureau of Home Economics of the United States Department of Agriculture has made the following dietetic study. The "adequate diet' of the table might be called a "city" diet; the "very liberal diet suggested," a diet for homesteaders.

SUGGESTED FOOD BUDGETS FOR FARM FAMILIES
YEARLY SUPPLY FOR A FAMILY OF FIVE

	UNIT	Adequate diet recommended when most of food is purchased	Very liberal diet suggested when there are good resources for family food production
Flour, cereals	lbs.	1130	400
Milk	gal.	360	400
Potatoes, sweet potatoes	bu.	14	10
Dried beans	pk.	5	1
Tomatoes (citrus fruit)	bu.	5	10
Dried fruits	lb.	85	75
Other vegetables and fruits	lb.	365	1400
Butter, other fats	lb.	200	165
Sugar	lb.	180	200
Lean meat, poultry	lb.	250	620
Eggs	doz.	80	145

    

    With the exception of sugar--for which it might be possible to substitute in its entirety honey, maple sugar, and molasses--all of this food was to be produced on the proposed homesteads. Only the food items such as coflee, tea, spices, etc., would have to be purchased by the homesteaders. And of course exotic foodstuffs--oranges, pineapples, oysters, olive oil--would have to be purchased, though life could very well be maintained on whatever native foods there were which furnished the same sort of nutritive elements.

    The production of 4,750 pounds of various foods, 200 dozen eggs, and the 1,200 quarts of milk above listed would require from three to five acres of land. A homestead of this size would make it possible to raise not only the food for the table, but the feed for the livestock, the livestock consisting of 25 laying hens and 25 cockerels or capons (raised from 75 chicks); two grade or pure-blooded Swiss goats with their four kids each year (two of these kids, the bucks, could be slaughtered and added to the meat diet, the does being raised and probably sold), and two hogs raised from pigs purchased each year. The bees, of which there ought to be three or four hives, would, of course, feed themselves. A considerable number of variations in this livestock scheme are possible without materially changing the land area needed to raise feed. Turkeys, ducks, and other fowls may be added or substituted for some of the chickens; sheep raised in place of hogs; a cow used instead of milch goats. The cow would require more land than the goats; the addition of sheep or an increase in the quantity of hogs would also increase the area of land needed for grain and pasturage. The area devoted to the orchard and the kitchen garden would have to be large enough to supply about 500 quarts of vegetables and fruits to be canned and preserved for winter, or to be dehydrated if that method of food preservation is preferred.

    On a three-acre homestead, about one and a half acres of the land would need to be put in grain for the goats, hogs, and chickens; about a quarter of an acre into alfalfa, soy beans or some similar crop, and a half acre reserved for pasturage. A quarter of an acre would be needed for the corn or wheat for the family's cereals. This means about two acres for field crops. The remaining acre would be all that was needed for the vegetable garden, the orchard, the barnyard, the flower-gardens and lawns, and the homesite itself. Indeed, if the family were content to live exclusively on vegetables and nuts, all its food could be raised on this one acre of land. On this general plan, three acres would be all that would be needed, while five acres would be a generous allowance. If a common pasture were made available, the three acres would be ample. I therefore suggested that the Dayton Homestead Units should consist of 160 acre tracts laid out for between thirty and thirty-five homesteads of three acres each, with the remainder of the land for common use.

    Upon the basis of the land area and food program above outlined, the investment needed to establish a homestead was calculated as follows:

    
    To this investment there was added about $120 for groceries and feed for use during the first six months after movement to the land. Assuming that the homesteading started in the winter or spring, within six months production would develop to a point so that no further outside purchases would have to be made for this purpose. The total investment would therefore be around $1,000 per family. But not more than $350 to $400 of this would have to be in cash.

    Farms of about 160 acres were to be laid out for the homesteads, and were to be known as Homestead Units to distinguish them from the Production Units already established by the unemployed in the city itself. In the Homestead Units the group activities and cooperative manufacturing carried on by the Production Units in the city might be continued to whatever extent the individuals in each group desired. The whole tract of land would be owned by the unit; title to the individual homesteads would be based upon perpetual leases, thus preventing speculation in land. If the farm buildings already on the tract were not suitable for use as community buildings, they would be gradually altered for this purpose. The pasture, wood lot, and community buildings would be owned by the unit as a whole and used by the individual homesteaders under rules and regulations established by the group. Tractors or horses, trucks, and heavy agricultural implements might also be cooperatively owned. Grain farming might be carried on by some units cooperatively, just as the city units produced clothes, bread, and other goods cooperatively. As much or as little communal life as the group desired was thus provided for, the balance between collectivism and individualism swinging in whatever direction experience and inclination pointed. Each family was expected, however, to build its own home, poultry-house, cow-shed, and workshop; to cultivate its own garden, and set out its own orchard and berry patch, and become in this new and modernized setting almost as self-sufficient and independent as were the pioneers of the country a hundred years ago. Trades and crafts were expected to develop and selling and bartering of produce of which individual homesteads had a surplus, but no such emphasis was to be placed upon this as to force a trend toward large-scale production.

    The plans looked toward the building of permanent and beautiful homes. Construction was to follow lines developed by Ernest Flagg for the building of beautiful and inexpensive small homes. The high cost and wastes involved in building cellars was therefore to be avoided. While building the first wing of their homes, the homesteaders were to commute between Dayton and their new homes, though some of them might camp out, more or less, if the farm buildings on the site made it practicable to do so. As soon as they were on the site, they were to begin to garden, to build their own furniture in their own workshops, to weave cloth on their own looms, and to make their own clothes on their own sewing-machines. Electricity was to be brought in for both light and power, and domestic machinery and appliances used to reduce drudgery to a minimum. The crushing burdens of elaborate water and sewage systems were to be avoided by the use of individual automatic pumps and individual septic tanks.

    Dayton, which is this year establishing its first homestead units, is demonstrating what can be done with very little cash even by unemployed families. But that an individual family can establish itself on a homestead with an even smaller cash investment than provided for in the Dayton plan was demonstrated to my satisfaction by a case with which I happen to be personally familiar. This family consisted of a man, wife, and boy eight years old. The man had made an indifferent living for many years as a chauffeur in and around New York, and when out of work came to live with his parents, who had a small country home in our section. One day he came to me with a project for building a road stand on a plot of land belonging to me. He had, however, no capital with which to buy the land and barely enough money to equip a stand. He asked for a lease on the lot, with the privilege of buying it if he managed to make a success of his stand. I gave him the lease for which he asked, and this is what happened:

    He went to a local lumber-yard and secured a large quantity of building material on credit. With this he first built a small stand, and equipped it to sell icecream, drinks, and the usual line of roadside refreshments. While his wife took care of the stand, he built a four-room house on the back of the lot, though the interior was unfinished at the time he came to me and told me that the lumber-yard was pressing him for money. I discovered that he had gone ahead and built the house, expecting that the stand would earn enough not only to enable him to buy the lot but to pay for the materials he used in building. To straighten out the tangle into which his over-optimism had led him, I arranged a mortgage for him with the building and loan association from the proceeds of which he paid for his lot, paid for the building materials for which he was already in debt, and then purchased enough materials with which to finish his home. His road stand folded up and disappeared the next winter--it never did make very much money. But in spite of this disappointment, he managed to earn enough during the periods when he worked to meet his loan payments, to keep adding to his homestead, until he finally had a substantial house, a garden and chicken-yard, and found himself living at a level of comfort and security which he had never before enjoyed.

    Now if a family with virtually no capital and having to rely mainly on the earnings of occasional periods of work as a chauffeur, can establish itself in a country home, it ought to be possible for families with some capital and more earning power to do so. What such a family needs--in addition to courage--according to our experience is enough capital for the down payment on the purchase price of a place and enough cash to pay for such materials and equipment as cannot be purchased on credit. For the rest, they must rely upon their incomes. But that a modest income, especially during the first few years, will enable them not only to pay for their place but to develop it into a substantial and comfortable home, is not difficult to demonstrate on the basis of our own experience.

    Assume that we are dealing with the problem of a family having enough capital for the first payment on a suitable place, enough cash with which to equip itself at least as well as we were able to, and with an income of $2,500 a year--approximately the income with which we worked our first year. Such a family living in the city would spend its income about as follows:

    
    Assuming that production upon the homestead increases gradually, and does not go as far toward self-sufficiency as is planned for the Dayton experiment, the family budget after moving to the country would look something like this:

    With the family producing its own shelter, instead of renting it, there is a saving of $500 a year between what would be spent for taxes and upkeep on their own home and that paid out in rent in the city. In the case of food, a cut of 50 per cent is possible the moment the garden, the orchard, and the chicken-yard contribute to the family larder. Between the sewing-room, the workshop, and the laundry, substantial savings are possible on clothing and other expenses. A fund of about $1,250 is therefore made available for investment in the homestead and its equipment, provided the family does all of its own work. To whatever extent servants are employed, this fund is reduced. In our own case, we much preferred to spend a part of it for help and to make our investment at a slower rate than to try to put so much into "saving" and take so much out of ourselves.

    Surely I have said enough about the problems involved to make it clear why it is so difficult to answer the questions which are asked us about how much capital is needed for establishing a homestead in the country. Whenever I am asked the question I always think of that old poser, Which is the most important leg of a three-legged stool? The amount of capital needed is just one part of an equation in three terms, of which the other two are the income upon which the family can rely, and the degree to which the family is willing to endure pioneering.