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Greatly cheered was Truster Tugwell, therefore, by the President's exclamations of approval as they viewed the half-finished buildings and roads of Greenbelt. Heartily he applauded the modernistic little houses which will be rented to 1,000 low-paid white-collar families at $20 to $40 per month; the double-horseshoe plan on which the town is being laid out, with underpasses for pedestrians and with automobile traffic routed to the outskirts; the surrounding "Greenbelt" of farms to furnish food and guard against industrial intrusion; the community centre, post office, schools, shops, athletic field; the 22-acre artificial lake which, as the president watched, was stocked with Federal fish.
Greenbelt is the first of four such projects which Administrator Tugwell has launched throughout the land.* Cried the President to some of its 4,000 WPA builders: I've often seen the blueprints of Greenbelt. The actual sight far exceeds anything I ever dreamed of. I wish everyone in the country could see it. It is good to get people out in the country. It is an experiment that ought to be copied in every community in the United States."
Thus reassured, Administrator Tugwell, like others on whom the President bestowed his amiable, noncommittal smile, popped into the headlines again next day with a plan for something even closer to his heart. He wants to spend $50,000,000 per year for at least ten years buying farms which would be turned over to upstanding tenant farmers, including Southern sharecroppers, with 40 years to pay. His proposal would be presented, explained polite Dr. Tugwell, only if Congress asked him for it. But he felt sure it would. Already, he revealed, RA had taken options on 1,000 good Southern farms as a starter.
*Three days later the President wrote Mr. Winant a letter drafting him at least temporarily for his old job.
*Others are at Cincinnati, Milwaukee, Bound Brook, N. J.