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Books: The "Have-More" Plan

Facts

Author: Ed and Carolyn Robinson
ISBN: 10: 0-88266-024-1
Paperback: 70 pages
Publisher: Storey Publishing

The Back Cover

Let’s Rebuild America…

From the day the automobile was invented there has been an ever increasing movement of families to the countryside surrounding the cities. In these post-war years this trend may become almost a stampede.

We Robinsons are only one family out of hundreds of thousands who have discovered how practical it is to hold a job in town and to go daily to it from home and an acre or so of land.

The only thing different about us is that we wrote the “Have-More” Plan about this way of living which has meant so much to us in security, health and happiness. We wanted to tell other families about our experiences so that they could profit by what we’d learned and thus succeed more quickly at setting up homesteads of their own.

The response we’ve had to our “Have-More” Plan has made us very happy but it has almost snowed us under at times. Not only have we had thousands of letters from other families telling us of their plans and asking advice – but we’ve heard from scores of manufacturers, real estate people, insurance companies, magazine and newspaper editors, and so on.

Here are just a few examples:

Soon after the “Have-More” Plan was published, Better Homes and Gardens Magazine asked us to write an article for them, with pictures, about our place. The Reader’s Digest reprinted it. Then many other magazines and newspapers ran stories about the “Have-More” Plan. We were interviewed on the radio a number of times.

Real estate firms from all over the country write to us continually about their plans for dividing land into acreage plots instead of 50 foot lots as they might have done a few years ago.

Architects and builders have told us they are going to offer homes especially designed for country living.

One of the biggest insurance companies has asked us for our advice in developing a special low-cost, long-term mortgage financing plan for families who want to have homesteads.

The Macmillan Company of New York has asked us to edit a whole series of books on the subjects people need to know about to succeed at homesteading.

The men in the services showed so much interest in the “Have-More” Plan that the Army bought a special printing of 55,000 copies for libraries.

We have talked to dozens of business men and have read about scores of others, including some of the biggest in the country, who are planning to move their offices and factories out of the cities so that their employees can enjoy the advantages that go with the ownership of a home and a little land.

In other words, it has sometimes looked to us as though just about everybody in the cities of America wants to move out to the countryside to live and to work!

And why not? Why wouldn’t that be a good idea? Why shouldn’t we set ourselves that goal-to rebuild our country in the next twenty or thirty years so that every family that wants to can own its home and a little land?

It is entirely practical for us to do so. We certainly have the productive capacity to build a whole new highway system, to move many factories away from the crowded cities, to build the millions of new homes, the equipment and furnishing that would go in them!

There was a time when a factory had to be located near water or rail transportation. Nearness to raw materials, nearness to markets, nearness to what was called a “labor supply” were the important considerations. Hardly anybody thought about whether the location chosen would be one where the workers in the factory would enjoy living.

Today and from now on there is no practical reason why the first consideration in locating a factory shouldn’t be the welfare and happiness of the people who are expected to work in it.

Highways and high speed trucks, a new era of railroad construction, can knit the whole of America into one widely dispersed market. Small factories and assembly units widely scattered can take the place of the gigantic plants that exist in our worst industrial areas.

The high human and material costs of city living and working can be lowered as people live in smaller communities. Their taxes will be lower. Their over-all living costs will be lower! For every dollar of wages they earn they can have more living. There can be more real democracy. We’ve found it’s lots easier to be a good citizen and to take part in public affairs if you live in a small town where you know your public officials personally.

Today, only four out of ten families in this country own their homes. In the big cities only one out of four families owns its home. Move factories away from the big cities, give people access to lower priced land, give them half a chance to own their homes, and the ratio may be reversed. How much sounds – how much better governed – would this county be if six instead of four families out of ten owned their homes – if the sense of responsibility, the interest in public affairs, the pride and independence that go with the ownership of property were theirs?

America needs a goal. It needs something tangible to work toward. Look what this nation has accomplished when it had a clear-cut job to do – like winning a war or opening the West.

For the sake of national security itself, remembering the atom bomb; for the welfare and happiness of every family; for the sake of having a big, worthwhile job to do – so that we can unite in doing it instead of quarreling with each other – let’s rebuild America so every family that wants to can own a home and a little land!

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