Promised Land

Favorite relief project of Anna Eleanor Roosevelt Roosevelt is the Subsistence Homestead (house & garden) for jobless miners at Reedsville, W.Va. There one day last week she arrived to inspect the first "Federal laboratory" and chat behind closed doors with the 50 families who compose the pioneer Homesteaders. Prevented by last-minute contract technicalities from moving into their new homes, the Homesteaders were nevertheless so grateful for their Promised Land that they appeared possessed of an almost religious fervor.

Because the newspaperwomen who accompanied Mrs. Roosevelt were excluded from the conference, it remained for Financier Bernard Mamies Baruch, who usually has small patience for easy-going relief handouts, to report what took place. Mr. Baruch:: "You should have seen those people's faces. It was really the most remarkable thing I ever saw. . . . You felt their sense of responsibility. There was a lovely thing at the end. The president of the Homesteaders' association said, "I think we ought to offer up a prayer for the blessings that the great Jehovah'-- he used the word Jehovah--has given us."

To the President's wife the Homesteaders gave a basket of home-grown radishes and onions. Said she: "I'll take them home. My husband adores onions."*

Most interesting social experiment in the U. S., Reedsville comprises a 1,017-acre community of some 350 hand-picked "white Americans." Majority of them have been living on relief funds since 1926 in miners' hovels at nearby Scots' Run. Once the property of Col. John Fairfax of Virginia, whose friend George Washington surveyed part of it, Reedsville was purchased by the Government last year from Farmer Richard M. Arthur. In its 50 white model cottages of the ready-made knock-down type are electric lights, modern plumbing, coal stoves, fireplaces, furnaces, double-decker beds and (by special request) bathtubs.

Five acres of soil with each house will enable Homesteaders to raise their own food, sell a surplus. For house & garden they will pay the Government $15-$20 a month for 20 years, payments to begin two years after occupancy. To construct and equip a factory in Reedsville to make furniture and other things for the Post Office Department $525,000 of PWA funds were allotted last October by Secretary Ickes. Construction of the building will provide some 2.000 man-months of labor for Homesteaders, and on completion the plant will give permanent employment to some 150.* Eventually the Government's No. 1 social laboratory will have a library, a lake, a pool, a gymnasium and a recreation centre.

--A favorite dish of the President: liver and onions.

--Last February the House refused to grant funds to the Post Office Department to operate the Reedsville factory, on the grounds that this would constitute ''State socialism" (TIME, March 12 ).

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