FOOTNOTE:[1]The material for this chapter is taken from an address entitled "Social Problems of American Farmers," which was read before the Congress of Arts and Science, section of The Rural Community, at St. Louis, September, 1904.
[1]The material for this chapter is taken from an address entitled "Social Problems of American Farmers," which was read before the Congress of Arts and Science, section of The Rural Community, at St. Louis, September, 1904.
[1]The material for this chapter is taken from an address entitled "Social Problems of American Farmers," which was read before the Congress of Arts and Science, section of The Rural Community, at St. Louis, September, 1904.
Narrowness is perhaps the charge most often brought against American farm life. To a certain extent this charge may be just, though the comparisons that usually lead up to the conclusion do not always discriminate. It must be remembered that there are degrees of desirability in farm life, and that at the least there are multitudes of rural communities where bright flowers still bloom, where the shade is refreshing, and the waters are sweet. But, granting for the time that in the main rural life is less pleasant, less rich, less expansive than city life, we shall urge that this era of restriction is rapidly drawing to a close. There are forces at work that are molding rural life by new standards, and the old régime is passing. We shall soon be able to say of the country that "old things have passed away; all things have become new."
This statement may seem too optimistic to some who can marshal an array of facts to prove that bigotry, narrowness, and the whole family of ills begotten by isolation still thrive in thecountry. It is true that our picture is not all of rose tints. But what of that? If it were not true there would be no farm problem; the country would have to convert the town. The fact remains that rural life is undergoing a rapid expansion. Materially, socially, and intellectually, the farmer is broadening. Old prejudices are fading. The plowman is no longer content to keep his eye forever on the furrow. The revival has been in slow progress for some time and has not yet reached its zenith; indeed, the movement is but well under way. For while the new day came long ago to some rural communities and they are basking in a noonday sun, yet in far too many localities the faintest gray of dawn is all that rouses hope.
The fundamental change that is taking place is the gradual adoption of the new agriculture. "Book-farmin'" is still decried, and many "perfessers" have a rocky road to travel in their attempts to guide the masses through the labyrinth of scientific knowledge that has been constructed during the last decade or two. This difficulty has not been wholly the farmer's fault—the scientist would often have been more persuasive had his wings been clipped. But there is a decided "getting together" nowadays—the farmer and the man of science have at last found common ground. And while the pendulum of agricultural prosperity shall always swing to and fro, there are, to change the figure, reasons for believing that an increasing number of farmers have rooted the tree of permanent success.
To enumerate some of these reasons: (1) Thousands of farmers are farming on a scientific basis. They use the results of soil and fertilizer analysis; they cultivate, not to kill weeds so much as to conserve moisture; horticulturists spray their trees according to formulas laid down by experimenters; dairymen use the "Babcock test" for determining the fat content of milk; stock-feeders utilize the scientists' feeding rations. (2) The number of specialists among farmers is increasing. This is a sign of progress surely. More and more farmers are coming to push a single line of work. (3) New methods are being rapidly adopted. Fifteen years ago hardly a fruit-grower sprayed for insect and fungus pests; today it is rare to find one who does not. The co-operative creamery has not only revolutionized the character of the butter product made by the factory system, but it has set the pace for thousands of privatedairymen who are now making first-class dairy butter. (4) In general the whole idea ofintensivefarming is gaining ground.
This specialization, or intensification, of agriculture makes a new demand, upon those who pursue it, in the way of mental and business training. This training is being furnished by a multitude of agencies, and the younger generation of farmers is taking proper advantage of the opportunities thus offered. What are some of these regular agencies? (1) An alert farm press, containing contributions from both successful farmers and scientific workers. (2) Farmers' institutes, which are traveling schools of technical instruction for farmers. (3) The bulletins issued by the government experiment stations located in every state, and by the federal Department of Agriculture. (4) Special winter courses (of from two to twelve weeks), offered at nearly all the agricultural colleges of the country, for instruction in practical agriculture. (5) Regular college courses in agriculture at these same colleges. (6) Extension instruction by lectures and correspondence. (7) A growing book literature of technical agriculture. (8) More encouraging than all else is the spirit of inquiry that prevails among farmers the country over—the recognition that there is a basis of science in agriculture. No stronger pleas for the advancement of agricultural education can be found than those that have recently been formulated by farmers themselves.
If this regeneration of farm life were wholly material it would be worth noting; for it promises a prosperity built on foundations sufficiently strong to withstand ordinary storms. Yet this is but a chapter of the story. Not only are our American farmers making a study of their business, bringing to it the resources of advancing knowledge and good mental training, and hence deriving from it the strong, alert mental character that comes to all business men who pursue equally intelligent methods, but the farmers are by no means neglecting their duty to broaden along general intellectual lines. Farmers have always been interested in politics; there is no reason to think that their interest is declining. The Grange and other organizations keep their attention on current problems. Traveling libraries, school libraries, and Grange libraries are giving new opportunities for general reading, and the farmer's family is not slow to accept the chance. Low prices for magazines and family papers bring to these periodicals an increasinglist from the rural offices. Rural free mail delivery promises, among many other results of vast importance, to enlarge the circulation of daily papers among farmers not less than tenfold.
The really great lesson that farmers are rapidly learning is to work together. They have been the last class to organize, and jealousy, distrust, and isolation have made such organizations as they have had comparatively ineffective. But gradually they are learning to compromise, to work in harmony, to sink merely personal views, to trust their own leaders, to keep troth in financially co-operative projects. There will be no Farmers' Party organized; but the higher politics is gaining among farmers, and more and more independent voting may be expected from the rural precincts. Farmers are learning to pool such of their interests as can be furthered by legislation.
It is also true that the whole aspect of social life in the country is undergoing a profound evolutionary movement. Farmers are meeting one another more frequently than they used to. They have more picnics and holidays. They travel more. They go sight-seeing. They take advantage of excursions. Their social life is more mobile than formerly. Farmers havemore comforts and luxuries than ever before. They dress better than they did. More of them ride in carriages than formerly. They buy neater and better furniture. The newer houses are prettier and more comfortable than their predecessors. Bicycles and cameras are not uncommon in the rural home. Rural telephone exchanges are relatively a new thing, but the near future will see the telephone a part of the ordinary furniture of the rural household; while electric car lines promise to be the final link in the chain of advantages that is rapidly transforming rural life—robbing it of its isolation, giving it balance and poise, softening its hard outlines, and in general achieving its thorough regeneration.
This sketch is no fancy tale. The movement described is genuine and powerful. The busy city world may not note the signs of progress. Well-minded philanthropists may feel that the rural districts are in special need of their services. Even to the watchers on the walls there is much of discouragement in the advancement thatisn'tbeing made. Yet it needs no prophet's eye to see that a vast change for the better in rural life and conditions is now in progress.
No student of these conditions expects ordesires that the evolution shall be Acadian in its results. It is to be hoped indeed that country sweets shall not lose their delights; that the farmer himself may find in his surroundings spiritual and mental ambrosia. But what is wanted, and what is rapidly coming, is the breaking down of those barriers which have so long differentiated country from urban life; the extinction of that social ostracism which has been the farmer's fate; the obliteration of that line which for many a youth has marked the bounds of opportunity: in fact, the creation of a rural society whose advantages, rewards, prerogatives, chances for service, means of culture, and pleasures are representative of the best and sanest life that the accumulated wisdom of the ages can prescribe for mankind.
All farmers may be divided into three classes. There is the "old" farmer, there is the "new" farmer, and there is the "mossback." The old farmer represents the ancient régime. The new farmer is the modern business agriculturist. The mossback is a mediaeval survival. The old farmer was in his day a new farmer; he was "up with the times," as the times then were. The new farmer is merely the worthy son of a noble sire; he is the modern embodiment of the old farmer's progressiveness. The mossback is the man who tries to use the old methods under the new conditions; he is not "up" with the present times, but "back" with the old times. Though he lives and moves in the present, he really has his being in the past.
The old farmer is the man who conquered the American continent. His axe struck the crown from the monarchs of the wood, and the fertile farms of Ohio are the kingdom he created. He broke the sod of the rich prairies, and the tasseling cornfields of Iowa tell the story of his deeds.He hitched his plow to the sun, and his westward lengthening furrows fill the world's granary.
The new farmer has his largest conquests yet to make. But he has put his faith in the strong arm of science; he has at his hand the commercial mechanism of a world of business. He believes he will win because he is in league with the ongoing forces of our civilization.
The mossback cannot win, because he prefers a flintlock to a Mauser. He has his eyes upon the ground, and uses snails instead of stars for horses.
The old farmer was a pioneer, and he had all the courage, enterprise, and resourcefulness of the pioneer. He was virile, above all things else. He owned and controlled everything in sight. He was a state-builder. Half a century ago, in the Middle West, the strong men and the influential families were largely farmers. Even professional men owned and managed farms, frequently living upon them. The smell of the soil sweetened musty law books, deodorized the doctor's den, and floated as incense above the church altars.
The new farmer lives in a day when the nation is not purely an agricultural nation, but is also a manufacturing and a trading nation. Hebelongs no longer to the dominant class, so far as commercial and social and political influence are concerned. But none of these things move him. For he realizes that out of this seeming decline of agriculture grow his best opportunities. He discards pioneer methods because pioneering is not now an effective art.
The mossback sees perhaps clearly enough these changes, but he does not understand their meaning, nor does he know how to meet them. He is dazzled by the romantic halo of the good old times, dumfounded by the electric energy of the present, discouraged and distracted by the pressure of forces that crush his hopes and stifle his strength.
Economically, the old farmer was not a business man, but a barterer. The rule of barter still survives in the country grocery where butter and eggs are traded for sugar and salt. The old farmer was industrially self-sufficient. He did not farm on a commercial basis. He raised apples for eating and for cider, not for market—there was no apple market. He had very little ready money, he bought and sold few products. He traded. Even his grain, which afterward became the farmer's great cash crop, was raised in small quantities and ground at the nearestmill—not for export, but for a return migration to the family flour-barrel.
The new farmer has always existed—because he is the old farmer growing. He has kept pace with our industrial evolution. When the régime of barter passed away, he ceased to barter. When the world's market became a fact, he raised wheat for the world's market. As agriculture became a business, he became a business man. As agricultural science began to contribute to the art of farming, he studied applied science. As industrial education developed, he founded and patronized institutions for agricultural education. As alertness and enterprise began to be indispensable in commercial activity, he grew alert and enterprising.
The mossback is the man who has either misread the signs of the times, or who has not possessed the speed demanded in the two-minute class. He is the old farmer gone to seed. He tries to fit the old methods to the new régime.
But it is not sufficient to picture the new farmer. You must explain him. What is it that makes the new farmer? Who is he? What are his tools? In the first place, you cannot explain the new farmer unless you know theold farmer. You cannot have the new farmer unless you also have the mossback. The new farmer is a comparative person, as it were. You have to define him in terms of the mossback. The contrast is not between the old farmer and the new, for that is merely a question of relative conditions in different epochs of time. The contrast is between the new farmer and the mossback, for that is a question of men and of their relative efficiency as members of the industrial order. Then, of course, you must observe the individual traits that characterize the new farmer, such as keenness, business instinct, readiness to adopt new methods, and, in fact, all the qualities that make a man a success today in any calling. For the new farmer, in respect to his personal qualities, is not a sport, a phenomenon. He does not stand out as a distinct and peculiar specimen. He is a successful American citizen who grows corn instead of making steel rails.
But you have not yet explained the new farmer. These personal traits do not explain him. It may be possible to explain an individual and his success by calling attention to his characteristics, and yet you cannot completely analyze him and his career unless youunderstand the conditions under which he works—the industrial and social environment. Much less can you explain a class of people by describing their personal characteristics. You must reach out into the great current of life that is about them, and discern the direction and power of that current.
Now, the conditions that tend to make the new farmer possible may be grouped in an old-fashioned way under two heads. In the old scientific phrases the two forces that make the new farmer are the "struggle for life" and "environment," or, to use other words, competition and opportunity.
Competition has pressed severely upon the farmer, competition at home and competition from other countries. At one time the heart of the wheat-growing industry of this country was near Rochester, N. Y., in the Genesee Valley; but the canal and the railway soon made possible the occupation of the great granary of the west. A multitude of ambitious young men soon took possession of that granary, and the flour-mills were moved from Rochester to Minneapolis. This is an old story, but the same forces are still at work. There has been developed a world-market. The sheep of the Australian bush havebecome competitors of the flocks that feed upon the green Vermont mountains and the Ohio hills. The plains of Argentina grow wheat for London. Russia, Siberia, and India pour a constant stream of golden grain into the industrial centers of Western Europe, and the price of American wheat is fixed in London. These forces have produced still another kind of competition; namely, specialization among farmers. Localities particularly adapted to special crops are becoming centers where skill and intelligence bring the industry to its height. The truck-farming of the South Atlantic region, the fruit growing of western Michigan, the butter factories of Wisconsin and Minnesota, have crowded almost to suffocation the small market-gardener of the northern town, the man with a dozen peach trees, and the farmer who keeps two cows and trades the surplus butter for calico. These things have absolutely forced progress upon the farmer. It is indeed a "struggle for life." Out of it comes the "survival of the fittest," and the fittest is the new farmer.
But along with competition has come opportunity. Indeed, out of these very facts that have made competition so strenuous spring themost marvelous opportunities for the progressive farmer. Specialization brings out the best that there is in the locality and the man. It gives a chance to apply science to farming. Our transportation system permits the peach growers of Grand Rapids to place their crops at a profit in the markets of Buffalo and Pittsburg; the rich orchards and vineyards of Southern California find their chief outlet in the cities of the manufacturing Northeast—three thousand miles away. During the forty years, from 1860, the exports of wheat from this country increased from four million bushels annually to one hundred and forty million bushels; of corn, from three and one-third million bushels to one hundred and seventy-five million bushels; of beef products, from twenty million pounds to three hundred and seventy million pounds; of pork products, from ninety-eight million pounds to seventeen hundred million pounds. And not only do the grain and stock farmers find this outlet for their surplus products, but we are beginning to ship abroad high-grade fruit and first-class dairy products in considerable quantities. Low rates of freight, modern methods of refrigeration, express freight trains, fast freight steamers—the whole machinery of thecommercial and financial world are at the service of the new farmer. Science, also, has found a world of work in ministering to the needs of agriculture, and in a hundred different ways the new farmer finds helps that have sprung up from the broadcast sowing of the hand of science.
But perhaps even more remarkable opportunities come to the new farmer in those social agencies that tend to remove the isolation of the country; that assist in educating the farmer broadly; that give farmers as a class more influence in legislature and congress, and that, in fine, make rural life more worth the living. The new farmer cannot be explained until one is somewhat familiar with the character of these rural social agencies. They have already been enumerated and classified in a previous chapter; they will be more fully described in subsequent chapters.
It must not be supposed that every successful farmer is necessarily a supporter of all of these social agencies. He may be a prosperous farmer just because he is good at the art of farming, or because he is a keen business man. But more and more he is coming to see that these things are opportunities that he cannotafford to disregard. Indeed, some of these institutions are largely the creation of the new farmer himself. He is using them as tools to fashion a better rural social structure.
But they also fashion him. They serve to explain him, in great part. Competition inspires the farmer to his best efforts. The opportunity offered by these new and growing advantages gives him the implements wherewith to make his rightful niche in the social and industrial system.
It would be erroneous to suppose that the new farmer is arara avis. He is not. The spirit pervading the ranks of farmers is rapidly changing. We have been in a state of transition in agriculture. But the farther shore has been reached and the bridge is possible. The army of rural advancement is being recruited with great rapidity. The advance guard is more than a body of scouts, it is an effective brigade.
I want also to make a plea for the mossback. He must not be condemned utterly. Remember that competition among farmers has been intense; that rural environment breeds conservatism. Remember also that the farmer cannot change his methods as rapidly as can some other business men. Remember, too, thatthere is comparatively small chance for speculation in agriculture; that large aggregates of capital cannot be collected for farming, and consequently, that the approved means for securing immense wealth, great industrial advancement, and huge enterprises are nearly absent in agriculture. Remember that the voices calling from the city deplete the country of many good farmers as well as of many poor ones. Moreover, there are many men on farms who perhaps don't care for farming, but who for some reason cannot get away. On the farm a man need not starve; he can make a livelihood. Doubtless this simple fact is responsible for a multitude of mossbacks. They can live without strenuous endeavor. Possibly a good many of us are strenuous because we are pushed into it. So I have a good deal of sympathy for the mossback, and a mild sort of scorn for some of his critics, who probably could not do any better than he is doing if they essayed the gentle art of agriculture. I also have sympathy for the mossback particularly because he is the man that needs attention. The new farmer takes the initiative. He patronizes these opportunities that we have been talking about. But the mossback, because he is discouraged, or because he isignorant, or perhaps merely because he is conservative, takes little interest in these things. About one farmer in ten belongs to some sort of farmers' association. Thousands of farmers do not take an agricultural paper, and perhaps millions of them have not read an agricultural book. Right here comes in another fact. Every "new" farmer when full grown competes with every mossback. The educated farmer makes it still harder for the ignorant farmer to progress.
The future of the American farmer is one of the most pregnant social problems with which we have to deal. There is indeed an issue involved in the success of the new farmer that is still more fundamental than any yet mentioned. The old farmer had a social standing that made him essentially a middle-class man. He was a landholder, he was independent, he was successful. He was the typical American citizen. The old farmer was father to the best blood of America. His sons and his sons' sons have answered to the roll call of our country's warriors, statesmen, writers, captains of industry.
Can the new farmer maintain the same relative social status? And if he can, is he to be an aristocrat, a landlord, a captain of industry, and to bear rule over the mossback? And isthe tribe of mossbacks destined to increase and become a caste of permanent tenants or peasants? Is the future American farmer to be the typical new farmer of the present, or are we traveling toward a social condition in which the tillers of the soil will be underlings? Is there coming a time when the "man with the hoe" will be the true picture of the American farmer, with a low standard of living, without ideals, without a chance for progress?
We must eliminate the mossback. It is to be done largely by education and by co-operation. There must be a campaign for rural progress. There must be a union of the country school teacher, of the agricultural college professor, of the rural pastor, of the country editor, with the farmers themselves, for the production of an increased crop of new farmers. Anything that makes farm life more worth living, anything that banishes rural isolation, anything that dignifies the business of farming and makes it more prosperous, anything that broadens the farmer's horizon, anything that gives him a greater grasp of the rural movement, anything that makes him a better citizen, a better business man, or a betterman, means the passing of the mossback.
The question of questions that the college student asks himself is, What am I going to be? The surface query is, What am I going todo? But in his heart of hearts he ponders the deeper questions: What may I become in real intellectual and moral worth? How large a man, measured by the divine standards, will it be possible for me to grow into?
These are the great questions because growth is the great end of life. That is what we are here for, to grow. To develop all our talents, all our possibilities, to increase our native powers of body, mind, and soul—this is life. It is important that we have a vocation. We must do something, and do it well. But the real end is not in working at a profession but in developing our abilities. Our symmetrical growth is the measure of our success as human beings.
As the student looks out over the ocean of life and scans the horizon for signs of the wise course for him to take, he should decide whetherthe particular mode of life that now appeals to him will yield the greatest possible measure of growth. He must consult his tastes, his talents, his opportunities, his training. And the test question is, Will this line of work yield me the growth, the culture, I desire?
But what are the elements that yield culture to an individual? Using culture in a very broad sense as a synonym for growth, we may say that the things contributing most to the culture of the average person are his work, his leisure, and his service to others. We may now try to answer the question we started with, as it presents itself to many a student in the agricultural colleges of our country. Will agriculture as a business, will the farm life and environment, contribute to the growth which I desire for myself? Can I extract culture from the corn lot?
Let us first see if the work or vocation of farming gives culture. My answer would be that there is scarcely an occupation to be named that requires broader knowledge, more accurate observation, or the exercise of better judgment than does modern farming. The farmer deals with the application of many sciences. He must be an alert business man. He requires executive talent of no mean order. The study of hisoccupation in its wider phases leads him into direct contact with political economy, social movements, and problems of government. The questions confronting him as a farmer relate themselves to the leading realms of human knowledge and experience. I speak of course of the progressive farmer, who makes the best use of his opportunities. He can hardly hope to become immensely wealthy, but he can maintain that modest standard of living that usually is the lot of our most useful and cultured people and that ministers as a rule most fully to the ideal family life. The truly modern farmer cannot help growing.
There is much hard work on the farm. Yet on the whole there is fully as much leisure as in most other occupations. There is time to read, and books are today so easily accessible that living in the country is no bar to the bookshelf. Better than time to read is time to think. The farmer has always been a man who pondered things in his heart. He has had a chance to meditate. No culture is sound except it has been bought by much thinking; all else is veneer. Farm life gives in good measure this time to think. But it is in nature that the farmer finds or may find his most fertile field for culture.Here he is at home. Here he may revel if he will. Here he may find the sources of mind-liberation and of soul-emancipation. He may be the envy of everyone who dwells in the city because he lives so near to nature's heart. Bird and flower, sky and tree, rock and running brook speak to him a various language. He may read God's classics, listen to the music of divine harmonies, and roam the picture galleries of the Eternal. So too in his dealings with his kind, he lives close to men and women who are frank, virile, direct, clean, independent. The culture coming from such associations is above price. One learns to pierce all shams, to honor essential manhood, to keep pure the fountains of sympathy, ambition, and love. Thus on the farm one may find full opportunity for that second means of culture, leisure.
Another powerful agency for cultivating the human soul is service. Indeed, service is the dynamic of life. To be of use is the ambition that best stimulates real growth. Culture is the end of life, the spirit of service the motive power. So it is of this I would speak perhaps most fully, not only because it is a vital means of culture, but because it is also peculiarly the privilege and duty of the college man and the collegewoman. For let it be said that if any college student secures a diploma of any degree without having been seized upon by a high ambition to be of some use in the work of helping humanity forward, then have that person's years of study been in vain, and his teaching also vain. The college man comes not to be ministered unto but to minister. He has been poorly taught if he leaves college with no thought but for his material success. He must have had a vision of service, his lips touched with a coal from the altar of social usefulness, and his heart cultivated to respond to the call for any need he can supply, "Here am I, send me."
I think it may safely be said that there is no field which offers better chance for leadership to the average college man or woman than does the farm. Take, for instance, politics. The majority of our states are agricultural states. The majority of our counties are agricultural counties. The agricultural vote is the determining factor in a large proportion of our elections. It follows inevitably that honest, strong farmers with the talent for leadership and the ability to handle themselves in competition with other political leaders have a marvelously fine chance for useful service.
So is it in educational questions. Nowhere may the citizen come into closer contact with the educational problems of the day than through service on the rural school board. If he brings to this position trained intelligence, some acquaintance with educational questions, and a desire to keep in touch with the advancement of the times, he can do for his community a service that can hardly be imagined.
Take another field—that of organization for farmers, constituting a problem of great significance. As yet this class of people is relatively unorganized, but the movement is growing and the need of well-trained leadership is vital. I cannot speak too strongly of the chance here offered for active, intelligent, masterful men and women in being of use as leaders and officials in the Grange and other farmers' organizations.
So with the church question. One of the reasons for the slow progress of the country church is the conservatism in the pews as well as in the pulpit. The ardent member of the Young Men's Christian Association in college may feel that, in the country, there will be no outlet for his ambition to be of religious use to his fellow-men. This is a mistake. The work of the Young Men's Christian Association itselfin the country districts is just beginning, and promises large growth. Wider service in the church, a community federation or union of different churches, the work of young people's societies and of the Sunday schools—all these afford abundant opportunity for the man or the woman qualified and willing.
There are other lines of usefulness. Although I have stated that on the farm the opportunities for personal culture are great, it must be confessed that these opportunities are not fully utilized by the average farmer's family. Here then is a very wide field, especially for the farmer's wife. For if she is a cultivated college woman, she can through the woman's club, the Grange, the school, the nature-study club, the traveling library, and in scores of ways exercise an influence for good on the community that may have far greater results than would come from her efforts if expended in the average city. The farm home too has latent capacities that are yet to be developed. It ought to be the ideal home and, in many cases, it is. But there are not enough of such ideal homes in the country. No college woman with a desire to do her full service in the world ought for an instant to despise the chance for service as it exists on the farm.
All of these opportunities so briefly suggested might be enlarged upon almost indefinitely, but the mere mention of them emphasizes the call for this service and this leadership. Nowhere are leaders more needed than in the country. The country has been robbed of many of its strongest and best. The city and perhaps the nation are gainers: but the country has suffered. From one point of view, the future of our farming communities depends upon the quality of leadership that we are to find there during the next generation.
So we come back to our question, Can the farm be made to yield to the man or woman, residing upon it and making a living from it, that measure of growth and all-round development that the ambitious person wishes to attain? And our answer is, Yes. In its work, its leisure, its field for service, it may minister to sound culture. If you love the life and work of the farm, do not hesitate to choose that occupation for fear of becoming narrow or stunted. You can live there the full, free life. You can grow to your full stature there. You can get culture from the corn lot.
FOOTNOTE:[2]Addressed to students in an agricultural college.
[2]Addressed to students in an agricultural college.
[2]Addressed to students in an agricultural college.
The two generations living subsequent to the year 1875 are to be witnesses of an era in American history that will be known as the age of industrial education. These years are to be the boundaries of a period when the general principle that every individual shall be properly trained for his or her occupation in life is to receive its practical application. Future generations will doubtless extend marvelously the limits to which the principle can be pushed in its ministrations to human endeavor, but we are in the time when the principle is first to receive general acceptation and is to be regarded as a fundamentally necessary fact of human progress.
We are already "witnesses of the light." Even within the memory of young men has it come to pass that the old wine skins of the old educational institutions have been filled with the new wine of science and of knowledge and training applied to the industries and businesses of life.
Agriculture has perhaps been slow to feel the current of the new wine as it flows from the wine press of fast-growing industrial and social need. But the least hopeful of us can, I am sure, already see signs of a vast awakening. The farm, as well as the pulpit, the bar, the schoolroom, the shop, the counting-room, is breathing in the new idea that knowledge and training can be made of use to every man.
This awakening is due not merely to the desire of agriculturists to be in fashion, nor to the efforts of agricultural pedagogues, but to a real need. It is common knowledge that in America we have not farmed, but have mined the soil. We have "skimmed the cream" of fertility, and passed on to conquer new areas of virgin soil. This pioneer farming has required hard work, enterprise, courage, and all the noble traits of character that have made our American pioneers famous and that have within a century subdued a wilderness to civilization. But the farmer of today faces a new situation. The fertile lands are fairly well occupied. The old lands are depleted. These old lands must be handled skilfully if they are to produce profitably. They must be used because there is little else to use, and because they are near the bestmarkets. Meantime, scientists have been studying the deep things of nature, and have been learning the laws that govern soil, plant, and animal. Thus we have the farmer's need met by the theorist's discoveries. The farmer, to avail himself of these discoveries must know their meaning and be able to apply the general principle to the specific case. This means agricultural education.
Then again, the consumption of high-class products increases at least as rapidly as does our wealth. The demand comes not alone from the rich, but from the middle classes of our cities. Skilled artisans are large consumers of choice meats, fruits, and vegetables. To grow these high-grade products means skill, and skill means training, and training in the large sense means education.
The need for agricultural education, is, then, a real and vital one. It is pressed upon us by economic and social conditions. It is in line with the movement of the age.
In discussing agricultural education, we must not forget that the farmer is also a citizen and a man. He should be an intelligent citizen, and should therefore study questions of government. As a man, he should be the equal of other menof his same social rank. He therefore needs a good general education. He is more than mere farmer. While as farmer he must connect his business with its environment and out of his surroundings gain sound culture; while he should know nature, not only as its master, but as its friend; he should also be in sympathy with all that makes modern civilization worth while. And even as mere farmer, he finds himself face to face with grave social problems. He must not only produce but he must sell, and his selling powers are governed by conditions of the market, by transportation facilities and practices, and are affected by the laws of the land. Hence he must be a student of these problems and must know the broad phases of agriculture and its relations to other industries.
No intelligent man doubts the need of agricultural education. Let us, then, say a word about the kind of education demanded. This question is settled very largely by the discussion we have just had about the need of this education. First of all, this education will give a fair mastery of the principles that govern proper soil management and plant and animal growth. This is fundamental. The farmer is dealing with natural laws, and he must know in themtheir applications. He cannot be blind to their dominance. They insist on recognition. They are jealous masters and good servants. Nature serves only the man who obeys her. To obey he must know. The truth shall make him free. How to secure larger crops of better products at less cost and still maintain soil fertility, is the first demand of modern agriculture, and its solution depends in large measure upon education.
But education does not stop here. The farmer is also a seller as well as a producer. He is a business man. He is manager of an industry. He is an investor of capital. So the question will arise, Can he get any help from education in the handling of the business phases of his farm? He certainly can. You cannot teach a man business in the sense of supplying him with good sense, business judgment, ability to handle men, and so on. But you can study the general conditions that govern the business of agriculture, and you can report the results of your researches to the practical farmer; and he, if he is willing, may learn much that will be helpful to him in deciding the many difficult questions that confront him as a business man. Farm administration in its largest sense will,then, be a most important phase of agricultural education.
It is quite possible for the individual farmer to succeed admirably if he is equipped with a sound training in the principles of production and in farm management. But there are still larger questions that farmers as a class must meet if agriculture is to have its full success and if the farmer himself is to occupy the social position he ought to have. Agriculture is an industry among industries. Farmers are a class among classes. As an industry, agriculture has relations to other industries. It is subject to economic laws. It involves something more than growing and selling. The nature of the market, railroad rates, effects of the tariff and of taxation, are questions vital to agriculture. So with the farmers socially considered. Their opportunities for social life, their school facilities, their church privileges, their associations and organizations—all these are important matters. So agricultural education will not fail to call attention to these larger questions.
The well-educated farmer will, then, be trained in three lines of thought—first, that which deals with the growth of products; second, that which deals with the selling ofproducts; and third, that which deals with agriculture as an industry and farmers as a class of people.
We may next discuss as briefly as possible the methods by which agricultural education may be advanced. We may not consider all of them, but rather attend only to some of those agencies that seem of peculiar interest just at this time.
There is one underlying requisite of successful agricultural education that is all-important. It is faith in agriculture. Any man to succeed grandly must have absolute faith in his business. So the farmer must believe in agriculture. Agriculture cannot attain its highest rank unless the men engaged in it believe in it most profoundly. They must believe that a man can make money in farming. They must love the farm life and surroundings. They must believe that the best days of agriculture are ahead of us, not behind us. They must believe that men can find in agriculture a chance to use brains and to develop talents and to utilize education. Agricultural education rests on this faith. Give us a state filled with such farmers and we can guarantee a strong system of agricultural education. But the seeds of education cannot grow in a soil barren of the richness of sentiment for andconfidence in the farm. Our agricultural colleges have been criticized because they have graduated so few farmers. But the fault is not all with the colleges. The farmers also are to blame. They have not had faith enough in the farm to advise young men to go to college to prepare for farming. They admit the value of education for the law, for building railroads, but not for farming. This must be changed, is being changed. The last ten years have seen a revolution in this respect, and the result is a mighty increase in agricultural educational interest.
One powerful means of agricultural education is the farmers' organization or association. All our dairy, horticultural, poultry, and live-stock associations are great educators. So of an organization like the Grange, its chief work is education. It brings mind in contact with mind; it gives chance for discussion and interchange of ideas; it trains in power of expression; it teaches the virtue of co-operation. Farmers blunder when they fail to encourage organization. Sometimes, out of foolish notions of independence, they neglect to unite their forces. They are utterly blind to their best interests when they do so. They shouldencourage organization if for no other reason than for the splendid educational advantages that flow from it.
However, our chief interest is, perhaps, in those institutions that are formed purposely and especially for agricultural education and which are usually supported out of public funds. There are three great fields of endeavor in which these institutions are working. The first step is to know—to know the truth. So in agriculture we must know. Know what? Know how nature works. So the man of science studies the soil and finds out what plant-food it contains, how the water acts in it, what heat and air do, and the inter-relation of all these elements. He studies the plant and its habits and tries to discover how it grows and how it can be improved for man's use. He studies the animal and endeavors to learn what are the best foods for it and what laws govern its adaptation to human food. He studies climate and tries to find out what plants and animals are most appropriate to different locations. He studies injurious insects and diseases and devises remedies for them. He discovers, experiments. So we have research as the first term in agricultural education. The institutions of research are ourexperiment stations and United States Department of Agriculture. Their work may be likened to the plowing of the field. They strive to know how nature works, and how man can make use of her laws in the growing of plant and animal.
The next thing is to teach. The farmer too must know. Knowledge confined to the scientist has little practical use. It is the farmer who can use it. Moreover, new teachers must be trained, new experimenters equipped, and leaders in every direction prepared. So we have agricultural colleges and schools. If experiment is to be likened to plowing, the work of the schools may be compared to sowing and cultivating.
Agricultural colleges have been in existence in America almost fifty years. Their careers have been both inspiring and disappointing. They have had to train their own teachers, create a body of knowledge, break down the bars of educational prejudice. This work has taken time. The results justify the time and effort. For today agricultural education is becoming organized, the subjects of study are well planned, and competent men are teaching and experimenting. The disappointment is twofold. They have notgraduated as many farmers as they should have. This is due not wholly to wrong notions in the colleges. It is, as suggested before, partly due to the lack of faith in agriculture on the part of the farmers themselves. But the colleges are in part to blame. Many of them have not been in close touch with the farmers. They have often been out of sympathy with the interests of the farmers. They have too frequently been servile imitators of the traditions of the older colleges, instead of striking out boldly on a line of original and helpful work for agriculture. Today, however, we see a rapid change going on in most of our agricultural colleges. They are seeking to help solve the farmers' difficulties. They are training young men for farm life. The farmers are responding to this new interest and are beginning to have great confidence in the colleges.
It is sometimes said that most farmers who get an agricultural education cannot be trained in the colleges. Doubtless this is true. Probably a very small proportion even of educated farmers can or will graduate from a full course in an agricultural college. Many will do so. There is no reason why a large proportion of the graduates of our college courses in agriculture may not go to the farm. I haveno sympathy with the idea that those courses are too elaborate for those young men who want to farm. It must be recognized, however, that even if our agricultural colleges shall graduate hundreds and thousands every year who return to the farm, it still leaves the great majority of farmers untouched in an educational way unless other means are devised. But there are other means at hand.
We have first the agricultural school. The typical agricultural high school gives a course of two or three years, offering work of high-school grade in mathematics and English, with about half the time devoted to teaching in agriculture. Many young men want to get an insight into the principles of modern agriculture, but cannot afford time or money for college work. This course fits their need. A splendid school of this design has been in successful operation in Minnesota for more than a dozen years, and has nearly five hundred students. In Wisconsin there are two county schools of agriculture for a similar purpose. Other schools could be named.
The agricultural colleges also offer shorter courses of college grade, perhaps of two years. These are very practical and useful courses. Not only that, but nearly all the colleges givespecial winter courses of from ten days to fourteen weeks. These are patronized by thousands of young men. So in many ways are the colleges meeting the need. We all agree that it is desirable for a young man to take a full college course, even in agriculture. But it is better to have a half-loaf than no bread. Yes, better to have aslicethan no bread. The colleges furnish the whole loaf, the half-loaf, and the slice. And young men are nourished by all.
One reason why agricultural education has not made more rapid progress is because the children of the country schools have been taught in such a manner as to lead them to think that there is no chance for brains in farming. Both their home influence and their school atmosphere have, in most cases perhaps, been working against their choice of agriculture as a vocation. It therefore becomes important that these children shall be so taught that they can see the opportunity in farming. They must, moreover, be so trained that they will be nature students; for the farmer above all men must be a nature student. So we see the need of introducing into our rural schools nature-study for the young pupils and elementary agriculture for the older ones. This is being successfullyaccomplished in many cases, and is arousing the greatest interest and meeting with gratifying success. We shall within ten years have a new generation of young men and women ready for college who have had their eyes opened as never before to the beauties of nature and to the fascination there is in the farmer's task of using nature for his own advantage.
But when we have increased the attendance at our agricultural colleges tenfold; when we have hundreds of agricultural schools teaching thousands of our youth the fundamentals of agriculture; when each rural school in our broad land is instilling into the minds of children the nearness and beauty of nature and is teaching the young eyes to see and the young ears to hear what God hath wrought in his many works of land and sea and sky, in soil, and plant, and living animal—even when that happy day shall dawn will we find multitudes of men and women on our farms still untouched by agricultural education. These people must be reached. The mere fact that their school days are forever behind them is no reason why they shall not receive somewhat of the inspiration and guidance that flow from the schools. So we have an imperative demand for the extension ofagricultural teaching out from the schools to the farm community. The school thus not only sheds its light upon those who are within its gates, but sets out on the beautiful errand of carrying this same light into every farm home in the land. This work is being done today by thousands of farmers' institutes, by demonstrations in spraying and in many other similar lines, by home-study courses and correspondence courses, by co-operative experiments, by the distribution of leaflets and bulletins, by lectures at farmers' gatherings, by traveling schools of dairying. These methods and others like them are being invoked for the purpose of bringing to the farmers in their homes and neighborhoods some of the benefits that the colleges and schools bestow upon their pupils.
We have seen something of the need of agricultural education, of the kind of education required, and of the means used to secure it. Does not this discussion at least show the supreme importance of the question? Will not the farmers rally themselves to and league themselves with the men who are trying to forward the best interests of the farm? Shall we not all work together for the betterment both of the farm and of the farmer?
A decade and a half ago, there was a vigorous campaign for the establishment of university extension throughout the United States. Generally speaking the campaign was a losing one—with but a few successes amid general failure. But many years before this agitation, there was begun a work among farmers, which in form and spirit was university extension, and which has constantly developed until it is today one of the most potent among the forces making for rural progress. This work has been done chiefly by what are now universally known as farmers' institutes.
The typical farmers' institute is a meeting usually lasting two days, held for the purpose of discussing subjects that relate to the interests of farmers, more particularly those of a practical character. As a rule, the speakers to whom set topics are assigned are composed of two classes: the first class is made up of experts, either professors or experimenters in agricultural colleges and similar institutions, orpractical farmers who have made such a study of, and such a conspicuous success in, some branch of agriculture that they may well be called experts; the second class comprises farmers living in the locality in which the institute is held. The experts are expected to understand general principles or methods, and the local speakers the conditions peculiar to the neighborhood.
The meeting usually begins in the forenoon and ends with the afternoon session of the second day—five sessions being held. As a rule, not over two or three separate topics are treated in any one session, and in a well-planned institute topics of a like character are grouped together, so that there may be a fruit session, a dairy session, etc. Each topic is commonly introduced by a talk or paper of twenty to forty minutes' length. This is followed by a general discussion in which those in the audience are invited to ask questions of the speaker relevant to the topic under consideration, or to express opinions and give experiences of their own.
This is a rough outline of the average farmers' institute, but of course there are many variations. There are one-day meetings and there are three-day meetings, and in recent years theone-day meetings have grown in favor; in some states local speakers take little part; in some institutes a question-box is a very prominent feature, in others it is omitted altogether; in some cases the evening programme is made up of educational topics, or of home topics, or is even arranged largely for amusement; in other instances the evening session is omitted. In most institutes women are recognized through programme topics of special interest to them.
It is not important to trace the early history of the farmers' institute movement, and indeed it is not very easy to say precisely when and where the modern institute originated. Farmers' meetings of various sorts were held early in the century. As far back as 1853 the secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Agriculture recommended that farmers' institutes be made an established means of agricultural education. By 1871 Illinois and Iowa held meetings called farmers' institutes, itinerant in character, and designed to call together both experts and farmers, but neither state kept up the work systematically. Both Vermont and New Hampshire have held institutes annually since 1871, though they did not bear that name in the early years. Michigan has a unique record, havingheld regularly, since 1876, annual farmers' institutes, "so known and designated," which always have contained practically the essential features of the present-day institute. The Michigan legislature passed a law in 1861 providing for "lectures to others than students of the Agricultural College," and has made biennial appropriations for institutes since 1877. Ohio, in 1881, extended the institute idea to include every county in the state.
More important than the origin of the farmers' institute movement is the present status. Practically every state and territory in the Union carries on institutes under some form or other. In somewhat more than half the states, the authorities of the land-grant colleges have charge of the work. In the other states, the board of agriculture or the department of agriculture has control.
In 1905-6 there were held 3,500 institutes, in 45 states and territories, with a total reported attendance of 1,300,000 people, at a cost of nearly $350,000. The work is largely supported by the state treasuries, some of the states showing a most generous spirit. The annual state appropriations for the work in leading institute states are as follows: Pennsylvania, $20,500;New York, $20,000; Minnesota, $18,000; Illinois, $17,150; Ohio, $16,747; Wisconsin, $12,000; Indiana, $10,000. In these states practically every county has annually from one to five institutes.
Institutes in no two states are managed in the same way, but the system has fitted itself to local notions and perhaps to local needs. A rough division may be made—those states which have some form of central control and those which do not have. Even among states having a central management are found all degrees of centralization; Wisconsin and Ohio may be taken as the extremes. In Wisconsin the director of institutes, who is an employee of the university, has practically complete charge of the institutes. He assigns the places where the meetings are to be held, basing his decision upon the location of former institutes in the various counties, upon the eagerness which the neighborhoods seem to manifest toward securing the institute, etc. He arranges the programme for each meeting, suiting the topics and speakers to local needs, prepares advertising materials, and sets the dates of the meeting. A local correspondent looks after a proper hall for meeting, distributes the advertising posters, and bears acertain responsibility for the success of the institute. Meetings are arranged in series, and a corps of two or three lecturers is sent by the director upon a week's tour. One of these lecturers is called a conductor. He usually presides over the institute and keeps the discussions in proper channels. Practice makes him an expert. The state lecturers do most of the talking. Local speakers do not bear any large share in the programme. Questions are freely asked, however.
Ohio has an institute society in each county, and this society largely controls its own institutes. The secretary of the State Board of Agriculture, who has charge of the system, assigns dates and speakers to each institute. After that everything is in the hands of the local society, which chooses the topics to be presented by the state speakers, advertises the meeting, and the society president acts as presiding officer. Local speakers usually occupy half the time.
It does not seem as if either of these plans in its entirety were ideal—the one an extreme of centralized control, the other an extreme of local management. Yet in practice both plans work well. No states in the Union have betterinstitutes nor better results from institute work than Wisconsin and Ohio. Skill, intelligence, and tact count for more than particular institutions.
New York may be said to follow the Wisconsin plan. Minnesota goes even a step farther; instead of holding several series of institutes simultaneously in different parts of the state, attended by different "crews," the whole corps of state speakers attends every institute. No set programmes are arranged. Everything depends upon local conditions. This system is expensive, but under present guidance very effective. Michigan, Indiana, and Pennsylvania have adopted systems which are a mean between the plan of centralization and the plan of localization. Illinois has a plan admirably designed to encourage local interest, while providing for central management.
Few other states have carried institute work so far as the states already named, and in some cases there seems to be a prejudice against a well-centralized and fully-developed system—a feeling that each locality may be self-sufficing in institute work. But this attitude is wearing away, for experience serves to demonstrate fully the value of system. The danger ofcentralization is bureaucracy; but in institute work, if the management fails to provide for local needs, and to furnish acceptable speakers, vigorous protests soon correct the aberration.
It has been stated that in America we have no educationalsystem—that spontaneity is the dominant feature of American education. This is certainly true of farmers' institutes. So it has transpired that numerous special features have come in to use in various states—features of value and interest. It may be worth while to suggest some of the more characteristic of these features, without attempting an exact category.
Formerly the only way in which women were recognized at the institutes was by home and social topics on the programme, though women have always attended the meetings freely. Some years ago Minnesota and Wisconsin added women speakers to their list of state speakers, and in the case of Wisconsin, at least, held a separate session for women, simultaneously with one or two sessions of the regular institute, with demonstration lectures in cooking as the chief features. Michigan holds "women's sections" in connection with institutes, but general topics are taken up. In Ontario separate women's institutes have been organized. In Illinois aState Association of Domestic Science has grown out of the institutes. Thus institute work has broadened to the advantage of farm women.
At many institutes there are exhibits of farm and domestic products—a sort of midwinter fair. Oftentimes the merchants of the town in which the institute is held offer premiums as an inducement to the farmers.
In Wisconsin an educational feature of much value takes the form of stock-judging—usually at the regular autumn fairs. The judges give their reasons for their decisions, thus emphasizing the qualities that go to make up a perfect or desirable animal.
In several states there is held an annual state institute called a "round-up," "closing institute," or the like. It is intended to be a largely attended and representative state convention of agriculturists, for the purpose of discussing topics of general interest to men and women from the farms. These meetings are frequently very large and enthusiastic gatherings.
The county institute society is a part of the organization in some instances very well developed. It gives permanency to the work and arouses local interest and pride.
The development of men and women intosuitable state speakers is an interesting phase. As a rule the most acceptable speakers are men who have made a success in some branch of farming, and who also have cultivated the gift of clear and simple expression. Not a few of these men become adepts in public speaking and achieve a reputation outside of their own states. In several states there is held a "normal institute"—an autumn meeting lasting a week or two weeks, and bringing together, usually at the state college of agriculture, the men who are to give the lectures at the institutes of the winter to follow. The object of the gathering is to bring the lecturers into close contact with the latest things in agricultural science, and to train them for more effective work.
A few years ago the United States Department of Agriculture employed an experienced institute director to give all his time to the study and promotion of farmers' institutes. This incident is suggestive of the important place which institutes have secured in the work for better farming.
The results of a generation of institute work are not easy to summarize. It is safe to make a broad generalization by asserting that thisform of agricultural education has contributed in a remarkable degree to better farming. The best methods of farming have been advocated from the institute platform. Agricultural college professors, and agricultural experimenters have talked of the relations of science to practical farming. The farmers have come to depend upon the institute as a means for gaining up-to-date information.
And if institutes have informed, they have also done what is still better—they have inspired. They have gone into many a dormant farm community and awakened the whole neighborhood to a quicker life. They have started discussions, set men thinking, brought in a breath of fresh air. They have given to many a farmer an opportunity for self-development as a ready speaker.
Other educational agencies, such as the agricultural colleges and experiment stations, have profited by institutes. No one thing has done more than the institutes to popularize agricultural education, to stir up interest in the colleges, to make the farmers feel in touch with the scientists.
Farmers' institutes are a phase of university extension, and it is as a part of the extensionmovement that they are bound to increase in value and importance. Reading-courses and correspondence-courses are growing factors in this extension movement, but the power of the spoken word is guarantee that the farmers' institute cannot be superseded in fact. And it is worth noting again, that while university extension has not been the success in this country which its friends of a decade ago fondly prophesied for it, its humbler cousin—agricultural college extension—has been a conspicuous success, and is acquiring a constantly increasing power among the educational agencies that are trying to deal with the farm problem.