The Salvation Army's Radical Plan to End Urban Poverty
Commander Booth-Tucker calls for government-backed farm colonies to rescue the urban poor, citing the success of land reform in New Zealand.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Commander Booth-Tucker of the Salvation Army stated that the sole object of his trip was to investigate into a movement in favor of the colonization bill now pending before congress. During the course of the conversation he said: 'Our politicians make a great mistake when they think that because a man has no capital there must be something wrong with him. Under the present system everything operates to make it difficult for this man to live. I have been to New Zealand and have made a study of the manner in which they handle this man there, and I have found it an admirable way. They do not allow a poor man who cannot get work to stay in the city. They take him to the country and put him to work on the road. Instead of sending the tramps to prison, they put them to work out in the open air and pay them for it. Soon he has a little money ahead, when they give him a piece of land and the necessary provisions, charging him 5 per cent interest. This interest pays off the principal in 30 years.'
“A doctor might as well put a plaster on the face of a man who has the smallpox, attempting to cure him by that method, as for us to try to alleviate poverty and do away with crime by the methods we have been using.”
Booth-Tucker’s argument for state-supported transition from urban homelessness to rural land ownership echoes modern discussions about housing stability and the 'housing-first' model. While the specific mechanism of state-run farm colonies has faded, the core debate over whether poverty is a failure of the individual or a systemic failure remains the central theme of Tacoma's contemporary housing crisis.
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