Suggestions for a National Program of Rural Rehabilitation and Relief

Abstract

T HE simple fact that rural poverty existed in this country was never openly recognized by our government until approximately five years ago. Public recognition of the fact has come still more slowly. The idea of poverty has been traditionally associated with city slums and the great mass of immigrants who came to this country during the last quarter of last century. On the other hand, the barefoot boy with cheeks of tan, has been a symbol of rural life. He was a healthy little cuss; well supplied with vigor and vitamines; and though his clothes were not decorous, they were always warm and sturdy, and characterized by a rustic simplicity which appealed to our esthetic taste. We have been loathe to recognize the pallid faced youngsters, suffering from infected tonsils, pellagra, or hookworm, subsisting on half enough food of dubious quality and scant variety, clothed in flour and feed sacks, and sleeping on mattresses of straw or corn shucks. There are, of course, many implications of the fact that the problem of rural poverty has only recently been recognized. An important one, from the viewpoint of this paper, is that there is only a meager bit of generally accepted knowledge upon which to base suggestions for a national program of rural rehabilitation and relief. Research in the field of rural poverty got off to a fairly rapid, though narrow, start three or four years ago. As yet however, the findings are few. Of still greater significance is the apparent fact that there has been little discussion of these findings, and other readily observable facts of a related nature, by the layman.