An Abandoned Church, Daviess County, Indiana.
A Hunt for Fundamental Causes
Depletion added to isolation, and later tending toward degeneracy, is what makes the rural problem acute. It is the growth of the city which has made the problem serious. If we would discover a constructive policy for handling this problem successfully by making country life worth while, and better able to compete with the city, then we must find out why the boys and girls go to the big towns and why theirparents rent the farm and move into the village.
For two generations there has been a mighty life-current toward the cities, sweeping off the farm many of the brightest boys and most ambitious girls in all the country-side, whom the country could ill afford to spare. The city needed many of them doubtless; but not all, for it has not used all of them well. Everywhere the country has suffered from the loss of them. Why did they go? It is evident that a larger proportion of the brightest country boys and girls must be kept on the farms if the rural communities are to hold their own and the new rural civilization really have a chance to develop as it should.
The Unfortunate Urbanizing of Rural Life
As a rule the wholeeducationaltrend is toward the city. The teachers of rural schools are mostly from the larger villages and towns where they have caught the city fever, and they infect the children. Even in the lower grades the stories of city life begin early to allure the country children, and with a subtle suggestion the echoes of the distant city’s surging life come with all the power of the Arabian Nights tales. Early visits to the enchanted land of busy streets and wonderful stores and factories, the circus and the theater, deepen the impression, and the fascination grows.
In proportion to the nearness to the city, there has been a distinct urbanizing of rural life. To a degree this has been well. It has raised the standard of comfort in country homes and has had a distinct influence in favor of real culture and a higher plane ofliving. But the impression has come to prevail widely that the city is the source of all that is interesting, profitable and worth while, until many country folks have really come to think meanly of themselves and their surroundings, taking the superficial city estimate of rural values as the true one.
A real slavery to city fashions has been growing insidiously in the country. So far as this has affected the facial adornments of the farmer, it has made for progress; but as seen in the adoption of unhospitable vertical city architecture for country homes,—an insult to broad acres which suggest home-like horizontals,—and the wearing by the women of cheap imitations of the flaunting finery of returning “cityfied” stenographers, it is surely an abomination pure and simple.
Bulky catalogs of mail-order houses, alluringly illustrated, have added to the craze, and the new furnishings of many rural homes resemble the tinsel trappings of cheap city flats, while substantial heirlooms of real taste and dignity are relegated to the attic. Fine rural discrimination as to the appropriate and the artistic is fast crumbling before the all-convincing argument, “It isthe thingnow in the city.” To be sure there is much the country may well learn from the city, the finer phases of real culture, the cultivation of social graces in place of rustic bashfulness and boorish manners, and the saving element of industrial cooperation; but let these gains not be bought by surrendering rural self-respect or compromising rural sincerity, or losing the wholesome ruggedness of the country character. The new rural civilizationmust be indigenous to the soil, not a mere urbanizing veneer. Only so can it foster genuine community pride and loyalty to its own environment. But herein is the heart of our problem.
Why Country Boys and Girls Leave the Farm
The mere summary of reasons alleged by many individuals will be sufficient for our purpose, without enlarging upon them. Many of these were obtained by Director L. H. Bailey of Cornell, the master student of this problem. Countless boys have fled from the farm because they found the work monotonous, laborious and uncongenial, the hours long, the work unorganized and apparently unrewarding, the father or employer hard, exacting and unfeeling. Many of them with experience only with old-fashioned methods, are sure that farming does not pay, that there is no money in the business compared with city employments, that the farmer cannot control prices, is forced to buy high and sell low, is handicapped by big mortgages, high taxes, and pressing creditors. It is both encouraging and suggestive that many country boys, with a real love for rural life, but feeling that farming requires a great deal of capital, are planning “to farm someday, after making enough money in some other business.”
The phantom of farm drudgery haunts many boys. They feel that the work is too hard in old age, and that it cannot even be relieved sufficiently by machinery, that it is not intellectual enough and furthermore leaves a man too tired at night to enjoy reading orsocial opportunities. The work of farming seems to them quite unscientific and too dependent upon luck and chance and the fickle whims of the weather.
Farm life is shunned by many boys and girls because they say it is too narrow and confining, lacking in freedom, social advantages, activities and pleasures, which the city offers in infinite variety. They see their mother overworked and growing old before her time, getting along with few comforts or conveniences, a patient, uncomplaining drudge, living in social isolation, except for uncultivated neighbors who gossip incessantly.
Many ambitious young people see little future on the farm. They feel that the farmer never can be famous in the outside world and that people have a low regard for him. In their village high school they have caught visions of high ideals; but they fail to discover high ideals in farm life and feel that high and noble achievement is impossible there, that the farmer cannot serve humanity in any large way and can attain little political influence or personal power.
With an adolescent craving for excitement, “something doing all the time,” they are famished in the quiet open country and are irresistibly drawn to the high-geared city life, bizarre, spectacular, noisy, full of variety in sights, sounds, experiences, pleasures, comradeships, like a living vaudeville; and offering freedom from restraint in a life of easy incognito, with more time for recreation and “doing as you please.” But with all the attractiveness of city life for the boys and girls, as compared with the simplicity of the rural home, the main pull cityward is probably“the job.” They follow what they think is the easiest road to making a living, fancying that great prizes await them in the business life of the town.
Superficial and unreasonable as most of these alleged reasons are to-day, we must study them as genuine symptoms of a serious problem. If country life is to develop a permanently satisfying opportunity for the farm boys and girls, these conditions must be met. Isolation and drudgery must be somehow conquered. The business of farming must be made more profitable, until clerking in the city cannot stand the competition. The social and recreative side of rural life must be developed. The rural community must be socialized and the country school must really fit for rural life. The lot of the farm mothers and daughters must be made easier and happier. Scientific farming must worthily appeal to the boys as a genuine profession, not a mere matter of luck with the weather, and the farm boy must no longer be treated as a slave but a partner in the firm.[8]
The Folly of Exploiting the Country Boy
An eminent Western lawyer addressing a rural life conference in Missouri a few weeks ago explained thus his leaving the farm: “When I was a boy onthe farm we were compelled to rise about 4 o’clock every morning. From the time we got on our clothes until 7:30 we fed the live stock and milked the cows. Then breakfast. After breakfast, we worked in the field until 11:30, when, after spending at least a half hour caring for the teams we went to dinner. We went back to work at 1 o’clock and remained in the field until 7:30 o’clock. After quitting the fields we did chores until 8:30 or 9 o’clock, and then we were advised to go to bed right away so that we would be able to do a good day’s work on the morrow.”
No wonder the boy rebelled! This story harks back to the days when a father owned his son’s labor until the boy was twenty-one, and could either use the boy on his own farm or have him “bound out” for a term of years for the father’s personal profit. Such harsh tactlessness is seldom found today; but little of it will be found in the new rural civilization.[9]Country boys must not be exploited if we expect them to stay in the country as community builders. Many of them will gladly stay if given a real life chance.
The City’s Dependence upon the Country
The country is the natural source of supply for the nation. The city has never yet been self-sustaining. It has always drawn its raw materials and its population from the open country. The country must continue to produce the food, the hardiest young men andwomen, and much of the idealism and best leadership of the nation. All of these have proven to be indigenous to country life. Our civilization is fundamentally rural, and the rural problem is a national problem, equally vital to the city and the whole country. The cities should remember that they have a vast deal at stake in the welfare of the rural districts.
The country for centuries got along fairly well without the city, and could continue to do so; but the city could not live a month without the country! The great railway strike last fall in England revealed the fact that Birminghamhad but a week’s food supply. A serious famine threatened, and this forced a speedy settlement. Meanwhile food could not be brought to the city except in small quantities, and the people of Birmingham learned in a striking way their utter dependence upon the country as their source of supply. The philosophy of one of the sages of China, uttered ages ago, is still profoundly true: “The well-being of a people is like a tree; agriculture is its root, manufactures and commerce are its branches and its life; but if the root be injured, the leaves fall, the branches break away and the tree dies.”[10]
That far-seeing Irish leader, Sir Horace Plunkett, after a searching study of American conditions, is inclined to think that our great prosperous cities are blundering seriously in not concerning themselves more earnestly with the rural problem: “Has it been sufficiently considered how far the moral and physical health of the modern city depends upon the constantinflux of fresh blood from the country, which has ever been the source from which the town draws its best citizenship? You cannot keep on indefinitely skimming the pan and have equally good milk left. Sooner or later, if the balance of trade in this human traffic be not adjusted, the raw material out of which urban society is made will be seriously deteriorated, and the symptoms of national degeneracy will be properly charged against those who neglected to foresee the evil and treat the cause.... The people of every state are largely bred in rural districts, and the physical and moral well-being of those districts must eventually influence the quality of the whole people.”[11]
V. A Challenge to Faith.
The seriousness of our problem is sufficiently clear. Our consideration in this chapter has been confined mainly to the personal factors. Certain important social and institutional factors will be further considered in Chapter V under Country Life Deficiencies. With all its serious difficulties and discouragements the rural problem is a splendid challenge to faith. There are many with the narrow city outlook who despair of the rural problem and consider that country life is doomed. There are still others who have faith in the country town and village but have lost their faith in the open country as an abiding place for rural homes. Before giving such people of little faith further hearing, we must voice the testimony of a host of country lovers who have a great and enduring faithin the country as the best place for breeding men, the most natural arena for developing character, the most favorable place for happy homes, and, for a splendid host of country boys and girls the most challenging opportunity for a life of service.
Test Questions on Chapter I1.—How would you define the Rural Problem?2.—Illustrate how the growth of the city has affected the rural problem.3.—Explain the terms rural, urban, city, town, and village.4.—What misleading comparisons have been made between city and country conditions?5.—In what six states has the rural population, as a whole, shown a net loss in the last ten years?6.—To what extent has rural America grown in population the past half century?7.—Describe the symptoms of a decadent village.8.—Under what conditions do you find a village improving even when losing population?9.—Discuss carefully the comparative degeneracy of the city and the country.10.—Describe some of the stages of rural degeneracy.11.—What signs of rural degeneracy have come under your personal observation and how do you account for the conditions?12.—What evidences have you seen of the “urbanizing” of rural life, and what do you think about it?13.—Why do country boys and girls leave the farm and go to the city?14.—What must be done to make country life worth while, so that a fair share of the boys and girls may be expected to stay there?15.—How do you think a farmer ought to treat his boys?16.—To what extent is the city dependent upon the country.17.—Why do so many prosperous farmers rent their farms and give up country life?18.—How does the village problem differ from the problem of the open country?19.—Do you believe the open country will be permanently occupied by American homes, or must we develop a hamlet system, as in Europe and Asia?20.—To what extent have you faith in the ultimate solution of the country problem?
Test Questions on Chapter I
1.—How would you define the Rural Problem?
2.—Illustrate how the growth of the city has affected the rural problem.
3.—Explain the terms rural, urban, city, town, and village.
4.—What misleading comparisons have been made between city and country conditions?
5.—In what six states has the rural population, as a whole, shown a net loss in the last ten years?
6.—To what extent has rural America grown in population the past half century?
7.—Describe the symptoms of a decadent village.
8.—Under what conditions do you find a village improving even when losing population?
9.—Discuss carefully the comparative degeneracy of the city and the country.
10.—Describe some of the stages of rural degeneracy.
11.—What signs of rural degeneracy have come under your personal observation and how do you account for the conditions?
12.—What evidences have you seen of the “urbanizing” of rural life, and what do you think about it?
13.—Why do country boys and girls leave the farm and go to the city?
14.—What must be done to make country life worth while, so that a fair share of the boys and girls may be expected to stay there?
15.—How do you think a farmer ought to treat his boys?
16.—To what extent is the city dependent upon the country.
17.—Why do so many prosperous farmers rent their farms and give up country life?
18.—How does the village problem differ from the problem of the open country?
19.—Do you believe the open country will be permanently occupied by American homes, or must we develop a hamlet system, as in Europe and Asia?
20.—To what extent have you faith in the ultimate solution of the country problem?
I. Signs of a New Faith in Rural Life.
THE FARM: BEST HOME OF THE FAMILY: MAIN SOURCE OF NATIONAL WEALTH: FOUNDATION OF CIVILIZED SOCIETY: THE NATURAL PROVIDENCE
THE FARM: BEST HOME OF THE FAMILY: MAIN SOURCE OF NATIONAL WEALTH: FOUNDATION OF CIVILIZED SOCIETY: THE NATURAL PROVIDENCE
This tribute to the fundamental value of rural life is a part of the classic inscription, cut in the marble over the massive entrances, on the new union railroad station at Washington, D. C. Its calm, clear faith is reassuring. It reminds us that there is unquestionably an abiding optimism in this matter of country life. It suggests, that in spite of rural depletion and decadence here and there, country life is so essential to our national welfare it will permanently maintain itself. So long as there is a city civilization to be fed and clothed, there must always be a rural civilization to produce the raw materials. The question is, will it be aChristiancivilization?
Our opening chapter has made it clear, that if the rural problem is to be handled constructively and successfully, rural life must be made permanently satisfying and worth while. It must not only be attractive enough to retaina fair shareof the boys and girls, but also rich enough in opportunity for self-expression,development and service to warrant their investing a life-time there without regrets.
The writer believes there are certain great attractions in country life and certain drawbacks and disadvantages in city life which, if fairly considered by the country boy, would help him to appreciate the privilege of living in the country. It is certainly true that there is a strong and growing sentiment in the city favoring rural life. Many city people are longing for the freedom of the open country and would be glad of the chance to move out on the land for their own sake as well as for the sake of their children.
In this connection the most interesting fact is the new interest in country life opportunity which city boys and young men are manifesting. The discontented country boy who has come to seek his fortune in the city finds there the city boy anxious to fit himself for a successful life in the country! In view of the facts, the farm boy tired of the old farm ought to ponder well Fishin’ ’Zeke’s philosophy:
“Fish don’t bite just for the wishin’,Keep a pullin’!Change your bait and keep on fishin’;Keep a pullin’!Luck ain’t nailed to any spot;Men you envy, like as not,Envy you your job and lot!Keep a pullin’!”
In many agricultural colleges and state universities, we find an increasing proportion of studentscoming from the citiesfor training in the science of agricultureand the arts of rural life. This is a very significant and encouraging fact. It shows us that the tide has begun to turn. Rural life is coming to its own, for country life is beginning to be appreciated again after several decades of disfavor and neglect. Our purpose in this chapter is to discuss these matters in detail.
It is difficult to find a more comprehensive statement of the attractiveness of country life, in concrete terms, than this fine bit of rural optimism entitled The Country Boy’s Creed:
THE COUNTRY BOY’S CREED“I believe that the country which God made is more beautiful than the city which man made; that life out-of-doors and in touch with the earth is the natural life of man. I believe that work is work wherever I find it; but that work with Nature is more inspiring than work with the most intricate machinery. I believe that the dignity of labor depends not on what you do, but on how you do it; that opportunity comes to a boy on the farm as often as to a boy in the city; that life is larger and freer and happier on the farm than in the town; that my success depends not upon my location, but upon myself,—not upon my dreams, but upon what I actually do, not upon luck but upon pluck. I believe in working when you work and playing when you play, and in giving and demanding a square deal in every act of life.”[12]
THE COUNTRY BOY’S CREED
“I believe that the country which God made is more beautiful than the city which man made; that life out-of-doors and in touch with the earth is the natural life of man. I believe that work is work wherever I find it; but that work with Nature is more inspiring than work with the most intricate machinery. I believe that the dignity of labor depends not on what you do, but on how you do it; that opportunity comes to a boy on the farm as often as to a boy in the city; that life is larger and freer and happier on the farm than in the town; that my success depends not upon my location, but upon myself,—not upon my dreams, but upon what I actually do, not upon luck but upon pluck. I believe in working when you work and playing when you play, and in giving and demanding a square deal in every act of life.”[12]
There are many contented country boys in comfortable modern homes and prosperous rural communities,who heartily assent to this rural confession of faith. “For substance ofdoctrine” many a man would frankly accept it after a more or less disappointing life in the city whirl. It is not difficult to find men who really regret that they left the farm in young manhood, now that country life has so greatly increased in attractiveness. “Farm life has changed a great deal,” says one with a tone of regret, “since I left the farm twelve years ago. Machinery has been added, making the work easier; farming has become more scientific, giving scope to the man who does not wish to be a mere nobody. For the last few years there has been more money in farming.”
Every year now at Cornell University, some men change their course from the overcrowded engineering to the agricultural department. This confession of a late change of heart about country life comes from one of the engineers who apparently wishes he had done likewise: “When I entered the university and registered in mechanical engineering, I had the idea that a fellow had to get off the farm, as the saying goes, ‘to make something of himself in the world,’ and that a living could be made more easily, with more enjoyment, in another profession. But now, after seeing a little of the other side of the question, if I had the four years back again, agriculture would be my college course. As for country life being unattractive, I have always found it much the reverse. The best and happiest days of my life have been on the farm, and I cannot but wish that I were going back again when through with school work.”
City-bred Students in Agricultural Colleges
In reply to the question “Why are so many city boys studying agriculture?” a dean of a college of agriculture replied, “I think it is safe to say that a large number of city-bred boys are attracted to the agricultural colleges as a result ofthe general movement of our cities toward the country. The agitation which has caused the business man to look upon the rural community as more desirable than the city, leads him to send his son to an agricultural college in preference to other departments of the university.”
This city-to-country movement is naturally strongest where the country-to-city movement has long been developing. The Massachusetts State College reports only about 25% of its new students sons of farmers and 50% of its enrollment from the cities. Yet even in the rural state of North Carolina, with 86% in rural territory (under 2,500), the number of city boys studying agriculture in the state college is “large enough to make the fact striking.”
In the College of Agriculture of the University of Illinois, there are 756 students enrolled this year. Eighty-one of these came from Chicago and 257 from other cities and towns above $5,000; making 45% from urban centers.[13]
One-third of the agricultural students at the University of Missouri last year enrolled from cities of 8,000 or over, communities which formed 36% of the state’s population. In general it seems to be true that the proportion of city boys in the various agriculturalcolleges is approximately as large as the ratio of city population in the state; which indicates that city boys are almost as likely to seek technical training for country professions as the country boys are. In a few cases, as in Massachusetts, it is partly accounted for by the fact that the Agricultural College is the only state institution with free tuition. The breadth of the courses also draws many who do not plan for general farming but for specialized farming and the increasing variety of the modern rural professions. The facts clearly show that the city boys in state after state are seeing the vision of country life opportunity.
A study of the home addresses of American students at the New York State College of Agriculture, Cornell University, for a period of twelve years prior to 1907 shows 19% from large cities, 34% from small cities and towns, and 47% from rural communities under 2,000. The proportion of city students is evidently now increasing, as indicated by this year’s figures. Of the new students entering this year from within the state 57% came from cities of 5,000 or over, 51% of whom came from cities of 10,000 upwards. Making considerable allowance for the neglect to add “R. F. D.” in registration, it is still evident that the splendid equipment for country life leadership offered at Cornell is attracting more and more young men and women from the cities.
Reasons for this City-to-Country Movement
Two months ago the agricultural students at the University of Illinois who came from cities and larger towns were asked, “What were the considerationswhich led you to choose an agricultural course?” Over two hundred gave their answers in writing. Love of country life was the main reason mentioned by 131; dislike for the city, 22; the financial inducements, 62; and, land in the family, 36. Farming was stated as the ambition of 167, teaching 21, experiment station work 23, landscape gardening 6, and other rural professions 15.
In a similar referendum at Cornell the city students mentioned many reasons for choosing their life work in the country. Among them were cited the love of nature and farm life, the desire to live out of doors, love for growing things, and love for animals, the financial rewards of farming, its independence, its interesting character and the healthful life it makes possible. Other interesting reasons given will be cited later in this chapter.
II. The Privilege of Living in the Country.
Some City Life Drawbacks
Millions of people unquestionably live in the country from choice. They would not live in the city unless compelled to do so. A peculiarly amusing kind of provincialism is the attitude of the superficial city dweller who cannot understand why any one could possibly prefer to live in the country! Yet an unusually able college professor with a national reputation recently remarked that he could not conceive of anything which could induce him to live in the city.
With all the attractions of the city, it has serious drawbacks which are not found in the country. Ifcountry boys actually understood the conditions of the struggle into which they were entering in the city, more of them would stay on the farm. “I lived one year in the city; which was long enough,” writes a country boy. The severe nervous tension of city life, the high speed of both social life and industry and the tyranny to hours and close confinement in offices, banks and stores are particularly hard for the country bred. The many disadvantages of the wage-earner, slack work alternating with the cruel pace, occasional strikes or lockouts, and the impersonal character of the corporation employer, coupled with the fact often realized that in spite of the crowds there are “no neighbors” in the city, reminds the country-bred laborer of the truth of President Roosevelt’s words: “There is not in the cities the same sense of common underlying brotherliness which there is still in the country districts.”
A striking cartoon was recently published by thePaterson(N. J.)Guardianentitled “The City Problem.” It represented “Mr. Ruralite” in the foreground halting at the road which leads down to the city, while from the factory blocks by the river two colossal grimy hands are raised in warning, with the message,GO BACK! On one hand is writtenHIGH PRICES; on the otherPOOR HEALTH.
With the recent improvement in city sanitation, which has perceptibly lowered the death rate, the city is physically a safer place to live in than it used to be; but slum sections are still reeking with contagion, and through most of the city wilderness the smoke andgrime is perpetual and both pure air and clear sunshine are luxuries indeed. For most people the crowded city offers little attraction for a home. The heart of great cities has ceased to grow. The growing sections are the outlying wards and the suburbs, for obvious reasons. The moral dangers of the city where the saloon is usually entrenched in politics and vice is flagrantly tolerated if not actually protected help to explain the fact that a continuous procession of city families is seeking homes in suburban or rural towns where the perils surrounding their children are not so serious.
The Attractiveness of Country Life
It is evidently true, as Dean Bailey suggests, “Even in this epoch of hurried city-building, the love of the open country and of plain, quiet living still remains as a real and vital force.” The chance to live in the open air, to do out of door work and enjoy consequently a vigorous health, is a great boon which is coming to be more and more appreciated. “I intend to stick to farm life,” writes a Cornell agricultural student, “for I see nothing in the turmoil of city life to tempt me to leave the quiet, calm and nearness to nature with which we, as farmers, are surrounded. I also see the possibilities of just as great financial success on a farm as in any profession which my circumstances permit me to attain.” Another contented country boy writes, “I think the farm offers the best opportunity for the ideal home. I believe that farming is the farthest removed of any business from the blind struggleafter money, and that the farmer with a modest capital can be rich in independence, contentment and happiness.”
A variety of other significant reasons have been collected by Director Bailey from boys who are loyal to their country homes. Many speak of the profitableness of scientific farming, but the majority are thinking of other privileges in rural life which outweigh financial rewards, such as the fact that the farmer is really producing wealth first-hand and is serving the primary needs of society. “I expect to make a business of breeding live-stock. I like to work out of doors, where the sun shines and the wind blows, where I can look up from my work and not be obliged to look at a wall. I dislike to use a pen as a business. I want to make new things and create new wealth, not to collect to myself the money earned by others. I cannot feel the sympathy which makes me a part of nature, unless I can be nearer to it than office or university life allows. I like to create things. Had I been dexterous with my hands, I might have been an artist; but I have found that I can make use of as high ideals, use as much patience, and be of as much use in the world by modeling in flesh and bone as I can by modeling in marble.”
In spite of the common notion of the farm boys who shirk country life, there is a great attraction now in the fact that farming really requires brains of a high order, offers infinite opportunity for broad and deep study, a chance for developing technical skill and personal initiative in quite a variety of lines of work, all of which means a growing, broadeninglife and increasing self-respect and satisfaction.
The Partnership With Nature
Any briefest mention of the attractiveness of country life would be incomplete without reference to the nearness to nature and the privilege of her inspiring comradeship. Not only is the farmer’s sense of partnership with nature a mighty impulse which tends to make him an elemental man; but every dweller in the country with any fineness of perception cannot fail to respond to the subtle appeal of the beautiful in the natural life about him. As Washington Irving wrote, in describing rural life in England, “In rural occupation there is nothing mean and debasing. It leads a man forth among scenes of natural grandeur and beauty; it leaves him to the working of his own mind, operated upon by the purest and most elevating of external influences. Such a man may be simple and rough, but he cannot be vulgar.”
As young Bryant wrote among the beautiful Berkshire hills, “To him who in the love of nature holds communion with her visible forms, she speaks a various language.” Without an interpreter, sometimes the message to the soul is heard as in a foreign tongue; but the message is voiced again like the music of perennial springs, and others hear it with ear and heart, and it brings peace and comfort and God’s love. In his beautiful chapter on this topic Dr. W. L. Anderson writes: “By a subtle potency the rural environment comes to be not the obtrusive masses of earth, nor the monotonous acres of grass, nor the dazzling stress of endless flowers, nor the disturbing chatterof the birds; but instead of these, hills that speak of freedom, a sky that brings the infinite near, meadows verdant with beauty, air vocal with song. Beauty, sublimity, music, freedom, are in the soul.”[14]Surely the uplifting influence of nature is a wonderful gift to those who are fortunate enough to live in the country. It takes the petty and sordid out of life. It transfigures common things with beauty and fresh meaning, with the cycle of the seasons and ever freshness of the days. It brings to those who listen a quiet message of content.
Rural Sincerity and Real Neighborliness
Among the country privileges not often mentioned is the chance one has to live with real folks. There is a genuineness about country people that is not often found in crowded towns where conventionalities of life veneer even the ways of friends, and where custom dictates and fashion rules and the very breadth of social opportunity makes superficial people, flitting from friend to friend, not pausing to find the depths in the eye or the gold in the character.
With fine simplicity, sometimes with blunt speech to be sure, our rural friends pierce through the artificial and find us where we are; honoring only what is worthy, caring nothing for titles or baubles, slow to welcome or woo or even to approve; but quick to befriend when real need appears, and having once befriended, steady and true in friendship, awkward in expression, maybe, but true as steel. To live with such country folks is to know the joy of real neighbors.To work with them takes patience, honest effort to overcome inborn conservatism, and a brother’s sincere spirit; but when cooperation is once promised, your goal is gained. They will say what they mean. They will do as they say.
The Challenge of the Difficult in Rural Life
Since the invention of the sulky plow, the mowing machine and the riding harrow, et cetera, an American humorist remarked that farming is rapidly becoming a sedentary occupation! Drudgery has so largely been removed that it is probably true that there is no more “hack-work” or dull routine in agriculture than in other lines of business. But plenty of hard work remains the farmer’s task. There is enough of the difficult left to challenge the strong and to frighten the weakling, and in this very fact is a bit of rural optimism. It applies not merely to farming but to country life in general.
Our pioneer days certainly developed a sturdy race of men. They lived a strenuous life with plenty of hardship, toil and danger, but it put iron into the blood of their children and made wonderful physiques, clear intellects, strong characters. This heroic training nurtured a remarkable race of continent conquerors fitted for colossal tasks and undaunted by difficulties. The rise of great commonwealths, developing rapidly now into rich agricultural empires, has rewarded the pioneers’ faith and sacrifice.
All are thankful that the rigor of those heroic days is gone with the conquest of the wilderness. But few discern in the luxurious comfort of hyper-civilized lifea peculiar peril. Our fathers, with a fine scorn for the weather, braved the wintry storms with a courage which brought its own rewards in toughened fiber and lungs full of ozone. To-day in our super-heated houses we defy the winter to do us any good. We have reduced comfort to a fine art. Even heaven has lost its attractiveness to our generation. Luxury has become a national habit if not a national vice.
Our food is not coarse enough to maintain good digestion. Our desk-ridden thousands are losing the vigor that comes only from out-of-door life. Exercise for most men has become a lost art; they smoke instead! What with electric cars for the poor man and motor cars for the near rich, walking is losing out fast with the city multitudes. Our base ball we take by proxy, sitting on the bleachers; our recreation is done for us by professional entertainers in theater, club and opera. In a score of ways the creature comforts of a luxury loving age are surely enervating those who yield to them. Our modern flats equipped with every conceivable convenience to lure a man and a woman into losing the work habit and reducing to the minimum the expenditure of energy, are doing their share to takeeffortout of life and to make us merely effete products of civilization!
Modern city life, for the comfortably situated, is too luxurious to be good for the body, the mind or the morals. It dulls the “fighting edge”; it kills ambition with complacency; it often takes the best incentives out of life; it makes subtle assault upon early ideals and insidiously undermines the moral standards. We are fast losing the zest for the climbing life. Weneed the challenge of the difficult to spur us on to real conquests and to fit us for larger tasks.
It is the glory of country life that it is by no means enervated or over-civilized. Enough of the rough still remains for all practical purposes. Farm homes are comfortable usually but not luxurious. Rural life is full of the physical zest that keeps men young and vigorous. As Dr. F. E. Clark suggests, farming furnishes an ideal “moralequivalent of war.” The annual conquest of farm difficulties makes splendid fighting. There are plenty of natural enemies which must be fought to keep a man’s fighting edge keen and to keep him physically and mentally alert. What with the weeds and the weather, the cut-worms, the gypsy, and the codling moths, the lice, the maggots, the caterpillars, the San Jose scale and the scurvy, the borers, the blight and the gorger, the peach yellows and the deadly curculio, the man behind the bug gun and the sprayer finds plenty of exercise for ingenuity and a royal chance to fight the good fight. Effeminacy is not a rural trait. Country life is great for making men; men of robust health and mental resources well tested by difficulty, men of the open-air life and the skyward outlook. Country dwellers may well be thankful for the challenge of the difficult. It tends to keep rural life strong.
Our rural optimism however does not rest solely upon the attractiveness of country life and the various assets which country life possesses. We find new courage in the fact that these assets have at last been capitalized and a great modern movement is promoting the enterprise.
III. The Country Life Movement.
Its Real Significance
The modern country life movement in America has little in common with the “back to the soil” agitation in recent years. This latter is mainly the cry of real estate speculators plus newspaper echoes. The recent years of high prices and exorbitant cost of city living have popularized this slogan, the assumption being that if there were only more farmers, then food prices would be lower. This assumes that the art of farming is easily acquired and that the untrained city man could go back to the soil and succeed. What we really need is better farmers rather than more farmers; and the untrained city man who buys a farm is rather apt to make a failure of it,—furnishing free amusement meanwhile for the natives,—for the work of farming is highly technical, and requires probably more technical knowledge than any other profession except the practice of medicine.
There are few abandoned farms to-day within easy distance of the cities. For several years it has been quite the fad for city men of means to buy a farm, and when a competent farm manager is placed in charge the experiment is usually a safe one. Often it proves a costly experiment and seldom does the city-bred owner really become a valuable citizen among his rural neighbors. He remains socially a visitor, rather than a real factor in country life. Conspicuous exceptions could of course be cited, but unfortunately this seems to be the rule.
The kindly purpose of well-meaning philanthropiststo transplant among the farmers the dwellers in the city slums is resented by both! It would be a questionable kindness anyway, for the slum dweller would be an unhappy misfit in the country and escape to his crowded alley on the earliest opportunity, like a drunkard to his cups. Sometimes a hard-working city clerk or tradesman hears the call to the country and succeeds in wresting his living from the soil. The city man need not fail as a farmer. It depends upon his capacity to learn and his power of adaptation to a strange environment. The “back to the soil” movement is not to be discouraged; but let us not expect great things from it. The real “Country Life Movement” is something quitedifferent.
Rural Redirection by the County Committee of the Lake County, Ohio, Associations.
One hundred and forty farmers in “five day school,” the Ohio Agricultural College cooperating. A girls’ exhibit in cut flower contest. A May pole dance at a township school picnic. One of the boys participating in corn growing contest. The winner of the strawberry growing contest.
Its Objective: A Campaign for Rural Progress
The back-to-the-soil trend is a city movement. The real country life movement is a campaign for rural progress conducted mainly by rural people, not a paternalistic plan on the part of city folks for rural redemption. It is defined by one of the great rural leaders as the working out of the desire to make rural civilization as effective and satisfying as other civilization; to make country life as satisfying as city life and country forces as effective as city forces. Incidentally he remarks, “We call it a new movement. In reality it is new only to those who have recently discovered it.”
Its Early History: Various Plans for Rural Welfare
The father of the country life movement seems to have been George Washington. He and Benjamin Franklin were among the founders of the firstfarmers’ organization in America, the Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture, established in 1785. There were about a dozen such societies by 1800, patterned after similar organizations in England. President Washington had an extensive correspondence with prominent men in England on this subject and made it the subject of his last message to Congress. He called attention to the fundamental importance of agriculture, advocated agricultural fairs, a national agricultural society and government support for institutions making for rural progress.
Since these early days there have been many organized expressions of rural ambition, most of them only temporary but contributing more or less to the movement for the betterment of country life. There were over 900 agricultural societies in 1858 and these had increased to 1,350 by 1868 in spite of the setback of the civil war. Most of these were county organizations whose chief activity was an annual fair. Agricultural conventions were occasionally held, sometimes national in scope, which discussed frankly the great questions vital to farmers; and more permanent organizations soon developed which had a great influence in bringing the farmers of the country into cooperation with each other industrially and politically. Foremost among these were the Grange (1867), the Farmers’ Alliance (1875), the Farmers’ Union (1885), Farmers’ Mutual Benefit Organization (1883), and the Patrons of Industry (1887). The Farmers’ National Congress has met annually since 1880, and has exerted great influence upon legislation during this period, in the interest of the rural communities.
Its Modern Sponsors: The Agricultural Colleges
Important as these efforts at organized cooperation among farmers have been, nothing has equalled the influence of the agricultural colleges, which are now found in every state and are generously supported by the states in addition to revenue from the “land-grant funds” which all the colleges possess. These great institutions have done noble service in providing the intelligent leadership not only in farm interests but also in all the affairs of country life. At first planned to teach agriculture almost exclusively, many of them are now giving most thorough courses in liberal culture interpreted in terms of country life. The vast service of these schools for rural welfare, in both intra-mural and extension work, can hardly be overestimated.
The Roosevelt Commission on Country Life
It will be seen that the country life movement has been making progress for years. But it really became a national issue for the first time when President Roosevelt appointed his Country Life Commission. Though greeted by some as an unnecessary effort and handicapped by an unfriendly Congress which was playing politics, the Commission did a most significant work. Thirty hearings were held in various parts of the country and a painstaking investigation was conducted both orally and by mail, the latter including detailed information and suggestion from over 120,000 people. The Commission’s report, with the President’s illuminating message, presents in the best formavailable the real meaning of the country life movement. It will serve our purpose well to quote from this report a few significant paragraphs:
“The farmers have hitherto had less than their full share of public attention along the lines of business and social life. There is too much belief among all our people that the prizes of life lie away from the farms. I am therefore anxious to bring before the people of the United States the question of securing better business and better living on the farm, whether by cooperation among the farmers for buying, selling and borrowing; by promoting social advantages and opportunities in the country, or by any other legitimate means that will help to make country life more gainful, more attractive, and fuller of opportunities, pleasures and rewards for the men, women and children of the farms.”
“The farm grows the raw material for the food and clothing of all our citizens; it supports directly almost half of them; and nearly half of the children of the United States are born and brought up on the farms. How can the life of the farm family be made less solitary, fuller of opportunity, freer from drudgery, more comfortable, happier and more attractive? Such a result is most earnestly to be desired. How can life on the farm be kept on the highest level, and where it is not already on that level, be so improved, dignified and brightened as to awaken and keep alive the pride and loyalty of the farmer’s boys and girls, of the farmer’s wife and of the farmer himself? How can a compelling desire to live on the farm be aroused in the children that are born on the farm? All thesequestions are of vital importance, not only to the farmer but to the whole nation.”—Theodore Roosevelt.
Its Call for Rural Leadership
“We must picture to ourselves a new rural social structure, developed from the strong resident forces of the open country; and then we must set at work all the agencies that will tend to bring this about. The entire people need to be aroused to this avenue of usefulness. Most of the new leaders must be farmers who can find not only a satisfactory business career on the farm, but who will throw themselves into the service of upbuilding the community. A new race of teachers is also to appear in the country. A new rural clergy is to be trained. These leaders will see the great underlying problem of country life, and together they will work, each in his own field, for the one goal of a new and permanent rural civilization. Upon the development of this distinctively rural civilization rests ultimately our ability, by methods of farming requiring the highest intelligence, to continue to feed and clothe the hungry nations; to supply the city and metropolis with fresh blood, clean bodies and clear brains that can endure the strain of modern urban life; and to preserve a race of men in the open country that, in the future as in the past, will be the stay and strength of the nation in time of war and its guiding and controlling spirit in time of peace.”
“It is to be hoped that many young men and women, fresh from our schools and institutions of learning,and quick with ambition and trained intelligence, will feel a new and strong call to service.”
Its Constructive Program for Rural Betterment
The Commission suggested a broad campaign of publicity on the whole subject of rural life, until there is an awakened appreciation of the necessity of giving this phase of our national development as much attention as has been given to other interests. They urge upon all country people a quickened sense of responsibility to the community and to the state in the conserving of soil fertility, and the necessity for diversifying farming in order to conserve this fertility. The need of a better rural society is suggested; also the better safeguarding of the strength and happiness of the farm women; a more widespread conviction of the necessity for organization, not only for economic but for social purposes, this organization to be more or less cooperative, so that all the people may share equally in the benefits and have voice in the essential affairs of the community. The farmer is reminded that he has a distinct natural responsibility toward the farm laborer, in providing him with good living facilities and in helping him to be a man among men; and all the rural people are reminded of the obligation to protect and develop the natural scenery and attractiveness of the open country.
The Country Life Commission made the following specific recommendations to Congress:
The encouragement of a system of thoroughgoing surveys of all agricultural regions in order to take stock and to collect local facts, with the idea ofproviding a basis on which to develop a scientifically and economically sound country life.
The encouragement of a system of extension work in rural communities through all the land-grant colleges with the people at their homes and on their farms.
A thoroughgoing investigation by experts of the middleman system of handling farm products, coupled with a general inquiry into the farmer’s disadvantages in respect to taxation, transportation rates, cooperative organizations and credit, and the general business system.
An inquiry into the control and use of the streams of the United States with the object of protecting the people in their ownership and of saving for agricultural uses such benefits as should be reserved for such purposes.
The establishing of a highway engineering service, or equivalent organization, to be at the call of the states in working out effective and economical highway systems.
The establishing of a system of parcels post and postal savings banks.
The providing of some means or agency for the guidance of public opinion toward the development of a real rural society that shall rest directly on the land.
The enlargement of the United States Bureau of Education, to enable it to stimulate and coordinate the educational work of the nation.
Careful attention to the farmers’ interests in legislation on the tariff, on regulation of railroads, control or regulation of corporations and of speculation, legislationin respect to rivers, forests and the utilization of swamp lands.
Increasing the powers of the Federal government in respect to the supervision and control of the public health.
Providing such regulations as will enable the states that do not permit the sale of liquors to protect themselves from traffic from adjoining states.
IV. Institutions and Agencies at Work
Organized Forces Making for a Better Rural Life
When we consider the vast scope of the Country Life Movement in America and the variety of agencies involved, it greatly increases our rural optimism. The following list was compiled by Dr. L. H. Bailey and is the most complete available.