58 WE FARM FOR A HOBBY 



creator of the subsistence-homestead idea. It is a 

 good idea, with much to recommend it especially 

 its sound presumption that under modern con- 

 ditions of transportation the necessity to live in 

 cities is rapidly diminishing. But it would prob- 

 ably be a failure even though the federal govern- 

 ment had not cursed it under the dead hand of 

 bureaucracy. Its fatal weaknesses are that it is 

 based on the wrong kind of people, and that it 

 denies the necessity to sell surpluses to get the best 

 return from a part-time farm. It would be a grand 

 good thing to transplant borderline urbanites to 

 rural homes where production for use, supple- 

 mented by two or three days of factory work a 

 week, would guarantee a comfortable living. But 

 with every regard for the thousands of exceptions 

 I seriously doubt that, in the mass, the kind of 

 people who in hard times find themselves forced 

 to the bare-subsistence level of two or three days' 

 factory work a week are going to be the kind who 

 can operate small home farms successfully, or who 

 would even be willing to do the amount of work 

 the job entails. The necessity to sell surpluses is 

 so fundamentally implicit in nature's own produc- 

 tion scheme, that government's failure to take it 

 into consideration and Mr. Borsodi's positive de- 

 nial of it alike indicate to me, at least, a dearth of 

 practical experience in the application of the the- 



