Plan of Macdonald Consolidated School grounds and gardens, Bowesville, Ontario, Canada.
Test Questions on Chapter III1.—Why are the terms “countryman” and “farmer” ceasing to be used as terms of ridicule?2.—What effect, in past years, hasisolationhad upon people living in the country?3.—What modern means of intercommunication have largely overcome the evils of rural isolation?4.—What are the social possibilities of the telephone for people living in the open country?5.—Why are good roads so essential, socially and industrially, in the country sections?6.—When was the “Good Roads Association” formed, and how much has your state expended for state roads the past twenty years? (Inquire of your County Surveyor.)7.—What do the rural sections owe to the steam railroad system of the country?8.—What have the trolleys accomplished which the steam roads could not do?9.—What changes in rural life are due to the rural free delivery of mail?10.—Describe what these changes have accomplished in your own home county.11.—To what extent has machinery relieved farm labor of its drudgery?12.—Describe the evolution of the plow and the harrow.13.—What inventions in farm machinery have had the greatest influence on rural progress?14.—What can you say about the increase of intelligence in the country sections you have known?15.—What agencies are now at work in the country making popular education possible?16.—Have you observed anywhere yet the new social consciousness or class consciousness among farmers?17.—To what extent do you think cooperation has gained acceptance in the country?18.—In what rural institutions is cooperation still greatly lacking?19.—What changes have already come in rural institutions?20.—How is this new rural civilization revealing the will of God, and what relation has it to the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven?
Test Questions on Chapter III
1.—Why are the terms “countryman” and “farmer” ceasing to be used as terms of ridicule?
2.—What effect, in past years, hasisolationhad upon people living in the country?
3.—What modern means of intercommunication have largely overcome the evils of rural isolation?
4.—What are the social possibilities of the telephone for people living in the open country?
5.—Why are good roads so essential, socially and industrially, in the country sections?
6.—When was the “Good Roads Association” formed, and how much has your state expended for state roads the past twenty years? (Inquire of your County Surveyor.)
7.—What do the rural sections owe to the steam railroad system of the country?
8.—What have the trolleys accomplished which the steam roads could not do?
9.—What changes in rural life are due to the rural free delivery of mail?
10.—Describe what these changes have accomplished in your own home county.
11.—To what extent has machinery relieved farm labor of its drudgery?
12.—Describe the evolution of the plow and the harrow.
13.—What inventions in farm machinery have had the greatest influence on rural progress?
14.—What can you say about the increase of intelligence in the country sections you have known?
15.—What agencies are now at work in the country making popular education possible?
16.—Have you observed anywhere yet the new social consciousness or class consciousness among farmers?
17.—To what extent do you think cooperation has gained acceptance in the country?
18.—In what rural institutions is cooperation still greatly lacking?
19.—What changes have already come in rural institutions?
20.—How is this new rural civilization revealing the will of God, and what relation has it to the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven?
I. Its Struggle with Rural Conservatism.
Modern Efficiency not Confined to Cities
Efficiencyis everywhere demanded by the spirit of our times. We are living in an age that does things. Whatever the difficulties, it somehow gets things done. It brings to pass even the seemingly impossible. Are there mountains in the way? It goes over, under, or through.—There are no mountains! Is there an isthmus, preventing the union of great seas and blocking commerce? It erases the isthmus from the world’s map.—There is no isthmus! The masterful time-spirit has little patience with puttering inefficiency. It expects every man to pull his weight, to earn his keep, to do his own task, and not to whimper.
Our cities are hives of efficiency, cruel efficiency often. With new pace-makers every year, the wheels of industry speed ever faster, raising the percentage of effectiveness, per dollar of capital and per capita employed. Hundreds at the wheels, with scant nerves, fail to keep the pace; and the race goes by them. But the pace keeps up. Other workmen grow more deft and skillful. The product is both cheapened andperfected. The plant becomes more profitable, under fine executive efficiency. The junk-heap grows apace: Out goes every obsolete half-success. In comes every new machine which reduces friction, doubles results, halves the cost of maintenance, and swells dividends. Surely efficiency is the modern shibboleth.
Here is the new Tungsten electric lamp, which uses half the current, at low voltage, but doubles the light; the very dazzling symbol of efficiency. How it antiquates the best Edison lamp of yesterday! Yet the Tungsten becomes old-fashioned in a year. It is too fragile and is speedily displaced by the improved Mazda.
Butcitylife has no monopoly on efficiency. In fact we do not find in the mills or factories the best illustrations of modern effectiveness. We have to go back to the soil. Agriculture has become the newest of the arts, by the grace of modern science. To make two blades of grass grow where one grew before is too easy now. Multiplying by two is small boys’ play. Burbank has out-Edisoned Edison! He and other experimenters in the scientific breeding of plants and animals have increased the efficiency of every live farmer in the land, and have added perhaps a billion dollars a year to the nation’s wealth.
They have not yet crossed the bee and the firefly, as some one has suggested, to produce an illuminated bee that could work at night by his own light. Nor have they produced woven-wire fences by crossing the spider and the wire-worm! Not yet; but they have done better. By skillful cross-breeding, they have raised the efficiency of the sugar beet from 7%to 15% sugar. They have produced hardy, seedless oranges, plums, apples, and strawberry plants which will stand the climate of the frozen north. They have developed fine, long-stapled cotton, high-yielding cereal grains, and mammoth carnations and chrysanthemums. They have produced the wonderberry, the Wealthy Apple and the Burbank Potato. They have developed flax with 25% more seed. And the “Minnesota Number Thirteen Corn,” so hardy and sure, has carried the cornbelt in three great states fully fifty miles further to the north, with its magnificent wake of golden profits. No wonder America feeds the world. Such is our splendid Yankee genius for efficiency. It is the master-spirit, the ruling genius of our age; and it shows itself best on our fields and prairies. Other nations compete fairly well with our manufactures. They outstrip us in commerce. But they are hopelessly behind our American agriculture. The farm products of this country amounted in the year 1910 to almost nine billion dollars. The corn crop alone was worth a billion and a half; enough to cancel the entire interest-bearing debt of the United States, buy all of the gold and silver mined in all the countries of the earth in 1909, and still leave the farmers pocket-money.[21]
The Natural Conservatism of Farmers
In all fairness it must be said, the modern gospel of progressiveness has not been everywhere accepted, far from it. Plenty of farmers, doubtless the majority, are still following the old traditions. Country folksas a rule are conservative. They like the old ways and are suspicious of “new-fangled notions.” Director Bailey of Cornell enjoys telling the comment he overheard one day from a farmer of this sort. It was after he had been speaking at a rural life conference, doubtless proposing various plans for better farming, which differed from the honored superstitions of the neighborhood. A stolid native was overheard saying to his neighbor, “John, let them blow! They can’t hurt me none.” He prided himself on being immune to all appeals at such a rural life revival.
Such a man is very common among the hills, and wherever the soil is poor; but he is beginning to feel lonesome in really prosperous rural communities, for the new agriculture is fast winning its way. That is, the application of science to agriculture has proved its efficiency by actual tangible results. A farmer may be so superstitious as to begin nothing on a Friday, nor butcher during a waning moon for fear his meat will shrink, nor use an iron plow for fear it may poison the soil! But when his neighbor by modern methods adds 50% to his crop, he knows there must be something in it. The newtheoryhe always greets with “I don’t believe it!” but the knock-down argument of facts compels his reluctant faith. Soon he gives the new heresy a trial himself; and success makes him a convert to the new gospel.
An experience like this is a serious thing for a hide-bound conservative, long wedded to old methods. It means that “the former things are passed away and behold all things are become new.” He loses his superstitions as he discovers the laws of cause and effect.He gradually concludes that farming is not a matter of luck but largely a matter of science; that it is not merely tickling Dame Nature till she grudgingly shares her bounties, but that it is a scientific process, the laws of which may be discovered. This means mental growth for the farmer, the stimulus of many new ideas which bring wider horizons and a larger life; and incidentally a heightened respect for his own life-work.
What is Progressive Agriculture?
The old-fashioned farmer, particularly in America where methods have been so wasteful because of the cheapness of land, has planted and harvested just for the season’s returns, with little regard for the future. The modern farmer, self-respecting and far-sighted, plans for the future welfare of his farm. He learns how to analyze and treat his soil and to conserve its fertility, just as he would protect his capital in any business investment. Scientific management and farm economy are taking the place of mere soil-mining and reckless waste. The best farmers plan to leave their farms a little more fertile than they found them. Good authorities in rural economics assert that if depletion of soil fertility were taken into account, the wasteful methods of American agriculture in the past, though producing apparently large returns, have actually been unprofitable. So long as new land could easily be obtained from the government for a mere song and a few months’ patience, the pioneer farmer was utterly careless in his treatment of the soil. He moved from state to state, skimming the fat of theland but never fertilizing, following the frontier line westward and leaving half-wasted lands in his trail.
It was really a blessing to the land when the scarcity of free homesteads brought this wasteful process towards its end. When new lands became scarce, the farms of the middle West increased in value. For twenty years farm values have been rising steadily, with two evident results: intensive farming and speculation. The demoralizing effects of the latter are at once apparent. It was a sad day when the prairie farmer ceased to think of his farm as a permanent home, but as a speculative asset. But it was a good day for the business of farming when the farmer discovered the need of more careful, intensive cultivation to keep pace with rising values. This marks the beginning of scientific thoroughness and efficiency in our tilling of the soil.
Its Development by Government Patronage
Just then something very timely happened. The modern period of American agriculture really dates from 1887, when Congress, by the Hatch Act, established the first national system of agricultural experiment stations in the world. Previous to this date there had been a few private and state enterprises; but this Act of Congress established at public expense an experiment station in every state and territory. The vast usefulness of this movement in developing a real science of agriculture is evident from this paragraph from the law:
“Sec. 2. That it shall be the object and duty of said experiment stations to conduct original researchesor verify experiments on the physiology of plants and animals; the diseases to which they are severally subject, with the remedies for the same; the chemical composition of useful plants at their different stages of growth; the comparative advantages of rotative cropping, as pursued under the varying series of crops; the capacity of new plants or trees for acclimation; the analysis of soils and water; the chemical composition of manures, natural or artificial, with experiments designed to test their comparative effects on crops of different kinds; the adaptation and value of grasses and forage plants; the composition and digestibility of the different kinds of food for domestic animals; the scientific and economic questions involved in the production of butter and cheese, et cetera.”
As a result of this and later laws, over three millions of dollars are now spent annually, by the national and state governments, to support experiment station work. Over a thousand men are employed in the investigations and their publications cover practically the whole range of the science and art of agriculture. About five hundred separate bulletins are issued each year, which may be obtained free on application.
This great chain of experiment stations is working wonders. In cooperation with the agricultural colleges and the U. S. Department of Agriculture, they are raising agriculture to scientific levels. They are, by their laboratory work, doing the farmer’s experimenting for him and doing it better and with greater certainty. Thus theyare eliminating much of the uncertainty and “luck” from farming which has been its curse and discouragement. And thus they are equipping the farmer to cope more effectively with the difficulties of nature and to put a more confident fight with stubborn climate and fickle weather, because he knows the scientific points of the game.
II. Some Special Aspects of Scientific Agriculture.
Intensive Farming and Conservation of Fertility
The opening of the rich prairie lands to cultivation, with the marvels of extensive agriculture, is a wonderful story. Our last chapter suggested it in outline. Butintensivefarming has its own triumphs, though they may be less spectacular. There is something that wins our respect in the careful, thorough methods of European agriculture, by which whole nations are able to make a living on tiny farms by intensive farming. Tilling every little scrap of ground, even roadside and dooryard, and guarding the soil fertility as the precious business capital of the family, it is wonderful how few square rods can be made to sustain a large family.
Frugality is not attractive to Americans, especially the European type which often means peasant farming, and a low scale of living. We are discovering, however, the vast possibilities of farm economy and intensive cultivation. Professor Carver says, “Where land is cheap and labor dear, wasteful and extensive farming is natural, and it is useless to preach against it.... We always tend to wastethat which is cheap and economize that which is dear. The condition of this country in all the preceding periods dictated the wasteful use of land and the economic use of labor, as shown by the unprecedented development of agricultural machinery. But as land becomes dearer, relatively to labor, as it inevitably will, the tendency will be equally inevitable toward more intensive agriculture, that is, toward a system which produces more per acre. This will follow through the normal working of economic laws, as surely as water will flow down hill.”
The Stockman-Farmer Pub. Co.
A modern Fruit and Truck Farm in high state of fertility.
It is wonderful what can be accomplished by intensive cultivation. If the old New England orchards were given as thorough care and treatment as the scientifically tended and doctored apple trees of Oregon, the results would surprise the oldest citizen! Conserving moisture and keeping the soil clean from weeds is worth all the painstaking care it requires. The renovation of the soil by regular fertilizing is a lesson the wasteful West is slowly learning, coupled with scientific schemes of crop rotation to conserve the soil’s quality. Farmers are astonishingly slow to adopt these methods, however, thinking that they know best the needs of their own soil. The North Dakota experiment station is inducing farmers to adopt their advice as to seed selection and crop rotation with the promise to set aside five acres for experimentation in accordance with the advice given. This is extremely wise policy. Doubtless, if directions are faithfully followed, the contrast with the rest of the farm will be highly favorable to the five-acre lot and agricultural progress will win out.
Achievements in Scientific Breeding
In the earlier pages of this chapter we have already alluded to this fascinating subject as an illustration of modern efficiency in country life. Four years ago Assistant Secretary Hays of the Department of Agriculture asserted that scientific breeding of better stock and plant life was netting this country a billion dollars a year, of the total agricultural production of seven and a half billions in 1907.[22]In 1910 the total reached about nine billions and it is probable that scientific agriculture was the main cause of the great increase rather than additional acreage.
One of the wonders of modern science is this story of the development of new plant species and improvement in the best of the old, by the skillful processes of plant breeding. Notable also has been the improvement in American horses, cattle, swine and poultry, developed by the same scientific principles. Projected efficiency, or breeding power to beget valuable progeny, is the central idea. Simple selection is the method. Out of a large number of animals the phenomenal individual is selected for his notable capacity for reproducing in his offspring his own desirable characteristics. Thus the best blood is multiplied and the less desirable is discarded. Sometimes by close inbreeding the eugenic process has been hastened. In this way scientific stock raisers have been able practically to make to order animals with any desired quality. For instance, the great demand for bacon in England has been met by a masterly bit ofagricultural statesmanship, for which Mr. John Dryden, chief of the Canadian Agricultural Department, is responsible. After careful study and experiment, the Yorkshire and Tamworth breeds of hogs were crossed and a special breed developed especially valuable for bacon with exceptionally long sides of uniform thickness and with alternating layers of fat and lean. Selected bacon made to order!
New breeds of sheep have been developed which have combined phenomenal wool-producing power with superior meat production; similarly short-horn cattle with great milk-giving capacity and beef production; and more remarkable still have been the results in horse breeding. In spite of all the motor-cycles and automobiles, the horse is becoming more and more useful, because more highly civilized and specialized. The breeders know how to build up horse-flesh to suit your special needs for draft horse, family horse, trotter or pacer, with any desired form, proportions or talent, almost as accurately as a druggist compounds prescriptions! The wonderful possibilities involved challenge our imagination. Among the results of this stock-raising strategy we ought to expect not only happier and richer farmers, but better and cheaper food and clothing for all classes of people. The very fact that the business is now on a scientific basis has appealed to students and is attracting men of large abilities who see the opportunity to better rapidly, year by year, the live-stock quality of the whole country.
Marvels in Plant Production
In the field of plant breeding these marvelous results are more rapid and startling because of the widerrangeof selection. Hybridization, the crossing of different species, has accomplished much more than simple selection. Dr. William Saunders of Canada succeeded in crossing the Ladoga and Fife varieties of wheat and secured a wheat which was earlier than Fife and yielded better than Ladoga. Likewise, Luther Burbank was able to produce a hybrid walnut by crossing the English and Black walnuts; and Webber and Swingle developed the new fruits called tangerines and citranges by crossing sweet oranges with carefully selected specimens of the wild fruit. Experiments last year in blueberry culture developed luscious berries a half inch in diameter. Possibilities in berry development are almost unlimited, especially by crossing with hardy wild varieties.
Peach raisers have two great obstacles to sure success: drought in the Southwest and frost toward the North. Science is helping them to compete successfully with the severities of nature. A hardy wild peach has been found in Northern China and grafting on this stock has produced (this last year) the hardiest peach in Iowa; while another strain bids fair to meet the drought-resisting needs of the Southwest fruit grower.
Our agricultural explorers are searching the world for new varieties which can be used in hybridizing to perfect the American species. For instance, a wild wheat has been found in Palestine which requiresvery little water. So a specialist in acclimatization was sent directly to the slopes of Mount Hermon to discover its possibilities for American dry farming. If the plant doctors succeed in developing wheat which can be raised in our arid wilderness, it would repay a thousand fold the expense of a round-the-world trip. The possible profits in skillful plant breeding are almost unlimited. Burbank is quoted as asserting: “The right man under favorable conditions can make one dollar yield a million dollars in plant breeding.” In 1908 the Minnesota Experiment Station had spent $40,000 in breeding the cereal grains. The agricultural department is authority for the opinion that “the increased production is estimated at a thousand fold, or $40,000,000.”[23]
The justly famous navel oranges of California can all be traced to two scions sent from the U. S. Department of Agriculture some years ago. The Wealthy apple, which thrives in the cold north better than any other good variety, goes back to the early struggles of Peter Gideon at Lake Minnetonka, who faced the Minnesota winter almost penniless, coatless and with a family dependent upon him; but had faith enough to invest his hard-earned dollars in selected apple-seed from his far off home in Maine. The largest single contributor to the wealth produced by scientific breeding is said to be the Burbank potato. The van-guard of American experimenters are rangingthe world and bringing home large-fruited jujubes (as good as dates) from the dry fields of Central Asia; seedless Chinese persimmons which have just been successfully fruited in North Carolina; a Japanese salad plant and a vegetable calledudowhich is similar to asparagus; edible roots calledaroidswhich thrive in swampy land where the potato rots; hardy alfalfa from central Asia successfully crossed with our own varieties for our cold northwest; drought-resisting cherries, apricots with sweet kernels, Caucasian peaches, olives hardy in zero temperatures, mangoes from Porto Rico, the Paradise apple which grows wild in the Caucasus, the Slew Abrikose, an apricot as smooth as the nectarine, and wild strawberries fruiting in February on the dry cliffs of western Asia which, through cross-breeding may help to carry our native strawberry many miles still farther to the north.
The story is endless; but these items suggest to us the thoroughly statesmanlike way in which our agricultural leaders are increasing year by year the possibilities of our soil in spite of all drawbacks of condition and climate. No wonder they are already prophesying that our annual agricultural production will before long reach twenty billions. When it comes, a large part of the credit must be given to the skillful agricultural scientists who are furnishing all progressive farmers these newer species of plants and animals which are superseding the inferior varieties.
Irrigation and the Problem of the Desert
When it is the problem of sterility, it is hopeless. But usually it is merely the problem of aridity; which is only a challenge to enterprise. Much of our “GreatAmerican Desert,” as the old geography used to describe it, is in reality the most fertile of all soils; no wonder it can easily be made to “blossom as the rose.”
Dr. W. E. Smythe in his fascinating book “The Conquest of Arid America” calls attention to the fact that the real dividing line between the east and the west is the 97th meridian which divides in twain the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. East of this line is the region of fairly assured rainfall. To the westward stretches the vast area of arid land with a rainfall insufficient to sustain agriculture; and with only three or four people to the square mile, though with resources enough to support a hundred million people. With a climate matchless for health and a varied and beautiful scenery, coupled with untold mineral deposits and a soil fertility that is remarkable, this great section is slowly coming to its own, through the method of irrigation, from the mountains and the streams.
With characteristic western spirit the above author remarks, “Even in humid regions nothing is so uncertain as the time and amount of the rainfall. In the whole range of modern industry nothing is so crude, uncalculating and unscientific as the childlike dependence on the mood of the clouds for the moisture essential to the production of the staple necessities of life.” The superiority of irrigation as a certain means of water supply which can be regulated at will is a thesis easy to maintain. The results make a marvelous story. “The canal is an insurance policy against loss of crops by drought, while aridity is a substantial guarantee against injury by flood. The rich soils ofthe arid region produce from four to ten times as largely with irrigation, as the soil of the humid region without it. Twenty acres in the irrigated West should equal 100 acres elsewhere. Certainty, abundance, variety—all this upon an area so small as to be within the control of a single family through its own area, are the elements which compose industrial independence under irrigation.”
The small farm unit, usually from five to twenty-five acres, brings neighbors close together, abolishing loneliness and most of the social ills of farm life in the East. Beautiful irrigated villages are springing up which rival in comfort and privilege most places on earth, and combine both city and country privileges, where rural and urban meet. The spirit of cooperation is strong in irrigated communities, enforced by the common dependence upon the common enterprise and water supply. This is well illustrated by the Mormon commonwealth, the pioneer irrigators of the West.
The enthusiastic irrigating farmer asserts that irrigation is “the foundation of truly scientific agriculture.” “The western farmer who has learned to irrigate thinks it would be quite as illogical for him to leave the watering of his potato patch to the caprice of the clouds as for the housewife to defer her wash-day until she could catch rainwater in her tubs.” Irrigation certainly furnishes the ideal method for raising a varied crop, giving each crop individual treatment, serving each of thirty varieties of plants and trees with just the amount of daily moisture they individually need, so as to produce maximum products.No wonder three crops in a year sometimes result, and sometimes five crops of alfalfa in the Southwest. Here we come to the highest development of intensive farming where the utmost value of agricultural science has free play and rivals the results of research and skill in any other line of human effort.
Dry Farming Possibilities
Wonderful as these irrigation projects are, we must not fail to notice that this method of reclaiming arid lands can only be used where there are mountains, rivers or water courses which can be tapped. Ultimately an area as large as New England and New York State will probably be blessed by irrigation. But this is only a small fraction of the arid West. How shall the rest be reclaimed from the desert? Obviously by some method of dry farming, depending on and conserving the meager rain-fall.
A few simple principles have been discovered, and some specialized machinery developed, by which successful dry farming is now conducted on an extensive scale along the arid plains between the Missouri river basin and the Sierra Nevada mountains. In brief these principles are: deep plowing, sub-soil packing, intensive cultivation, maintaining a fine dust mulch on the surface, the use of drought-resisting grains, especially certain varieties of wheat, allowing the land to lie fallow every other year to store moisture, and keeping a good per cent. of humus (vegetable matter) in the soil to resist evaporation. In every possible way the dry farmer conserves moisture. The dry mulch is particularly effective. Only a few yearsago it was discovered that by capillary attraction much of the water absorbed by the spongy soil during a rain is lost by rapid evaporation, coming to the surface, just as oil runs up a wick. But by stirring the surface the “capillary ducts” are broken up and the moisture tends to stay down in the sub soil; for the two inches of dust mulch on the surface acts like a blanket, protecting the precious moisture from the dry winds.
III. Some Results of Scientific Farming.
Agriculture Now a Profession
In such a brief treatment it is not to be expected that the writer could do justice to the subject of modern agriculture. In fact there has been little reference to the topic of general farming in this chapter. In its main outline it is a familiar topic and requires little attention here. The descriptions of certain varieties of specialized agriculture have been given as illustrations of the more remarkable phases of the application of scientific methods to country life. We hope two results have thus been attained, that the dignity and efficiency and scientific possibilities of modern agriculture as a profession have been brought to the attention both of our readers in the city and of the discontented farm boys in the country. Both need a higher appreciation of country life. It should be evident to all that agriculture to-day is thoroughly scientific when rightly practiced, which is simply saying that the practice of the new agriculture is aprofession. It is among the most difficult and highly technical of all professions.No profession, with the possible exception of medicine, has a broader scientific basis or is at present deriving a greater benefit from vast inductive work in world-wide experimentation at both public and private expense. This profession has made wonderful gains in recent years in both extensive and intensive efficiency, and has written among its triumphs many of the most romantic stories of modern mechanical skill, inventive genius, economic profit and scientific achievement.
Pennsylvania Farm Land.
This honorable profession is not only worthy of the finest and ablest of our American young manhood, but its opportunity and present need is a distinct challenge to their attention. Mr. James J. Hill recently stated as his opinion that not more than one per cent. of American farmers in the middle West were keeping in touch with the agricultural institutions; which is the same as saying they are not keeping up to date. This suggests the need of more intelligent modern farmers tilling the soil as a profession and thus pointing the way to progress for all their neighbors.
Conservation: A New Appeal to Patriotism
This word conservation has but recently won its place of honor in our popular speech; but it is a word of mighty import. The battle for conservation of our national resources is on, and it challenges the attention of our young collegians.
It is encouraging to see results already. By a happy combination of progressiveness with true conservatism, we are conserving our national assets from Niagara to the mighty forests of Washington and Californiaand from the arid lands of the mighty empire of Montana to the swamps of Florida. The nation is repenting of its prodigal wastefulness and is now guarding jealously its forest reserves, its vast water-power privileges, its coal and mineral deposits and its soil fertility, for upon these stores of fundamental wealth depends the prosperity of endless generations. Many alluring chances will come to men now in college to share in this great task of the nation, this fascinating enterprise of conservation.
Permanency of Rural Christendom Now Possible
Any reader must be quite lacking in vision who has been able to read this chapter on the remarkable progress of modern agricultural science without discerning the deep religious significance of it all. Civilization unquestionably is based on economics. Rural prosperity is a primary condition of rural permanence. Farming must be profitable enough to maintain a self-respecting rural folk; or the open country would be speedily abandoned to a race of peasants and rural heathenism would be imminent.
Progress in agriculture, developing rural prosperity, means the survival of the best rural homes and the finest rural ideals,—otherwise these would go to the city. Retaining in the country a genuine Christian constituency and rural leadership means the survival of the country church. The Christian forces in the country have a vast stake in rural prosperity. You cannot hope to build a prosperous country church on poor soil or maintain it on bad farming. This is not a mere matter of scarcity of contributions. It is aresult of the poverty of personality among people who are poor Christians because they are poor farmers.
Christian leaders should therefore rejoice in the advance of modern agriculture not only because it all signifies a richer and broader rural prosperity, but also because it makes possible the permanence of rural Christendom and the survival of successful country churches. The more profitable modern farming is made, the richer becomes the opportunity of country life, the larger proportion of the brightest sons and daughters of the farm will resist the lure of the city. Nothing is so vital to the country church, humanly speaking, as to keep in the country parishes a fair share of the country boys and girls of the finest type. With them it lives and serves its community. Without them it will die and its community will become decadent.
It is no selfish Christian spirit that rejoices in the broadening opportunities of country life. The church is but a means to an end. The great objective is the coming of the Kingdom of God for which Jesus prayed. As fast as the very soil of a country is recognized as “holy land,” and preserving its fertility is felt to be a patriotic duty; as fast as better live stock, better plant species and a better breed of men are sought as a working ideal; as fast as the conservation of all natural resources becomes a national life purpose; so rapidly and inevitably the Kingdom of Heaven will come. The Country Life Movement is fundamentally religious.
Test Questions on Chapter IV1.—Mention a few evidences of modern industrial efficiency.2.—What can you say of the efficiency of modern agriculture?3.—In what ways have you noticed country people to be especially conservative?4.—Compare the wasteful farm methods of a half century ago with the careful intensive cultivation of to-day.5.—How has the government helped progressive agriculture?6.—What are the experiment stations accomplishing?7.—What do you think of the evil of soil-piracy?8.—Mention some of the remarkable achievements of scientific breeding of farm animals.9.—What should be the results of all this improvement in our live stock? What stands in the way?10.—What has especially interested you among the marvels of plant production by cross-cultivation?11.—Why are representatives of our Agricultural Department searching the world for new species of plants?12.—Locate the desert sections of America where the rainfall is insufficient to sustain agriculture.13.—What do you think of the advantages and possibilities of irrigation?14.—Explain the methods of dry farming, especially the principle involved in the “dust mulch.”15.—To what extent is it true that scientific agriculture has now become a profession?16.—Explain the real patriotism in the modern policy of conservation of natural resources.17.—To what extent do you think the government ought to own or control the great forests, the water power and the coal deposits? Why?18.—How does this whole subject of progressive agriculture affect the religious life of the country?19.—Upon what economic basis does the permanence of religious institutions in the country quite largely depend?20.—What do you think is the great religious objective in all rural progress?
Test Questions on Chapter IV
1.—Mention a few evidences of modern industrial efficiency.
2.—What can you say of the efficiency of modern agriculture?
3.—In what ways have you noticed country people to be especially conservative?
4.—Compare the wasteful farm methods of a half century ago with the careful intensive cultivation of to-day.
5.—How has the government helped progressive agriculture?
6.—What are the experiment stations accomplishing?
7.—What do you think of the evil of soil-piracy?
8.—Mention some of the remarkable achievements of scientific breeding of farm animals.
9.—What should be the results of all this improvement in our live stock? What stands in the way?
10.—What has especially interested you among the marvels of plant production by cross-cultivation?
11.—Why are representatives of our Agricultural Department searching the world for new species of plants?
12.—Locate the desert sections of America where the rainfall is insufficient to sustain agriculture.
13.—What do you think of the advantages and possibilities of irrigation?
14.—Explain the methods of dry farming, especially the principle involved in the “dust mulch.”
15.—To what extent is it true that scientific agriculture has now become a profession?
16.—Explain the real patriotism in the modern policy of conservation of natural resources.
17.—To what extent do you think the government ought to own or control the great forests, the water power and the coal deposits? Why?
18.—How does this whole subject of progressive agriculture affect the religious life of the country?
19.—Upon what economic basis does the permanence of religious institutions in the country quite largely depend?
20.—What do you think is the great religious objective in all rural progress?
[Cooperation of religious forces will be treated in Chap. VII.]
A.COUNTRY LIFE DEFICIENCIES
I. Social Diagnosis: Rural Individualism.
The preceding chapters have emphasized the riches of country life sufficiently to save the author from the charge of pessimism. Let us hold fast to our rural optimism. We shall need it all. But let it not blind us to the unfortunate facts in rural life, for diagnosis is the first step toward recovery. We are to notice now some of the fundamental social deficiencies which are almost universal in our American rural society.
Dr. Butterfield calls the American farmer “a rampant individualist!” Independence has been his national boast and his personal glory. Pioneer life developing heroic virtues in his personality has made him as a class perhaps the most self-reliant in history. The ownership of land always gives a man the feeling of independence. Let the world spin,—his broad acres will support him and his family. If one crop fail, another will succeed, though the weather act its worst. American farms average perhaps the largest in the world, nearly one-fourth of a square mile. Hence the distance between farm homes, and the habit of social independence which is bred by isolation.
“Every man for himself; look out for number one” is the natural philosophy of life under such conditions. Self-protection and aggrandizement, jealousy of personal rights, slowness to accept advice, proneness to law suits over property, thrifty frugality to a fault, indifference to public opinion, disregard of even the opinions of experts,—all are very characteristic of people of such independence of life. They seldom yield to argument. They do not easily respond to leadership. They are likely to view strangers with suspicion. Self-reliance overdeveloped leads them to distrust any initiative but their own. Hence they do not readily work with other people. They refuse to recognize superiority in others of their own class. All of which results in a most serious social weakness;failure in cooperation, a fatal failure in any society. Positively, this explains the jealousies and feuds so common in rural neighborhoods. Negatively, it accounts for the lack of effective social organization.
Where a progressive rural community has readjusted itself to the social ideals of the new century, these weaknesses are quietly disappearing. Elsewhere you still find them.
The Weakness in Rural Institutions
This unsocial streak of distrust and poor social cooperation runs through every sort of institution in rural life. Schools are usually run on the old school-district plan with over-thrifty supervisors, no continuous policy, and with each pupil buying his own text books; roads are repaired by township districts, with individuals “working out their taxes;” churches aremaintained on the retail plan, the minister being hired by the year or even by the week; the churches themselves are numerous and small, because of the selfish insistence upon individual views; even cooperative agreements in business have been repudiated by farmers under stress of temptation to personal gain; while rural distrust of banks and organized business is proverbial.
All of these unsocial tendencies are probably less due to selfishness than to lack of practice in cooperation. City people however have had constant practice in cooperation; hence they work together readily and successfully. They are organized for every conceivable purpose good or bad. In fact they are so intoxicated with the joy of social effort, they are apt to carry all sorts of social life to an extreme. The social fabric is as complex and confusing in the city as it is simple and bare in the country. The problem for the country is to develop a wholesome social life and an efficient institutional life which shall avoid the extremes of the city and yet shall get country people to working together harmoniously and happily. Only thus can life in the open country maintain itself in a social age for successful business, church, home, school or social life. Only thus can country character develop its capacity for those social satisfactions which are the crowning joys of a complete and harmonious civilization. But those who have faith in the fundamental vitality and adaptability of rural life believe that even this serious weakness incooperationcan be gradually overcome and country life be made as effective for its own purposes as life in the city. This faith isjustified by large success already thus attained in progressive rural sections with the modern spirit.
The Difficulty of Organizing Farmers
Five reasons are mentioned by President Butterfield to account for this difficulty: Ingrained habits of individual initiative; Financial considerations; Economic and political delusions which have wrecked previous organizations of farmers; Lack of leadership; and Lack of unity. Under lack of leadership, he says: “The farm has been prolific of reformers, fruitful in developing organizers, but scanty in its supply of administrators. It has had a leadership that could agitate a reform, project a remedial scheme, but not much of that leadership that could hold together diverse elements, administer large enterprises, steer to great ends petty ambitions.”[24]Yet country-bred leaders have been wonderfully successful in the city under different social conditions.
Failures in leadership are often due to failure to get support for the project in hand. This in turn is due to lack of common purposes and ideals. A successful leader personifies the ideals of his following. Unless there is unity in ideals the following disintegrates. Here again the rural unsocial streak shows plainly. Individual notions, ideas and remedies for social ills have been so various, it has taken the stress of some great common cause, the impulse of some powerful sentiment, or the heat of some mighty moral conflict to fuse together the independent fragments. This was done when Lincoln sounded the appeal to patriotismin ’61; when Bryan’s stirring eloquence aroused particularly the debtor farmer class in ’96; and when the projectors of the Farmers’ Alliance, the Grange and the Populist Party succeeded in their appeals to class consciousness and convinced the farmers of their need of union. Rural movements however have usually been short-lived.
II. Failures in Rural Cooperation.
Lack of Political Effectiveness
Farmers usually do their duty serving on juries and in minor civil offices. They are usually fairly well represented in state legislatures. But few farmers go to Congress or gain real leadership in politics. In proportion to their numbers, the rural people have marvelously little influence in the affairs of government. We have in this country no Agrarian party. The farmers are divided among the different political camps and seldom do they exert any great influence as a class in the making of the laws. There are about seventy times as many agriculturists as lawyers in the United States,—yet the lawyers exert vastly greater civic influence and greatly outnumber farmers in most law-making bodies.
Yet there are about fifty million rural people in the country, largely in farm households. The average farmer in 1910 paid taxes on 138 acres besides other property. Why should he not have more political influence? Why has he not demanded and secured a dominating influence in the state? There is probablyno reason except lack of cooperation, and adequate leadership to accomplish it.
Lack of Cooperation in Business
Successful farming is essentially cooperative. The most successful classes of farmers in the country, according to Professor Carver, are the Pennsylvania Dutch, the Mormons and the Quakers. All of these cooperate in their farming operations to a high degree, as well as in their social and church life. They occupy their farms permanently as family homes. Their land is not for sale, in spite of the rising values. To a large extent they buy and sell, and work their farms together, to their great mutual advantage.
The old-fashioned farm management however, which still generally persists, is competitive, and therefore wasteful and unsocial. With rapid transportation and the lengthening distance between producer and consumer, the function of the middleman has grown and his power vastly increased. Consequently on many products the rise in selling price is due to the series of middlemen through whose hands the article has passed on the way to market. Investigations at Decatur, Ill., revealed the fact that head-lettuce sold there was raised within five miles of Chicago, shipped into the city, repacked and shipped by freight to Decatur, a five-hour trip; then stored in the latter city over night; and finally displayed, wilted in the sun, in a store window, and sold to a housewife who buys it for fresh goods! If raised in a suburb of Decatur, it might have been sold at half the price, and been really fresh enough to eat. The same story offlagrant waste through poor management might be told of butter, cream, and practically all farm products which are not sold in a public market near the producer’s home.
Not only are both the farmer and his ultimate customer suffering a considerable loss from this competitive system of marketing, the process itself is bad socially, for this reason. It cuts off the farmer from his normal market, the nearest village, and isolates him and his family so that they have virtually no interests there. If the farmer should sell his product in the village stores or through a public market, or a cooperative commission house, he would have more at stake in that town. He would probably trade and go to church there, his wife would do her buying there, they would be persons of importance to the townspeople and would form friendships and social relationships there. As it is, a wall of mutual suspicion and disregard separates this family from the people of the town.
It is doubtful whether farming can be sufficiently profitable to-day, or the life of the open country be really satisfying, without some degree of cooperation in business. More and more men are realizing this; are overcoming their natural weakness for independence and are discovering numerous modern ways to cooperate with other farmers; to their great mutual advantage both financially and socially, as will be indicated later.
Lack of Religious Cooperation
The old self-sufficing and competitive methods offarming have been closely paralleled by the selfish ideals in religion; the great aim being to save one’s own soul and enjoy the religious privileges of one’s favorite type of church, whatever happened meanwhile to the community. In most country places religion is still strongly individualistic. Rural folk have seen little of the social vision or felt the power of the social gospel of Jesus, which aims not only to convert the individual, but to redeem his environment and reorganize the community life by Christian standards. Consequently rural churches are depending too exclusively on preaching and periodic revivals rather than on organized brotherliness, systematic religious education and broad unselfish service. All of these are essential.
This lack of cooperation is very widely in evidence in the division of country communities into petty little churches, so small and ineffective as to be objects of pity instead of respect and enthusiastic loyalty. In the older sections of the country, rural communities often have twice as many churches as are needed; but in the middle West and the still newer sections further westward the problem of divided Christian forces is even more serious. Many a small township has five churches where one or two would be quite sufficient, and all are struggling for existence. The problem is less serious in the South, where denominations are fewer and where union services are exceedingly common.
In a sparsely settled section in Center County, Pennsylvania, there are 24 churches within a radius of four miles. This fact was vouched for in 1911 by thePresbyterian Department of the Church and Country Life. The same authority suggests the following:
In Marshall County, Indiana, with a total population of but 24,175, there are twenty-nine varieties of churches, separating Christian people. The situation is typical and the names are so suggestive as to be worth recording: Amish Mennonite, Baptist, Primitive Baptist, Brethren, Catholic, Christian, Church of Christ Scientist, Church of God (Adventists), Church of God (Saints), Come-Outers, Congregational, Disciple, Episcopalian, Evangelical Association, German Evangelical, Holiness, Lutheran (Synod of Chicago), Lutheran (Synod of Missouri), Swedish Lutheran, Methodist Episcopal, Methodist Protestant, Pentecostal Holiness, Presbyterian, Progressive Brethren, Reformed, Seventh Day Adventist, United Brethren, United Brethren (Old Constitution), and Wesleyan Methodist.
The village of Lapaz in this county has only 252 inhabitants, but there are three churches. They have 20 members all told! There are 68 persons in the village who claim to be church members, but 48 belong to churches of 12 denominations elsewhere. There are 93 people affiliated with no church whatever; and no boy or young man in the village belongs to any church. No wonder!
III. Rural Morals and the Recreation Problem.
Lack of Wholesome Social Life for Young People
In three adjoining townships in Indiana there are 21 country churches, all but four of which are dead ordying. The average membership is 52. One of the local leaders significantly said, “We don’t believe in any social life in our church. Socialism never saved anybody.” Exactly. Such churches ought to die and certainly will.
The perfectly natural craving in all healthy young people for social life is a fact the rural districts fail to appreciate. By years of drudgery the farmers and their wives may starve to death this social craving in themselves. The work-slave forgets how to play and outlives his social hungers. But his children are not born that way. They have natural human instincts and appetites and these imperiously demand opportunity for expression. The religion that imagines that these things are born of Satan and must be repressed, is a religion of death not life.
It is worse than useless for the church to discourage the social life among its young people. If it tries to starve their social hungers and furnishes no chance in the church for young people to meet freely in friendly intercourse, those young people will meet elsewhere, as surely as the moon shines. To put the ban of the church on dancing and all other popular amusements, and then offer no substitute whatever, is not only unreasoning cruelty, it is pure foolishness.
You cannot hope to dam a stream and make no other outlet. Undoubtedly the country dance is usually a bad social enterprise; but the only way to fight it successfully is with social competition, not opposition. The loyalty of young people to the church often begins when they discover the church people really understand their social cravings and are doing somethingsensible to meet them. Happy the village where the young people have all their best times under Christian leadership.
But unfortunately rural life is seriously lacking, both in and out of the church, in social opportunities; and the condition is far worse than in generations past. To begin with, farmers’ families are perhaps only two-thirds as large as they used to be.[25]There are fewer children in the home and in the school. Farm machinery has displaced three-fourths of the hired men. Fewer older boys are really needed on the father’s farm; so they are free to go to the city where the social life strongly attracts them. The same is all too true of the farm daughters.
The incoming of urban standards has helped to displace the old-fashioned rural recreations which were natural to country life, and the taste for vaudeville, the public dance, amusement parks and picture shows has developed instead. The husking-bees and the apple-cuttings and the sugaring-offs, the quilting bees and the singing schools and spelling matches, wholesome, home-made neighborhood pastimes, which meant enjoyment from within instead of mere amusement from without, have silently disappeared. Little remains in many rural places but unmitigated toil, relieved by an occasional social spasm in the nearest village. In short, recreation has become commercialized. Instead of the normal expression of the social instinct in cooperative and wholesome pleasures which were natural to country life, social stimulus is bought for a nickelor a quarter; and an electric age furnishes forthwith the desired nerve excitement.
Lack of Recreation and Organized Play
This modern sort of recreation is not as good as the old for two reasons. It is really a sort of intoxication instead of a mild stimulant; and it is often solitary instead of social. Solitary pleasure is subtle selfishness. Even the rural sports are apt to be solitary, such as hunting and fishing. If the country is ever to be socialized and a spirit of cooperation developed which will make possible strong team-work in business, politics and religion, then we must begin with the laboratory practice of organized play. As a successful country minister says, “The reason why farmers cannot seem to cooperate when they are grown up is in the fact thatthey did not learn team-play when they were boys.” Faithfulness to the daily work is a great character builder, but Dr. Luther H. Gulick rightly insists that play, because of its highly voluntary character, trains men in a better morality than work does.
Especially is this true of wage-earners, students in school, and all those who work for others. As Dr. Wilson in his fine chapter on Rural Morality and Recreation, so well says, “What we do for hire, or under the orders of other people, or in the routine of life is done because we have to. We do not choose the minor acts of study in school, of work in the factory, of labor in the house, of composition in writing a book. All these little acts are part of a routine which is imposed upon us and we call them work.But play is entirely voluntary. Every action is chosen, and expresses will and preference. Therefore play is highly moral. It is the bursting up of our own individuality and it expresses especially in the lesser things, the preferences of life. The great school for training men in the little things that make up the bulk of character is team-work and cooperation in play. Here is the school of obedience to others, of self-sacrifice for a company and for a common end, of honor and truthfulness, of the subordination of one to another, of courage, of persistent devotion to a purpose, and of cooperation.”[26]
Morality and the Play Spirit
The undeniable fact that rural morality is so closely dependent upon wholesome recreation makes this subject a most vital one. Life in the country ought to be sweeter, purer and morally stronger than life in the city. The very fact thatincognitolife is impossible in the country is a great moral restraint. But the moral stamina of country people will surely give way, under stress of constant toil, unless relieved by play and its wholesome reactions. Investigate the sad stories of sexual immorality so common among country young people and you will find one of the ultimate causes to be the serious lack of wholesome recreation and organized play. The recreation problem is fundamental in this matter of rural morality and the sooner we face the facts the sooner we shall see a cleaner village life.
It is not enough to encourage occasional socials andpicnics, track athletics and baseball games under church auspices, as a sort ofsocial bait, to attract and attach people to the church. The Y. M. C. A. has taught us that these social and physical things areessential in and of themselves. They cannot be neglected safely. In a sense they are moral safety-valves, for releasing animal spirits which might be dangerous to the community under pressure. Certainly some measure of play is needed to keep the balance of sanity and efficiency in all human lives. Rural life, made solitary and mechanical by modern farm machinery, is seriously lacking in the play spirit and team-play practice. Here is its most serious failure in cooperative living. Here its socialization must begin.
B.THE NEW COOPERATION IN COUNTRY COMMUNITIES
I. Social Cooperation.
The Problem of Community Socialization
The seriousness of the problem as described in the previous pages has not been overstated, though dwellers in progressive and comfortable country communities may think so. Let them be duly thankful if their social environment is better than the average here described. Speaking from broad experience of the tragic results of rural individualism, Mr. John R. Boardman says, “There is a great social impulse in the country but its force is centrifugal. It tends to split up the community into jealous, suspiciousgroups, and we therefore find sects and parties disintegrating and multiplying often by division. This is nothing short ofa social crime. Strong measures must be taken not only to prevent further social stratification of a prejudicial character, but to compel a practical organic federation which will unite the personal forces, combine available resources and focus on mutual interests.”
Country folks must learn to cooperate; to live harmoniously together in rural neighborhoods, to find real recreation in organized play, to work effectively at mutual tasks and to utilize more successfully all social organizations and means for community welfare. Interdependence must be made to take the place of boasted independence. Selfish individualism must yield to social cooperation. Only thus can life in the open country be made to survive. Otherwise tenant farming will continue to increase and a rural peasantry finally develop on the land, with absentee landlords living in comfort in the more normal social conditions of the villages and towns. Already 37% of farm owners do not live on their farms; and the farm renter is cursing the soil.
This acute social problem is a great challenge to true lovers of the country. We believe rural life will survive the test. In most respects it has made great progress in recent years, and in many quarters it is rapidly learning the practical value of cooperation. Given adequate, intelligent leadership, country life will surely grow in social efficiency and happiness, and thus be better able to hold its best people loyal to the open country.
The problem, then, of socializing the community so that it will cooperate successfully, is to unite all the personal and social resources, federate all worth-while institutions for concerted action for mutual welfare; then “focus on mutual interests” and work together on the common tasks. Fellowship in work or play is a great uniter of hearts. It irresistibly develops a community spirit.
Who Shall Take the Initiative?
Woe to the man who starts anything in the country! He must have a good cause and an obvious reason. The success of any rural enterprise usually depends overwhelmingly upon its leader. In a “Get Together Campaign” for community betterment, the strongest local personality or institution would better issue the call. If there is a strong Farmers’ Club, or Cooperative Association, or Community Library Board, or a Village Board of Trade with community ideals, they may well assume the right to take the first step toward an ultimate union of all the community interests. If there is only a single church in the place and it commands the respect and loyalty of the people, it may well be the federating agency. Or the strongest church can invite in the others and together they can make this movement a community welfare proposition with a definitely religious stamp; working through committees of a church federation in the interests of all the people. Often this is best done by the Rural Young Men’s Christian Association, working in behalf of all the churches.
In short, whatever institution controls the greatestlocal influence, and is most representative of the people, has the best right to take the lead in socializing the community. Perhaps it may not be a religious body at all. It may be a social club, or a village improvement society, or a civic league, or a Rural Progress Association embodying modern rural ideals. If it has the backing of the people, it is responsible for using its social influence in the most effective way. For instance, in the prosperous little rural community of Evergreen, Iowa, the popular and effective socializing agency is “The Evergreen Sporting Association”! It unites all the young people in the neighborhood, both married and unmarried, and for some fifteen years has had a fine record for social efficiency. By its elaborate and varied annual program of popular interests it has made life in Evergreen wholesome, happy and worth while. The young people as a rule are loyal to the place and stay on their prosperous farms instead of losing themselves in the city.
A Community Plan for Socialization
Rural social life is simple and should be kept so. Elaborate organization is never necessary. What we need is that “touch of human nature which makes the whole world kin.” We do not need another institution, but possibly a social center and a working plan which can express and develop the common humanhood. The place may be an up to date “Neighborhood House” with rest room and reading room with its chimney corner; a place for tired mothers and babies, and a meeting place for men of business; or it may be just a room at the church or the school houseor the public library, easily accessible to all. Or the social spirit can be developed wholly without any special equipment. The main point is the growth of community ideals and a willingness to work together to attain them.
The plan should be the result of careful study of community needs by the social survey method, and a more or less definite program of constructive propositions to work out as conditions allow. It may be a thorough-going plan from the start, or a gradual growth as the vision enlarges; in any case it should embody and stimulate the community desire for progress. The first result of such a community effort will be a natural reaction on the local institutions, tending to encourage them and help them to function normally; bringing a finer spirit of cooperation into the church, new efficiency into the school and a revival of responsibility in many homes. The beautifying of public and private grounds, the establishing of play grounds and possibly a lecture or entertainment course, the stimulating of the local social life in an infinite variety of ways, will be suggested in detail by the local needs.
The Gospel of Organized Play
“A new gospel of the recreative life needs to be proclaimed in the country,” says J. R. Boardman. “Rural America must be compelled to play. It has, to a degree, toiled itself into deformity, disease, depravity and depression. Its long hours of drudgery, its jealousy of every moment of daylight, its scorn of leisure and of pleasure, must give way to shorter hoursof labor, occasional periods of complete relaxation and wholehearted participation in wholesome plays, picnics, festivals, games and other recreative amusements. Better health, greater satisfaction and a richer life wait on the wise development of this recreative ideal.”[27]