Seattle's Potato-Patch Plan for the Unemployed
Seattle's charity board proposes turning vacant city land into potato patches for jobless men, borrowing a Detroit relief experiment that fed nearly a thousand families.
At the monthly meeting of the Board of Associated Charities Friday afternoon a proposition was made by the president, R. D. Garrett, to get the use of unoccupied land within the city limits and divide it up among men out of employment for the cultivation of potatoes and other vegetables. This is the plan so successfully carried out last summer in Detroit, so that nearly a thousand families raised enough vegetables to live on all this winter. The Detroit method is being put into operation in New York and other cities, and it is thought that it can be well applied in Seattle, where there is a large quantity of good land that the owners will probably be glad to have used for so benevolent a purpose.
Rev. Mr. Taylor, Rev. Dr. Aston, Rev. George H. Lee, Mr. Conant, Mr. Winfield Smith and others present at this meeting favored the suggestion, and on motion of Rev. Mr. Taylor it was decided to call a meeting for next Tuesday evening at the Chamber of Commerce of all citizens interested in this practical movement for preventing poverty. It is asked that notices of this meeting be given in all the churches, and that all persons who will sympathize are requested to cooperate in making this meeting a success. The mayor has already been spoken to about this plan of land cultivation, and it is thought he will aid in every way. All that is necessary is to secure the use of sufficient land and to secure men to do the work. There will be a committee to apportion the land and an overseer to direct the work.
“All that is necessary is to secure the use of sufficient land and to secure men to do the work.”
The plan combines mutual aid, unused land and food security—issues that still collide in Seattle as the city debates encampments, empty lots and the cost of living. The charity board's appeal to landowners also shows how private property and public need were negotiated long before modern zoning.
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