RURAL SOCIALIZING AGENCIES

[6]Gillette, "Constructive Rural Sociology," p. 42.

[7]Parmelee, "The Science of Human Behavior," p. 290.

[8]Royce, "Outlines of Psychology," p. 21.

[9]Ward, "Applied Sociology," pp. 169-98.

[10]Flexner, "Prostitution in Europe," p. 72.

[11]Ellis, "Studies in the Psychology of Sex," VI, 293.

The individualism of rural thinking has been universally recognized. It is this attitude of mind that has produced much of the strength of rural character and much of the weakness of rural society. That the closer contact of town and country and the rapidly developing urban mind require more social thinking upon the part of country people few can doubt. There are some people, however, who fear this socializing influence of urban thought in the country, because they believe that it will antagonize rural individualism in such a way as to destroy the fundamental distinction between rural and urban ethics.

As a matter of fact, however, people in these days obtain their sense of personal responsibility from their confidence in their social function, and this confidence is not developed by an excessiveindividualism. The farmer, like men in other occupations, needs to make realization of his social service the corner stone of his moral life. This world war has made every thinking person realize the unrivaled function that the farmer performs socially, and it is fortunate for the future of rural welfare that what has always been true is at last finding adequate appreciation. It is the farmer himself who has most suffered in the recent past from not realizing the value of his social contribution. The widespread thoughtless indifference to his social service has, at least in the oldest portions of the nation, given him an irritating social skepticism and driven him into a dissatisfying industrial isolation. We naturally antagonize what we do not share and the farmer when he has thought himself little recognized as a social agent has had his doubts about the justice and sanity of public opinion.

It was doubly unfortunate that this situation developed at a time whenreligion was called upon to make heroic changes in order to adapt itself to the needs of modern life. Formerly religion gave rural thinking a larger outlook than individual experience by providing an outstretching theological environment. Rather lately this environment has ceased to satisfy the needs of rural people. Religion has in the city become social in a way of which our fathers did not dream, and in the country it must find its vigor also by introducing the believer to his social environment in such a way as to emphasize social function, as much as personal inward obligations formerly were emphasized by theology.

We need, therefore, for the best interests of the country that the native sense of personal importance characteristic of rural thinking should be brought into contact with social need, so that it may function socially. Out of this movement will issue most happily a great social optimism in the country and individualism will lose nothing by being adjusted to modernsocial needs. The chief agencies that socialize rural thinking are the church, the school, the press, secret societies and clubs, and the industry of farming itself.

The effective rural church as a socializing agency has a commanding position. Even the inefficient church has more social influence than appears on the surface. In a considerable part of the area of social inspiration the Church has an absolute monopoly. The rural church, however, has been until recently too well content with an individual ethics that modern life has made obsolete. In our day healthy-minded religion is forcing men and women to see their duties in social forms. It is becoming clear that one cannot save his own soul in full degree if attention is concentrated upon personal salvation. The country ministry is beginning to feel the changing order of things and there is an increasing attempt to build up a socializing institution in the Church. Such a radical readjustment is not easily made, nor can we expect it to be a completesuccess. Ministers are puzzled how to work out the new program; they even at times become discouraged as a result of disappointments. Impatience may be made the cause of defeat in such a reform. It is much to ask of our generation that it turn about face morally. Yet the dangerous thing is sure to happen when no effort is made to influence the Church to assume a moral social function in the country. We think as a people in social terms and the church that remains backward in assuming social duties is bound to be repudiated by the program of vital Christianity. The church that is struggling to maintain the old-time individualism is driven first to isolation and later to social hostility and moral stagnation. The rural church will move on more smoothly if it can obtain better-trained leadership. The minister is not yet given an adequate social view in some of our theological seminaries, great as have been the changes in theological preparation during the last twenty years. It is natural enough thatthe more socially minded of our preachers should rapidly drift cityward, for in the urban centers they can obtain the sympathy and opportunities that they crave.

Sectarianism narrows the social viewpoint. It is true that it brings one church into fellowship with outside churches of the same denomination, but it makes for moral division rather than unity and magnifies differences rather than similarities in the community life. Sectarianism is very largely maintained by churches in small places. Where church competition is severe, and especially when church support is dwindling, the Church advertises its distinctiveness and enters upon a life-and-death grapple with its neighbor institutions. Of course this develops sectarianism and forbids the wide outlook in its teaching that is required of a successful socializing agency.

There is positive need of church federation if the rural church is to do its social service properly. The resources of a country community cannot be scatteredif social enterprises are to be successfully carried on. These undertakings are of necessity expensive in proportion to community resources, both in equipment and leadership. Therefore, the religious work must be hampered in its social contribution unless there shall be a greater concentration of religious resources. This fact appears clearly with reference to work carried on by the rural church by means of a community-center or parish house. No form of service promises more for country welfare, but seldom can it be continued successfully year after year in a rural town or small village unless there is a concentration of the religious resources of the community.

Fortunately we have seen of late a vigorous effort to improve the rural schools and to make them more modern. The endeavor has been made to bring the schools more intimately into contact with their environment. This movement naturally tends to increase the effectiveness of the schools as a socializing agencybecause the viewpoint that guides the effort is one that brings into prominence the social relations of the schools. This progress is hampered here and there by a considerable inertia for which individualistic thinking is largely responsible. There are also positive limitations imposed upon the expansion of the school's social service due to the physical environment. Distance, the scattering of homes, and the small populations restrict the work of the most efficient consolidated school at some points where it tries to perform the largest possible social service.

As a matter of fact, however, the urban school is far less social than it wishes to be. Under the spell of our own recent educational experience it is difficult for us, who have to do with educating institutions, to see the radical changes that modern life demands of the schools and colleges. We add socializing efforts without removing the individual viewpoint that has gotten into school studies and professional habits. The failures of the city schools are lessapparent because the atmosphere of urban life is itself socializing. The walk or ride to the city school is likely to make some contribution of socializing character even to the unobservant child. It is still true that the education outside of the schools, the spontaneous instruction provided by the children themselves in addition to the publicly constructed school, impresses itself most upon the childish mind. The urban school is greatly strengthened in its social function by this by-product of school attendance. It is aided also by the fact that the public is more critical respecting its service. In the country we find the reverse. The by-products of education deepen character, but on the whole tend toward individualism. The community also is not asking for a large social contribution from the schools, and this loss of public pressure toward social effort is in the country very serious.

The consolidated school, modern in equipment and in spirit, adds greatly to the effectiveness of rural education as asocializing agency. In spite of limitations inherent in rural environment, the consolidated school is by instinct social, and its community service is therefore being enriched by its successful experience. It will increasingly relate its work to the needs of the community and to the demands of the home and will add to its socializing function by assuming new lines of service. Large as is its present contribution, in the near future it will be much greater. The consolidated school has enabled rural education to assume new undertakings and this is most fortunate, for the old type of rural school has about reached the limit of its social service.

It is safe to assume that neither in the city nor country are we likely to overestimate the influence of the press. The daily and weekly paper have a wide circulation among rural people and furnish a source of penetrating and persistent social influence all the more significant because the readers are little conscious ofwhat they receive from their reading. Into the most remote places the paper goes and is received with avidity. The appeal is to human interest and is based upon the entire hierarchy of instincts. No agency more successfully socializes. It affords a mental connection with distant places that is a good antidote for the physical loneliness in the country, which many living there experience. It prevents the stagnation that comes from concentration upon the interests of the day and neighborhood, for it draws the attention of the reader out into the world of business and affairs. It keeps country people from a too great class character by charging the rural mind with the effects of modern civilization and of necessity brings rural and urban people into a more sympathetic relation. If it invites some to the city—as it certainly does—it also makes the country a more satisfying and safer environment for those who remain. Fortunately the papers are themselves sensitive to modern thoughtand therefore attempt propaganda of a constructive social character. If the appeal to human interests causes these educational efforts to err respecting scientific accuracy, it is nevertheless true that in spite of this fault the articles have a beneficent effect in protecting the country from the excessive conservatism that isolation tends to bring. The newspaper is the great gregarious meeting place of the minds of men and therefore it serves to develop mental association in a most intense manner. The weekly paper also serves a large constituency in the country and on the whole probably socializes in a more profound degree than the daily. The weekly permits the rural reader to associate with the leaders of popular thought and builds up that enthusiastic conviction which leadership always obtains. The leaders of the country districts in this manner come into fellowship with the thinking of urban men of influence. The farm paper is not to be overlooked in a survey of the influence of the pressupon country life. Its little value as a professional journal because of its unscientific character is in many instances a great handicap upon the progress of agriculture, but even when these papers fail in having real worth for the industry of farming they do extend professional fellowship by encouraging harmony and enthusiasm. And as a whole the value of these papers, aside from their socializing influence, is increasing as they are more and more influenced by scientific investigation.

Secret societies and benevolent orders have a large following among rural and village people. They are popular because they perform a very valuable social service. No institution carries on its social function with greater success, and for this reason it is rather strange that rural sociology has not studied these organizations more seriously. Because they afford fellowship, recreation, and comradeship, their appeal is very great indeed to those who feel the hardships of physicalisolation. These societies do not limit their usefulness to community welfare in a narrow sense, for they tie their following to similar organizations in other localities and make possible an exchange of interests that socializes in a marked degree. It is true that each serves a limited number of people in the community, but the cleavage is along natural lines and does not provoke feuds or neighborhood hostility.

The one great danger that they create in some small places is the fact that there are so many of them that they capture nearly every evening of the week and make it difficult for any community-wide enterprise to obtain a free evening to bring all the people together. It is also true that some of them fail to take a serious interest in the community welfare, being content merely to enjoy the fellowship that they make possible.

This latter criticism cannot be justly made respecting the rural society strongest in the eastern section of thecountry—the Patrons of Husbandry. This society, popularly known as the Grange, affords contact with outside organizations, but it also takes a very practical and sane interest in its own community. No movement has done more to conserve the best of country life; no organization has in the country maintained so sincere a democracy. Unlike most secret societies, it has made a family appeal and has interested husband, wife, and children. It has taken a constructive attitude toward legislation of importance to farmers, and rural life has certainly become greatly indebted to its efficient socializing efforts.

The enterprise most successfully socializing country life is the business of farming itself. The farmer, who once maintained so large a degree of economic independence, has of necessity become a man of commerce, as seriously concerned and nearly as consciously interested in business conditions as the city merchant. This situation is one of the burdens of farming. The farmer must both produce and sellhis crop. Lack of skill in either undertaking may mean failure.

Economic pressure forces attention. The pain penalty, the product of bad adjustment to the demands of the occasion, commands respect. The farmer feels this pressure of economic conditions just as any other man of business. He is not free to isolate himself and enjoy the economic security of fifty years ago. Any indifference that he may assume toward the business world is likely to bring him economic punishment which will teach him his economic dependence as no argument could. It follows that the farmer's attention is driven from family and neighborhood affairs out into the modern world with all its complexities. He thinks in social terms, because from experience he has learned his social dependence in matters that concern the pocketbook. With painful evidences of his economic interrelations in mind, he tends to become tolerant regarding movements that attempt to socialize his community life. Herealizes that the independence of his fathers has gone not to return and that his happiness as well as his prosperity depend upon his opportunity to become well established in social relations.

No experience in the business of farming is so impressive as that of membership in a cooperative enterprise. Whether the undertaking fails or succeeds, it certainly teaches the member the meaning of social interrelations. Often it fails because the mental and moral preparation for successful working together is lacking. This is not strange, for rural life in the past has done little to build up a social viewpoint and the strain placed upon individual purposes in any cooperative effort is necessarily great. Cooperation is never so easy as it sounds in theory, but economic conditions are making it necessary in many rural localities if farming is to continue a profitable industry. Under pressure the farmers will develop the ability to cooperate. In this they are like other people, for cooperation seldom comesuntil circumstances press hard upon people who hopelessly try to meet individually conditions that can be successfully coped with only by a cooperative attack. We therefore must not pass hasty judgment upon the failures in cooperative efforts among country people. All such experiences have some part in the better socializing of rural thinking.

Without opposition to those who are placing emphasis upon other lines of rural advance, as social workers, we must keep ever before rural leadership the enormous importance that social conditions have for the prosperity, wholesomeness, sanity, and happiness of rural life. Every agency that has social value for country life must realize to the fullest degree possible its socializing functions if it covets for itself fundamental social service.

What will be the influence of this world war upon rural life? This question is constantly before the mind of thoughtful people who are lovers of country life and interested in rural prosperity. Of course it is much too soon to answer this question in detail or with certainty. It is true, nevertheless, that already we can see evidences of the influence the present war is having upon the conditions of country life. It is also possible, perhaps, to discover the direction in which other influences, born of the war, are likely to have significance for rural welfare. It is certainly most unreasonable for anyone to suppose that this terrible war of the nations will not greatly influence country conditions and country people.

One result is not a matter for argument. The great war has forced public attentionupon the problems of food production, and, as a consequence, the social importance of the work of country people has been finally revealed, so that even the least thoughtful has some realization of the indispensable industrial contribution rendered to society by those who till the soil.

Has this nation ever before had such a serious realization of the social importance of the agricultural industry? The prosperity of agriculture has become the nation's concern, because these war days are revealing how certainly farming is the basic enterprise of industry. And our experiences are those of the entire civilized world. It is not at all strange, therefore, that thoughtful students and public administrators the world over are earnestly studying how to foster the farming interests, not only during the war but also after it is over.

Before August, 1914, there were few people who realized that, under the conditions of modern welfare, one question of greatest national importance is hownearly the nation at conflict can produce the food necessary for its existence. It is unlikely that the nations will soon forget this lesson that they have been taught by the ordeals of this world war. Agricultural dependence is for any nation a very serious military weakness.

Nations that cannot feed themselves must first of all use their military power to make it possible to import the needed food. This, of course, is a military handicap, for it removes military resources from the strategic points for defence or attack, that lines of communication with other nations that are furnishing food may be kept open. The more nearly nations are able to obtain from their own cultivated land sufficient food stuff, the more effectively they can use their army and navy in strategic military service.

It does not seem possible that this great lesson can be forgotten by our generation. Perhaps this is the largest result that the war will yield within the field of rural interests. National leadersas never before will consider every possible method by which farming can be made profitable, satisfying, and socially appreciated. This policy will be undertaken not merely for the sake of the farmer, but also as a means of providing national safety.

The war already has disclosed the tendency of national policy to regard the uses made of farming land as a matter for social concern. In England, France, and Germany especially we have had, as a result of war conditions, public control exercised regarding the uses made of private land. Certain crops have been outlawed. Others have been stimulated and encouraged by the action of the government. It has proved wise to establish this control over the uses made of productive land. Of course, war has furnished the motive and made possible the success of this practical public control of land resources. Indeed, before the war, no one could have imagined that England, for example, could have beenled to so great a public control of the uses of productive land as has already resulted from the war.

Already we find some people advocating that the government continue after the war to exercise a degree of such control over the uses made of private lands and it attempt to conserve national safety by stimulating the production of staple crops. At least for a time it will be difficult to win converts to the proposition that the public has no interest in what people who own productive land may do with their property. By education, if not by legislation, the wiser nations are likely to attempt consciously to direct production for social welfare. Probably some nations will not hesitate to subsidize the cultivation of certain crops in order to keep agriculture in a condition of preparedness for the trials of war.

Whenever the war ceases, one of the problems that will immediately face all the warring nations will be how best to get great numbers of soldiers and sailorsback into productive industry. The task will be the largest of its kind in all human history. We find in Europe those who advocate that the government should place many of the soldiers and sailors back upon the land by making practicable a system of small farms. To some this appears the wise way to help the partially disabled soldiers and sailors. The problem of men suffering from nervous instability deserves special attention. Many who have seen service will return with slight nervous difficulties that will handicap them in certain forms of urban industry. Their best protection from serious disorders will be in many cases opportunity to engage in agriculture. At this point the question of competition with experienced farmers who suffer from no disability naturally arises. Experience may prove that the government can wisely give financial assistance to those placed on the land, by government aid in one form or another, to protect them in their undertakings.

It has been pointed out by European students that the small farm is not likely to increase much the production of the staple crops, since in Europe garden truck is more easily handled by those who cultivate small farms. Because of this fact, the effort of the government to encourage the growing of staple crops for purposes of national safety is likely to be independent of the movement to place soldiers and sailors on the land. In Europe the success of the small farms appears to be conditioned largely by the ability of the land owners to cooperate. Stress will have to be placed upon the development of the spirit of cooperation, and this, fortunately, will have a social influence in addition to its economic advantages. How much governments may do to encourage the building up of efficient cooperative enterprises is more or less problematical, but the experience of Denmark teaches that more can be done than has been done by most governments.

It is interesting to notice how the war has stimulated cooperation in Europe. None of the countries illustrates this more than Russia. January 1, 1914, there were about 10,000,000 members of cooperative societies or about 5.8 per cent of the total population. In 1916 this membership had increased to 15,000,000. Counting in the families of the cooperators, it is estimated that 67,500,000 people in Russia are interested in cooperative enterprises, or about 39 per cent of the population. We find that development of cooperation in consumption has been in Russia directly related to the pressure for food due to war conditions. The large majority of Russian cooperative societies are rural.[12]Other countries, notably England and France, have also felt the influence of the war in increasing the development of cooperation.

In America we are still too distant from the bitter consequences of war to feelthe need of planning for the care of the crippled and nervously injured soldiers. Imagination will not allow us to picture the returning of the soldiers as a problem. Our remarkable success in getting the soldiers back into industry after the Civil War gives us a strong sense of security when we do consider the matter. Probably if the war continues for several years our problem after this war will be more serious than it was in 1865. In any case we shall have a considerable number of those who, because of physical or nervous injuries, will require public assistance of a constructive character. If such men can be made fully or even partly self-supporting by being placed on land it will help both them and the food productiveness of the nation. Of course, this form of public aid, like every other method of giving assistance, has its political and economic dangers. The prosperity of other farmers must not be disturbed. So many interests are involved that the entire problem demands time for seriousdiscussion, so that we may not be troubled by hasty, half-baked legislation.

Anyone who has visited an army cantonment has felt the gregarious atmosphere of army service. For a few men this is the most trying experience connected with the service. Others find in it the supreme satisfaction. Every soldier is influenced by it more or less. What will it mean to the soldier who has come into the army from the small country place? We know, as a result of what social workers among the soldiers tell us, that the country boy is often very sensitive to this enormous change from an isolated rural neighborhood to the closest contact possible in a community which is literally a great city. By necessity the recruits from the country are forced into the conditions of city life, into an environment that is more gregarious than any normal urban center experiences. What result is this likely to have upon the future social needs of the men from rural districts? It is to be expected that many of them will not becontent again in the country. They will have developed cravings that the country-life environment cannot satisfy. For this reason it is not likely that the placing of former soldiers and sailors on the land will have in any country all the success desired. Much will depend upon who are selected to go into the country. On the other hand, it is safe to predict that this war will add momentum to the city-drift of our population and increase the number of those who form the mobile class of rural laborers.

[12]International Review of Agricultural Economics, August, 1917.

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