Karl Hess: Presidential Speechwriter Turned Homesteader

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PLOWBOY: Was the experiment successful?

HESS: Very! Our fish were healthier than any trout in any stream in the United States. We put in about two pounds of feed for every pound of meat protein we harvested and the fish-after cleaning-cost somewhere between 70¢ and $1.00 a pound to produce. I can't give you a more exact figure because we don't have the electricity bill yet and that-due to the pumps we used for aerating the water and the air conditioners we needed to keep the temperature-sensitive trout cool was a major expense.

But the project was a success. We proved that it's possible to raise about five pounds of trout per cubic foot of water per year. So you can produce a lot of fish in a basement.

PLOWBOY: Now that you've pointed the way, do you expect great numbers of city dwellers to start raising fish in their spare rooms?

HESS: That depends on their attitudes which, in turn, depends to a great extent on whether or not we allow today's welfare system to completely destroy the average citizen's sense of individual responsibility.

Washington is a very bad town in which to promote self reliance, you know, because Big Government is so pervasive there. It has a welfare program for everyone, and people are given money by the bucketsful. There are even summer programs that pay two and a half bucks an hour to school-age kids who do absolutely nothing they just sign in in the morning and out at night.

Now this isn't funny. One day, for instance, a teenager came to the Institute and asked if we had a job for him. When we asked what kind of work he wanted to do, he said, "I don't want work, I want a job." So we asked, "What's a job?" and he said, "That's where you give me money."

We have a generation of kids, you see, who've been economically corrupted by our government. And people like that-as we found out from bitter experience-find it impossible to spend a half hour twice a day tending a basement full of fish.

So we thought we'd fight this lethargy on a broader front by getting our Community Technology program introduced into the school system. eve actually- drew up pans to that end and took them to some of the largest foundations in the country.

PLOWBOY: What happened?

HESS: They were profoundly bored by the idea. One foundation's representatives only asked us one question: "How many of your staff are white?" When we told them that we're practically all white, they said, "Go away."

So there we were, living in a multi-racial neighborhood but because we had the stigma of being born white, we were dead in the water.

PLOWBOY: Did you and your wife leave Washington and move here to rural West Virginia because of the disappointments and social problems you've just mentioned?

HESS: Crime was the social problem that caused us to leave AdamsMorgan. We were robbed about once every two months during the years we lived there. The last time the thieves just tore the front door from its frame while we were out of town and took everything of value we owned except Therese's typewriter. They'd have probably taken that too if they hadn't found my target pistol first. In the world of thievery, you know, that's the jackpot.

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