Edward C. Banfield and What Conservatism Used to Mean: Hard thinking on difficult and uncomfortable questions about how to keep everything from falling apart. (Joshua Tait, Feb 01, 2025, The Bulwark)
IN GOVERNMENT PROJECT, BANFIELD TELLS the story of Casa Grande from its genesis to dissolution. It was fundamentally a relief project, to give succor to the Depression poor. Administrators made the decision to establish Casa Grande as one of four FSA cooperative farms—or “collective” farms, to use a term more evocative of the Soviet Union—despite the ways this ran against the expectations of the settlers, their neighbors, the press, and Congress. (There were another eleven FSA farms that were partly, but not fully, operated cooperatively.)
The rationale for running Casa Grande on a cooperative basis arose from the understanding that a major transition was underway in American agriculture. Technology had changed the economics of farming, but culture had not kept up. Diesel tractors gave such an advantage to large-scale farmers that the small family homestead became all but obsolete. The climate and landscape of this part of Arizona further seemed to suggest the need for treating this farm differently. To make Casa Grande at all viable, it would have to be at scale, which, to maximize relief, meant it would be a cooperative. No one would own their “property as lord of the manor,” as Banfield recounted; they would “use it only in common with 59 others.”
Eventually, FSA signed off on the project, funding was appropriated, and the beginnings of a cooperative legally established. The settlers were a varied bunch. Some were Arizonans; a later batch were Okies fleeing the Dust Bowl. Casa Grande did not promise them wealth; it was relief. But for the vast majority, Casa Grande offered them housing, amenities, pay, and security superior to any they had ever experienced. It also, at least in theory, offered the sense of purpose and satisfaction that can come with work, and the sense of camaraderie that can come with being part of a team. The FSA hoped these benefits and shared experiences would hold the settlers together despite their lack of a common background and ethos.Yet, as Banfield notes, an academic who spent a month at Casa Grande in early 1941 said that “the most striking fact about the Casa Grande project is that it seethes with dissatisfaction.” More than three quarters of the settlers were dissatisfied with the project. Why? In some respects, they were comparing their situation against an ideal. They did not like industrial-scale farming: The hours were less flexible and the roles less autonomous than on small farms. The settlers got little real training in the techniques of farming. There was little for teens or young adults to do. Their neighbors made fun of them for taking government aid. And they were still poor. But above all, the settlers simply did not like one another. Casa Grande—like most of FSA’s other collective projects—was riven with factionalism.