Seattle's Jobless Are Handed Potato Patches
A citizens' committee working out of a Railroad Avenue office gives out vacant land, seed and tools to more than twenty families in a single day — one of them has fourteen children.
Seeds and allotments of land were given out to over twenty applicants yesterday by the committee of the Pingree plan, and the two men in charge of the head office on Railroad avenue were kept busy all day. There were a number of applicants for land, and two from Fremont for seed, they having their own land. The supply of seed was nearly exhausted, and the committee is in urgent need of donations of small lots of available land; it already has a large amount of land, but it is in large tracts, and there are not enough applicants living near any one tract to fill it up.
The committee is endeavoring to place applicants as near their homes as possible. When they are placed, the land is examined to see if it is fit for cultivation, in which case the applicant is also furnished with seed and implements and can start work at once. If the land proves to be unfit for cultivation the applicant is given another piece of land. The land allotted yesterday is situated in the northern part of the city and did not need surveying, as the lines were found to be very straight and regular. Those given land were all men of family, and one had fourteen children.
On next Monday the members of the committee will each be assigned a district, in which he will inspect the work that is being done. This plan will probably be carried on through the summer.
Donations of implements are coming in very slowly and the committee wishes to impress upon those who promised them the necessity of sending them in as soon as convenient, as many who have been allotted land and seed cannot go ahead with the work of cultivation because they lack implements. Arrangements will also be made to have, if possible, the services of teams taken to the outlying land, instead of compelling the applicants to carry their own tools.
The committee will apply to the directors of school district No. 1 for the loan of all available school lands, and hopes to receive a favorable answer.
“Those given land were all men of family, and one had fourteen children.”
The Pingree plan took its name from Detroit's mayor, who put the unemployed onto vacant city lots during the depression of the 1890s; Seattle's version is a direct ancestor of the P-Patch, the food bank and the community garden. The problem the committee hit is still the problem: not goodwill, but land in the right place, close enough to the people who need it that they can walk to it.
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