SHOWDOWN IN BUCKS COUNTY
Blanshard, Paul Jr.
Showdown in Bucks County By Paul Blanshard. Jr. AFTER THREE years of industrial boom, Bucks County, Pennsylvania, has become one of America's striking examples of orderly growth through the free...
...Not quite three years ago Bucks County was known chiefly as a bounteous farmland whose main crops were commercial vegetables and artistic celebrities...
...Fact ' One—Studies show that while it is true values sometimes show temporary decline, especially if present owners get panic-stricken, values will always rise again as old groups adjust to new...
...To those familiar with Levitt operations on Long Island, this segregation policy came as no surprise...
...On Sept...
...And, emerging slowly, are the first signs that the challenge to democracy may be properly met...
...Outside of poor schools and perilously high-crowned roads, there was little to complain about...
...I would have a nighberhood of negros mixed together, how would you like it if you were a negro you worked on houses and you couldn't live in them even if you had enough money to buy them, if you are a real amiracan you should not have to ruin other peoples lives, if you want to go on doing that you may, but you may be sorry for it some day...
...A recent survey disclosed not one builder there constructing homes for Negroes on a volume basis...
...The segregation policy now has spread throughout the county...
...The important thing," said Bernard M. Baruch when told recently about this situation, "is not to get mad...
...Although indications are that several thousand Negroes will keep the wheels turning for freedom in local industry, they do not have the promise of roofs over their heads...
...Headed by suave, confident William Levitt, this firm gained a "miracle builder" reputation by mass producing some 17,500 low-cost homes on Long Island, New York, just after World War II...
...Fact Four—A study by the National Association of Real Estate Boards reported a few years back that Negroes take good care of property if it is in good repair when acquired...
...Money talks...
...Interracial panel groups have appeared widely in the region to talk on equal housing for all...
...Myth Three—Investment in interracial housing is a bad risk...
...Here are a few examples of the myths it meets: Myth One—Entrance of a minority group into a neighborhood will permanently ruin property values there...
...He urges those of us who are fighting for an inter-racial housing policy to find ways of making good any losses he might sustain by adopting such a policy...
...A little girl whose father has been working for months to help checkmate the new threat to democratic principles wrote a letter to William Levitt, saying as well as any of us can what this matter ,means to our republic: "Dear Mr...
...Levittown and Bucks County have become, as Drayton Bryant of the Philadelphia Housing Authority wrote, "an outstanding opportunity and a national front line for democracy...
...Bad news travels faster than good...
...The physical problems resulting from such change—need for new schools, roads, water, sewage—have consumed most of the attention of area residents...
...It is meeting the myths of interracial housing headon...
...Myth Two—Interracial housing projects drive down property values in surrounding areas...
...The Levittowns of America can be won to democracy if enough "real amiracans" care enough to fight for the principle at stake...
...There was an easy informality in the county...
...The trim, modern, well-equipped houses are regarded as a good buy at $11,000 by the 4,000 tenants who had moved in by mid-1953...
...With that kind of conscience lamp burning inside tomorrow's adults, there is hope that equality of opportunity will come to mean much more than mere theory in this "land of the free...
...The figures show a slightly better record for Negroes...
...AFTER THREE years of industrial boom, Bucks County, Pennsylvania, has become one of America's striking examples of orderly growth through the free enterprise system...
...The main builder for the new Bucks County is Levitt & Sons, Incorporated...
...But such human concerns as personal housing are taking on even greater significance...
...it was harder to make enemies than friends...
...A few miles below the spot where George Washington made his historic crossing of the Delaware, Levitt & and Sons are creating a new 16,000-unit community which will be home for some 70,000 when completed...
...Newspaper ads by the builders have lauded the settlement as "the most perfectly planned community in America...
...Fact Two—A single, striking refutation is the private development in Queens, N.Y., for United Nations personnel of all creeds and colors...
...II Unhappily for democracy, though, in none of Levittown's 16 sections in Pennsylvania can a Negro buy a home today...
...By dredging the Delaware River from Philadelphia to the new mill, ore vessels would be able one day to haul raw materials from remote Venezuela to a site where finished products could command markets to north, south, and west...
...Rose's committee is making progress because it is fighting with facts as weapons...
...Bill Levitt, a personable, glib materialist, explains his position by saying categorically that white people have high principles but are not ready for Negro' neighbors...
...By this year's end there will be 15,000 new jobs which did not exist in 1950...
...All but one reporting surveyor said that the Negro makes a good home buyer and carries his purchases to completion...
...I'm on your side of the fence...
...But the same boom has brought on a new and decisive challenge to democratic principles...
...29, 1950, the United States Steel Company announced plans for constructing a $400,000,000 Fairless Works on 3,800 acres of farmland near Morrisville...
...Morrisville has become the pivot of an industrial boom which will have far-reaching effects on the productive capacity of the whole free world...
...He asserted that the stress on material values as compared with moral values was "the curse of the age," but that if we work at it hard enough, "things will be bound to come out right in the end...
...Fact Three—While lending institutions have been slow to underwrite democracy in this form, the records show a number of successful projects carried out on this basis...
...I don't see why you're in such a hurry...
...Various national groups are studying and advising from New York and Philadelphia...
...Government agencies, looking into the matter of reliability, report that Negroes and whites of comparable incomes have similar records of property maintenance and payment...
...Then they will be ready for housing next door to whites...
...Give them 75 years," he advises, "and let the Negroes first have equal jobs and equal education...
...They enjoyed the rural setting...
...Belatedly, a good many people in Bucks County are beginning to work "hard enough" at this and allied challenges to democracy...
...Since its establishment property values in nearby areas have tripled...
...Alert businessmen the country over proceeded to draw up plans for some 300 new industries close by the Fairless Works...
...Steel-inspired development of several thousand additional homes...
...The same is true in nearby Fairless Hills, a U.S...
...Levitt, "I wish you would let the negros live in your houses, all tho I am only nine years old I am very inrested in what my Father is working on...
...Many urban workers owned homes there...
...Told that a lot of local citizens were not sure the white man still had 75 years to grant equal rights piecemeal, at his own pace, Levitt exclaims, "Now get this straight...
...Myth Four—Minority groups do not take care of property, and they are unreliable...
...Amid the many problems being solved today in swiftly-changing Bucks County, this moral issue of equality in housing offers a great test, a large challenge...
...this is not a world with only one kind of people, it has people with different kinds of skin, if I were running a place to make houses I would not care if I lost customers...
...The Mutual Life Insurance Company and the Bowery Savings Bank, both of New York, could speak most eloquently—and they frequently do —about the good return from investments in interracial housing...
...Two considering the move have been counseled against it lest they lose essential financial backing for other ventures...
...A housing committee led by Carter M. Rose of Fallsington is spearheading the efforts of a new Human Relations Council to inform the citizenry...
...To those concerned with the practice of what democracy preaches, the widespread acceptance of this policy in traditionally democratic Bucks County is cause for alarm...
Vol. 17 • July 1953 • No. 7
