18 OCTOBER 1924, Page 11

THE HOMECROFT POLICY.

[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—The letter reproduced in your article last week is merely an expansion of one which appeared in your columns last April entitled "Grow Your Own Food." Homecrofting is simply the science of creating your own food with your own hands ; thereby, if you are a wage-earner, building a wall between you and hunger. All I want to urge is that people look at the social situation and see the absolute need for experimenting in this direction. In the present distraction of things social we are not advancing from victory to victory. We are going from confusion to confusion, and it is becoming plainer every year that our only resource against final con- fusion with all its nameless consequences is to erect a screen that is hunger-proof around the individual home. We must enable a man to produce his own main foodstuffs with his own hands from the soil around his house. There can be no doubt that that would "do the trick." That would save us from the worst. With every worker master of a Homecroft, and every child in a garden, we could snap our fingers at the food producers to whom your correspondent, F. W. Moses, refers, who try to force up prices by limiting their production. It is tauly hard if those who begin food- growing for themselves occasion prices to go up for their less fortunate neighbours. But that argues, surely, not that we should turn back but that we should press on. And, besides, are the producers-for-themselves really the occasion of this action on the part of the producers-for-the-market ? My idea is rather that they are a handy excuse whereby the latter justify themselves. We do not produce fish for ourselves, or milk. Yet milk gets poured down the sewers and fish thrown back into the sea. It is all just a manoeuvre which the commercial world has found out. It is all a mere part of a universal, lamentable process ; a process of gradual self-strangulation into which our industrial civilization has got entangled, through a long period of misdevelopment. And we must arrest the process. We must cut our way out. And there is a way of doing so. It consists in meeting these combines by becoming self-supporting. We cannot, of course, reply to every combine alone these lines. When the rubber planters play this game, for instance, we cannot reply by growing our own. But we can grow our own food. And, to quote Carlyle, "gad, we'd better." All I want is to see the incidence of this problem realized. Men will find the way out once they see the corner they arc in. I want to see science get down to it, and by that I mean the agricultural colleges. The task is as clear as a pike-staff- to erect a hunger-screen around the individual home against the days that are to come. I believe it can be done on very little ground. I am not going to stickle over the third-of-

an-acre point. My main point is that it could be done on an obtainable and workable amount, and that it has got to be tried—not once or twice but again and again and again —till some way or other is found to relieve the masses of population from their present position of utter dependence on a machinery of exchange which the first international blast that blows will wreck, as it has wrecked it in Russia and Austria within recent memory.

And we mast continue attempting the invention of this screen, despite all the comments of those people who will not begin a job till they have learnt that somebody else has finished it. My appeal is to people who still have the

courage to walk straight out upon an idea ; to whom there is an attraction in bringing something off for the first time —of which number, I rejoice to see, what I always believed,

that "Kynmon" is one. But why should not he be the person to step in and bring this thing off ? There is immortality awaiting the first man who really and finally does it. And I have no doubt that the country is full of people who would

be content to bask in a few of the beams of the glory of his crown. I'm quite serious. Let him try the Surrey Garden Village Trust, Ltd., Croydon, for instance. The essential point is that if experimentation were adequately done on the problem, science has achieved a thousand and one more difficult tasks in the past than making a manageable piece of ground plus a working man's wage keep away hunger

permanently.

If this is speculation, let it be remembered that everything worth while was once mere speculation ; and most good things were not tried out once but many many times before they succeeded. But, of course, this matter is not altogether in the speculative stage now. Will someone not arise who

will bring out another edition of William E. Smythe's book which proves this ? If I were in a position to speak of all I know, I could tell of at least one tentative beginning along these lines—gloriously impecunious, of course—here in England. But in view of "Kynmon's" remark that an ounce of practice is worth a ton of theory—and if you think he deserves it—I wonder if you could print the appended private letter which an American reader of

the Spectator sent me for my comfort on his reading " Kynmon's" former criticism of my "Grow Your Own

Food" communication. It is the hurried letter of a busy man, and obviously never intended for publication ; but I feel sure that the generous writer will pardon the liberty of making this use of it :—

" Waynesburg, Ohio.

June 13th, 1924.

Sir,—I have read with much interest your two recent communi. cations to the Spectator—also Kyrunon's' letter. In this connexion I am taking the liberty of enclosing you herewith a short account of a housing, or more properly a ' home-ing ' experiment now in operation two years. We now have fifty-one pees occupied-- spring gardens now all planted—about an acre each. These places are occupied by coloured labourers mostly direct from the South, three families white. This proposition is working perfectly—or nearly so. Your proposition works—absolutely. It is so simple that most people can't see it—it is too plain to be seen. We are proving (in my judgment have proven) the absolute accuracy of your argument. Note, we have provided an acre—and a common pasture, thus ensuring a fully balanced table—milk, butter, eggs, meat (pork) and vegetables. The worker and his family work for these things directly and not for money wages. I certainly hope you will succeed in bringing this question of raising your own food to a greater public attention. It solves the problem.

Very truly yours, J. J. Whitacre."

Surely it isn't all purely and simply a speculation and a dream. But I dare not trespass further. And besides, neither " Kynmon" nor I are out for mere dialectics. There is surely

no piece of research more hopeful than this or that offers a more alluring reward.—I am, Sir, &c.,

J. W. Scorr.