Ten years ago that community had an unsuccessful church of the old type, gathering a small congregation from week to week but with little influence outside. No one had joined the church for five years. The last minister had resigned in discouragement, with six months’ arrears in salary. The “New Era Club,” a mile away, was wooing all the young people away from the church to its frequent dancing parties; while the church offered no substitute, and helplessly grew weaker year by year.
But in the past ten years a fine modern church building has been built, with fourteen rooms for all purposes, and paid for in cash; the manse has been remodeled; the pastor’s salary nearly doubled; about as much given to benevolences as in the half-century preceding; the Sunday school has grown to 300 members; the people from miles away flock to the preaching services, the lectures, concerts and socials; large numbers have been added to the church; while the “New Era Club” has been crumbling into ruin, simply starved out by religious competition! There has not been a dance there for eight or nine years, though the pastor has never preached against it.
This all began with an old-fashioned singing schoolwhich gathered together the young people socially at the church; and from this simple beginning, other plans developed which met the needs of the people and won their loyalty. Though the pastor modestly disclaims special merit or ability, the man who cannot only keep his preaching services at a high standard of success and keep up a system of cottage prayer meetings throughout his parish as centers of the spiritual life, and also gather over 2,000 people for the annual community plowing contest (more than double the population of the whole township) must be a personality to be reckoned with! There is, however, nothing in the situation or in the program of successful achievement which could not be duplicated elsewhere in thousands of purely rural communities, given the same kind of intelligent leadership and consecrated cooperation.
Oberlin: The Prince of Country Ministers
With all the resources of our modern church life, it is doubtful if there has ever been a country pastor more strikingly efficient or broadly influential than Johann Friedrich Oberlin, who died nearly a century ago. He was pastor of four rural parishes in the Vosges Mountains for over sixty years and became the most beloved and influential person in the entire section. He was a graduate of Strassburg University and declined a city pulpit in order to accept the most needy and difficult field of service which he could find. The people of Ban-de-la-Roche to whom he came were a rude mountain folk isolated fromcivilization; but since Oberlin’s work of transformation they have been a prosperous, happy people with many of the marks of culture.
Seven years before his death, Pastor Oberlin received the gold medal of the Legion of Honor from the King of France, “for services which he has rendered in his pastorate during fifty-three years, employing constant efforts for the amelioration of the people, for zeal in the establishment of schools and their methods of instruction, and the many branches of industry and the advancement of agriculture and the improvement of roads, which have made that district flourishing and happy.” The National Agricultural Society gave him a gold medal for “prodigies accomplished in silence in this almost unknown corner of the Vosges,... in a district before his arrival almost savage,” and into which he had brought “the best methods of agriculture and the purest lights of civilization.”
In the early stages of his remarkable career his narrow-minded people opposed every step he took in the direction of community progress. They resented his doing anything but preaching. When he proposed that they build a passable road over the mountains to civilization they jeered at the idea. But he shouldered his pick and began the task, and ere long they joined him. Together they built the first real highway and bridged the mountain stream. Out of a salary of $200 a year he paid most of the expense of two new schoolhouses, because the people refused to help. The other villages, however, saw the improvement and built their own. He graduallyrevolutionized the educational methods, and even in the course of years, succeeded in supplanting the mountain dialect with Parisian French. He studied and then taught agriculture, and horticulture, introducing new crops, new vegetables (including the potato), and new fruits; even reclaiming the impoverished soil by scientific methods which gradually won the respect of even the dullest of his people.
In all his reforms he kept his religious aim and purpose foremost and his church never suffered but constantly grew in influence and popular appreciation. Gradually he became the honored pastor, the “Protestant saint,” of the whole mountainside. Lutherans, Catholics and Calvinists attended his services. They would even partake of the sacrament together and he furnished them with three kinds of bread, to suit their diverse customs, wafers for the Romanists and bread leavened for the Calvinists and unleavened for the Lutherans; and thus they lived together in peace!
The Force of Oberlin’s Example
Few modern ministers perhaps will need to follow in detail the example of Johann Friedrich Oberlin, but the sacrificial spirit and working principles of his life ministry are as necessary as ever. As President K. L. Butterfield states so well, “Rural parishes in America that present the woeful conditions of the Ban-de-la-Roche in 1767 may not be common, though of that let us not be too sure. The same underground work that Oberlin did may not need doingby every rural clergyman. Schools are busy in every parish. Forces of socialization and cooperation are at work. The means of agricultural training are at hand. Yet the underlying philosophy of Oberlin’s life work must be the fundamental principle of the great country parish work of the future. Oberlin believed in the unity of life, the marriage of labor and learning. He knew that social justice, intelligent toil, happy environment are bound up with the growth of the spirit. They act and react upon one another.
More than a century ago this great man labored for a lifetime as a country minister. He knew all the souls in his charge to their core. He loved them passionately. He refused to leave them for greater reward and easier work. He studied their problems. He toiled for his people incessantly. He transformed their industry and he regenerated their lives. He built a new and permanent rural civilization that endures to this day unspoiled. The parishes about the little village of Waldersbach thus became a laboratory in which the call of the country parish met a deep answer of success and peace.”[37]
Test Questions on Chapter VII1.—How important do you consider the country church as an agency for rural betterment?2.—How important might it become if it lived up to its opportunity?3.—What four stages do you find in the development of the rural church in America? Describe this evolution.4.—Contrast the old and the new ideals in country church work.5.—What is the main business of a church in the country community and what do you regard as the real test of its efficiency?6.—Describe what you think is the broad function of the church in serving the rural community.7.—If the church meets its opportunity in this broad way what will it gain by it?8.—What do you think about the church’s responsibility for spiritual leadership?9.—Take some country church of your own acquaintance and tell what you think it ought to be doing to build up its community.10.—Name the chief reasons why many rural churches are so weak and ineffective.11.—Make a list of factors which would help to make these churches successful.12.—If local prosperity is at low ebb or the farmers are unsuccessful, what can the church people do about it? Illustrate what has been done.13.—Why should the church not merely serve its own membership but the whole community?14.—Why is sectarian competition particularly bad for the country sections?15.—How can a country village get rid of its surplus churches?16.—What can a church federation accomplish in a community? In a county? In a state?17.—Why is a permanent resident pastor so necessary to country church success? What must be done to make this to any extent possible?18.—What should be the “minimum wage” for a country pastor and how can this be secured? Illustrate how this has been accomplished near Cleveland.19.—Should denominational home mission boards help pay the salary of their ministers in over-churched communities? What can be done about this?20.—Draw a rough practical plan of a modern church building costing not over $10,000, and suited to rural needs.21.—Suggest a practical plan of work for laymen in the country church.22.—Discuss the religious usefulness of a community social survey. What local facts would you try to gather?23.—What do you think of the opportunity and importance of Sunday-school work in the country?24.—Why is the Bible particularly well adapted to people living in the country?25.—Why are rural Sunday schools often so unsuccessful?26.—Discuss possible improvements and suggest how you would accomplish them.27.—What do you think of the general plan of the Rural Young Men’s Christian Association work?28.—Tell how it is helping the country boy.29.—Discuss the working principles of this “County Work.”30.—Describe the broad opportunities for community Christian service which come to the County Work secretary.31.—What Christian work in country villages needs to be done by the Young Women’s Christian Association?32.—Why do you find so often to-day a “two-mile dead line for religion”?33.—What work in the surrounding country can be in a prairie church at Plainfield, Illinois.34.—Do you believe in the permanent usefulness of the church in the open country?35.—Tell the story of modern country church success in a prairie church at Plainfield, Illinois.36.—What were the secrets of the success of that particular church in the open country? Is there any reason why 10,000 other rural churches cannot learn to do the same?37.—Who was Johann Friedrich Oberlin?38.—Discuss his remarkable life work as a country pastor. What do you think of his rural church program?39.—Make a list of the successful country churches and ministers you have known and the chief reasons for their success.40.—Describe the ideal country church of the future.
Test Questions on Chapter VII
1.—How important do you consider the country church as an agency for rural betterment?
2.—How important might it become if it lived up to its opportunity?
3.—What four stages do you find in the development of the rural church in America? Describe this evolution.
4.—Contrast the old and the new ideals in country church work.
5.—What is the main business of a church in the country community and what do you regard as the real test of its efficiency?
6.—Describe what you think is the broad function of the church in serving the rural community.
7.—If the church meets its opportunity in this broad way what will it gain by it?
8.—What do you think about the church’s responsibility for spiritual leadership?
9.—Take some country church of your own acquaintance and tell what you think it ought to be doing to build up its community.
10.—Name the chief reasons why many rural churches are so weak and ineffective.
11.—Make a list of factors which would help to make these churches successful.
12.—If local prosperity is at low ebb or the farmers are unsuccessful, what can the church people do about it? Illustrate what has been done.
13.—Why should the church not merely serve its own membership but the whole community?
14.—Why is sectarian competition particularly bad for the country sections?
15.—How can a country village get rid of its surplus churches?
16.—What can a church federation accomplish in a community? In a county? In a state?
17.—Why is a permanent resident pastor so necessary to country church success? What must be done to make this to any extent possible?
18.—What should be the “minimum wage” for a country pastor and how can this be secured? Illustrate how this has been accomplished near Cleveland.
19.—Should denominational home mission boards help pay the salary of their ministers in over-churched communities? What can be done about this?
20.—Draw a rough practical plan of a modern church building costing not over $10,000, and suited to rural needs.
21.—Suggest a practical plan of work for laymen in the country church.
22.—Discuss the religious usefulness of a community social survey. What local facts would you try to gather?
23.—What do you think of the opportunity and importance of Sunday-school work in the country?
24.—Why is the Bible particularly well adapted to people living in the country?
25.—Why are rural Sunday schools often so unsuccessful?
26.—Discuss possible improvements and suggest how you would accomplish them.
27.—What do you think of the general plan of the Rural Young Men’s Christian Association work?
28.—Tell how it is helping the country boy.
29.—Discuss the working principles of this “County Work.”
30.—Describe the broad opportunities for community Christian service which come to the County Work secretary.
31.—What Christian work in country villages needs to be done by the Young Women’s Christian Association?
32.—Why do you find so often to-day a “two-mile dead line for religion”?
33.—What work in the surrounding country can be in a prairie church at Plainfield, Illinois.
34.—Do you believe in the permanent usefulness of the church in the open country?
35.—Tell the story of modern country church success in a prairie church at Plainfield, Illinois.
36.—What were the secrets of the success of that particular church in the open country? Is there any reason why 10,000 other rural churches cannot learn to do the same?
37.—Who was Johann Friedrich Oberlin?
38.—Discuss his remarkable life work as a country pastor. What do you think of his rural church program?
39.—Make a list of the successful country churches and ministers you have known and the chief reasons for their success.
40.—Describe the ideal country church of the future.
A.A CHALLENGE TO COLLEGE MEN
I. The Relation of the Colleges to This Problem.
A New Interest and Sense of Responsibility
It has been plain from the start that this book is a book with a purpose. Its object was frankly stated in the preface and the author at least has not forgotten it in a single chapter. These seven preceding chapters have condensed the facts of country life in its strength and weakness and have voiced the modern call for rural leadership. Every call for trained leadership must come ultimately to the college man. Both the need and the worthiness of rural life, its social and religious crisis and its strategic signs of promise, bring the challenge of the country to the man in college.
For two or three years past there have been groups of men in various universities meeting weekly to discuss this problem. In comparing the needs of various fields of service and weighing their own fitness for various tasks, they wished to study the opportunities in rural life for consecrated leadership. These groups are certain to multiply. Alert college men even in city colleges have discovered that we have to-day not only a complicated countryproblembut agreat rural lifeopportunity; a problem intricate enough to challenge earnest investigation by thoughtful students, and an opportunity for a life mission worthy of strong men.
General College Neglect of the Rural Call
The writer firmly believes that the city has been claiming too large a proportion of college graduates in recent years and that the needs of country life are not receiving due consideration. A large majority of students in most colleges come from the country. Has not the country a right to claim its fair share of these young men and women after they have been trained for a useful life? If only 15% of the students at Princeton come from the country we cannot complain if practically all of them after graduation go to the city; but when nearly all the students at Marietta College (Ohio) come from the country and 65% of them go to the city, we wonder why. Likewise 70% of the students at Stanford University (Calif.) were country bred, but only 25% return to country life after college days. At Williams (Mass.), a city boys’ college, only 24% come from the country and about 15% return; but at Pacific University (Ore.) 95% come from the country (80% from very small communities) yet only 45% resist the city’s call. Bowdoin (Maine) gets but 47% of its students from the city, but returns 70%; The University of Kansas receives but 44% of its students from cities, yet contributes to cities three-fourths of its graduates; while Whitman (Wn.)receives but 40% from the city yet returns 80%. Hillsdale (Mich.), a country college with a fine spirit of service, does better; receiving 95% of its students from small towns and villages, it returns all but 26%. “Practically all” the students at Adelbert College (Ohio) enter city work on graduation, though 30% of them are country bred.
It is entirely natural in institutions like the University of Illinois, Ohio State University and Cornell, where there are strong agricultural colleges, that there should be the keenest interest in the welfare and needs of country life; but is it not time that other institutions faced more frankly the responsibility of training more of their students for country life leadership? Certainly, with the splendid signs of promise in country life to-day and the opportunities for a life mission there, no thoughtful man can refuse to consider it.
The Stake of the City in Rural Welfare
It was quite natural that the rapidly growing city should attract a large proportion of college men preparing for business and professional life and various kinds of religious and social service. Not only have larger opportunities for earning money usually been found there, but the city has certainly needed the men. The call of the city in its dire need of Christian idealism and consecrated leadership has been as urgent and definite a call to service as ever a crusader heard. Dr. Strong’s eloquent appeal to earnest young people in his “Challenge of the City” is by no means extravagant. His facts are facts and his logic isconvincing. He is quite right in saying, “We must save the city in order to save the nation. We must Christianize the city or see our civilization paganized.” But even if “in a generation the city will dominate the nation,”where are the men who will then dominate the city? Most of them are now in the country towns and villages getting ready for their task, developing physical, mental and moral power in the pure atmosphere and sunlight of a normal life. To work on the city problem is a great life chance; butto train rural leadership is to help solve the city problem at its source.
Thus, the bigger and more urgent the city problem becomes, the more necessary it will be to solve the rural problem, for the city must continue to draw much of its best blood and its best leadership from the country. Professor M. T. Scudder explains in a sentence why this is a continuing fact: “The fully developed rural mind, the product of its environment, is more original, more versatile, more accurate, more philosophical, more practical, more persevering than the urban mind; it is a larger, freer mind and dominates tremendously. It is because of this type of farm-bred mind that our leaders have largely come from rural life.”[38]City leaders, of course, ought to betrained in the city, and they usually are, even though born and bred in the country.
Rural Progress Waiting for Trained Leadership
Leadership is the ultimate factor in every life problem. No movement can rise above the level of itsleadership. In many fields to-day, progress is lagging because of inadequate leadership. This is acutely true in all phases of rural life. Rural progress is halting for the lack of trained leadership. The colleges must be held responsible for furnishing it.
The agricultural colleges are rising magnificently to their opportunity and are striving to keep pace with the demands made upon them for technically-trained rural leaders. But though some of them double their enrolment every three or four years they cannot supply graduates fast enough for the various agricultural professions, quite aside from other kinds of country life leaders.
All schools of higher education must share the task of training and furnishing rural leadership. The broadening of country life, and its rising standards, puts increasing demands upon its untrained leaders which they are unable to meet. Rural institutions can no longer serve their communities effectively under the leadership of men lacking in the very essentials of leadership. Many country communities are demanding now as high-grade personality and training in their leaders as the cities demand, and they refuse to respond to crude or untrained leadership. Well-trained doctors, ministers, teachers, et cetera, have a great chance to-day in the country, because theirtrainingfinds unique appreciation for its very rarity and efficiency; while every profession is foolishly overcrowded in all cities.
As soon as adequate leadership, well trained and developed, is furnished our country communities, they will develop a rural efficiency which will make the ruralproblem largely a thing of the past. But until then, progress halts. Leadership is costly. Trained, efficient personality, ready for expert service is rare and beyond price. The colleges are lavishly sending it to the cities. The country deserves its share and patiently presents its claims.
II. Rural Opportunities for Community Builders.
The Call for Country Educators
There is little need of emphasizing to college students the opportunities of the teaching profession. Since 1900 teaching has claimed more graduates than any other life work. Taking 27 representative colleges as typical, more than one-fourth of all college graduates become teachers, the percentage having doubled since 1875. Of the class of 1911 in Oberlin College (both men and women), 60% have been teaching during their first year out; while of the men in the ten classes 1896-1905, 27% are still engaged in teaching, presumably as their permanent work.
Unfortunately the smaller salaries paid rural teachers has made the country school seem unattractive, and when accepted by young collegians by necessity rather than choice, it has been regarded often merely as an apprenticeship for buying experience, a stepping-stone to a city position. Country salaries of course must be increased, and they certainly will be, with the new development of rural life and the steady improvement in schools; especially with increased state aid which is more and more generously given.
With a living wage already possible in centralized schools, and the great personal rewards which far transcend the material benefits, the life of the country teacher is one of true privilege and deep satisfaction. College men should regard it as a genuinecallingand discover whether its call is for them. If a man has no real love for country life, let him not blight the country school by his subtle urbanizing influence. Most rural discontent is caused by such as he. But if his heart is open to the sky and the woods and the miracles of the soil; if he loves sincerity in human nature and appreciates the sturdy qualities and vast possibilities for development in country boys and girls, he will revel in the breadth and freedom and boundless outreach of his work.
If he is a man of vision and of power, the country school principal has greater local influence and social standing than he would have in the city. He has the finest chance to make his personality count in the great Country Life Movement, sharing his visions of a richer, redirected rural life not only with his pupils but every citizen and gradually leavening the whole community with a new ambition for progress. The responsibility for training the local leaders of the future devolves upon the teacher. It is he who can best teach a wholesome love for country life and help to stem the townward tide. He can organize around the school the main interests of his boys and girls and develop the impulse for cooperation which in time will displace the old competitive individualism and make social life congenial and satisfying. Through organized play, inter-community athletics,community festivals, old-home week, lyceums or debating clubs in the winter, with occasional neighborhood entertainments utilizing home talent, contests in cooking and various other phases of home economics, in corn-raising and other agricultural interests,—the possibilities are endless for making the school the vital social center of the rural community. It will all take time and energy and ingenuity. It will cost vitality, as all life-sharing does. But though it costs, the sharing of life is the greatest joy, and it is the teacher’s privilege in large measure. It is the measure of his true success as well as his happiness. Investing one’s life in a group of boys will yield far greater results in the country than in the city where their lives are already so full they would little appreciate it.
Professor H. W. Foght says three things are now required of the teacher of a rural school. “(1) he must be strong enough to establish himself as a leader in the community where he lives and labors; (2) he must have a good grasp on the organization and management of the new kind of farm school; and (3) he must show expert ability in dealing with the redirected school curriculum.”[39]In short, if he lives up to his opportunity as a rural leader, he will train his boys and girls distinctly for rural life, giving them not only the rudiments of agricultural training, but an enthusiasm for farming from the scientific side as the most complex of all professions; utilizing the vast resources the country affords for teaching objectively, not merely through hooks, and thus bridge the gap between the school and life.
The Call of the Country Church
The modern college man is not attracted to the ministry of the country churches which are conducted along old lines. If that ministry is to consist merely in preaching once or twice a week to half a hundred people, conducting a mid-week service for one-fifth of that number and doing the marrying and the burying and the parish calling for a fraction of a rural community divided among three struggling churches, then the college man refuses to be interested. Consequently we find most of such churches are manned by untrained men. They usually receive the wages of an unskilled laborer. Trained ministers usually receive a living wage. The college man demands at least a man’s job; a chance to invest his life where his whole personality will count and where his energy and perseverance will be allowed to work out his problems to a successful issue.
Let us grant at the start that churches which have no real field, in a community that is over-churched, need not expect to get our college men for pastors. If they have only a fraction of a field, let them have half a man. Likewise the church which is too selfish to offer the minimum living wage in return for faithful service must not expect a self-respecting, educated minister to serve it and at starvation rates. Even a martyr has no license to starve his wife and children to gain his starry crown. The church which gives no liberty to its pastor, but treats him like a hired man, and dictates his professional policy and perhaps even his pulpit messages, will of course nothold, if it ever should gain, a man of ability and initiative. And, lastly, the church which lacks the modern spirit, is hopelessly behind the times in its dogmatic teaching, rails at modern science as ungodly, and denies the social gospel of Jesus and the prophets, such a church will neither deserve nor desire the services of a college-trained man. His reverence for truth as well as loyalty to his own ideals would forbid his serving them.
Large Tasks Awaiting Real Leadership
While there are some small men with little training serving churches under the above conditions, there are also thousands of other churches striving to do God’s will in the service of men, many of them with earnest, able pastors. These men usually win the respect and confidence of their community and are given great opportunity as community builders when their leadership proves equal to the task. As the new rural civilization has developed, the title Country Minister has become once more a title of honor, just as the term Country Gentleman has again come to its own. In the readjustment of country life to the new agriculture and the new social ideals of cooperation, a new and brighter day has dawned for the country church. It is a day of new prosperity and of widening service.
This means a new opportunity for the right sort of a country minister sufficient to claim the life service of strong men. In fact, the task of readjustment is too difficult for any but strong men.Broken-down ministers, or men who have failed in the city, must not look to the country parsonage to-day as a refuge from toil or a temporary harbor for repairs. The insistent needs of the Kingdom of God in the country to-day demand strong, efficient men, specifically trained for country service and thoroughly acquainted with country folks and their life needs.We must have a permanently loyal country ministry for life, men who plan to devote their lives to rural redemption.
The Modern Type of Country Minister
College men of earnest spirit, who have determined to consecrate their lives to any life mission to which they believe God has called them, must listen to the call of the country church. The very difficulty of the task will challenge their interest and their courage. Would they know exactly the type of leadership the country church to-day requires? Let them study word by word this splendid description by Dr. Butterfield, unequalled in its clear analysis:
“The country church wants men of vision, who see through the incidental, the small and the transient, to the fundamental, the large, the abiding issues that the countryman must face and conquer.
“She wants practical men who seek the mountain top by the obscure and steep paths of daily toil and real living, men who can bring things to pass, secure tangible results.
“She wants original men, who can enter a human field, poorly tilled, much grown to brush, some of itof diminished fertility, and by new methods can again secure a harvest that will gladden the heart of the Great Husbandman.
“She wants aggressive men, who do not hesitate to break with tradition, who fear God more than prejudice, who regard institutions as but a means to an end, who grow frequent crops of new ideas and dare to winnow them with the flails of practical trial.
“She wants trained men who come to their work with knowledge and with power, who have thought long and deeply upon the problems of rural life, who have hammered out a plan for an active campaign for the rural church.
“She wants men with enthusiasm, whose energy can withstand the frosts of sloth, of habit, of pettiness, of envy, of back-biting, and whose spirit is not quenched by the waters of adversity, of unrealized hopes, of tottering schemes.
“She wants persistent men, who will stand by their task amid the mysterious calls from undiscovered lands, the siren voices of ambition and ease, the withering storms of winters of discontent.
“She wants constructive men, who can transmute visions into wood and stone, dreams into live institutions, hopes into fruitage.
“She wants heroic men, men who possess a ‘tart cathartic virtue,’ men who love adventure and difficulty, men who can work alone with God and suffer no sense of loneliness.
“The critical need just now is for a few strong men of large power to get hold of this country church question in a virile way. It is the time for leadership.We need a score of Oberlins to point the way by actually working out the problem on the field. We need a few men to achieve great results in the rural parish, to reestablish the leadership of the church. No organization can do it. No layman can do it. No educational institution can do it. A preacher must do it,—do it in spite of small salary, isolation, conservatism, restricted field, overchurching, or any other devil that shows its face. The call is imperative. Shall we be denied the men?”[40]
Presbyterian Church, Winchester, Ill.
Student Recruits for the Home Ministry
The Student Volunteer Bands in most of our colleges unite in a stimulating comradeship the young men and women who have pledged their lives to foreign missionary service. It is well worth while for our college men who have heard this call of the country church for this specialized service of Christ and humanity to organize local groups of Student Recruits for the Home Ministry, as has been done in various centers on the Pacific coast and at Oberlin College, Grinnell and elsewhere, under various names. At Oberlin this strong body of choice young men, in the college of arts and sciences, meets regularly through the year with a vitally helpful program which stimulates their intelligent interest in and loyalty to the ministry as the greatest of all professions. At the close of the year the members of this Theta Club, as it is called, are tendered a banquet by the students of Oberlin Theological Seminary, with a messagefrom some successful pastor. It is counted one of the most significant events of the college year.
The Call for Christian Physicians
There have been many followers of the Good Physician who have never been ordained except by the grace of God, whose consecrated devotion to the needs of sick humanity has been a genuine ministry. Often the Christian physician is the best friend of the family. Certainly he has countless opportunities to serve more than the bodily needs of men; and no man in the community is rendering more sacrificial service. He is ever at the call of human need, day or night. He heeds the call of the poorest as quickly as the wealthiest, and does from 5% to 30% of his work without remuneration. He is one of the most necessary factors in every community; yet for many rural communities the nearest up-to-date physician is many miles away.
In these days of specialists, “general practice” is relatively less attractive. There is some danger also that the fine idealism which has long characterized this splendid profession may yield to the growing commercialism which to-day threatens all professions like a canker. When surgeons operate for dollars instead of for a cure; and physicians make the art of healing strictly business instead of scientific kindness, it will be a sad day for humanity.
The work of the physician is not properly a business; it should be classed associal serviceof the highest order. In spite of the higher standards of medicalschools recently[41]with an emphasis on a general college preparation, fewer college men are going into medicine. The percentage has steadily decreased since 1850, and in the past twelve years there has been a sharp decline. The proportion at Harvard College has declined one-half in thirty years, though meanwhile Harvard Medical School has become a strictly graduate department.
It is evident that luxury-loving collegians are avoiding the medical profession to-day just as they are dodging the ministry. If they have capital of their own, business offers them a larger income and makes little demand upon their sympathies in personal service.Selfish men avoid the costs of life-sharingwhich a life in close personal associations compels, as is true of teaching, the ministry and the medical profession. But this is no handicap but greater opportunity, for men of real earnestness.
The Special Need of Country Doctors
The profession is seriously overcrowded in the cities, but people in the rural districts are literally dying for trained physicians. Some medical faculties are advising their graduates not to stay in the city but to settle in country villages where they are most needed, and where quite possibly they would find greatest success. “There are many towns in this state,” writes a medical professor, “with only 500 to 1,000 people, where a young physician could do well and where he is needed.”
Although, according to the best data obtainable, most medical graduates settle in cities,—the proportion at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York, being as high as 90%,—there is a rapidly increasing demand for them in the suburban and rural sections in the East because of the strong city-to-country movement. The secretary of the Harvard Medical faculty notes this: “With the advent of automobiles and the desire of people to live in the country, serious problems in medicine are frequently presented to the country practitioners.”
The need of educated physicians in country communities is well stated by Dr. Means of the Ohio Medical School: “The condition of medical practice in many of our country communities is deplorable. I can recall any number of places where there are two, three, four and five physicians and not one of them has had any post-graduate work from date of graduation, and none of them known to attend medical societies. Their professional work is on a par, no better, no worse, than that of their ancestors. I always feel that such communities sorely need an up-to-date physician who has been educated along the lines of modern sanitation and general medicine. The demand for a medical education has grown to such proportions in the last ten years that graduates, after having spent so much time and money, do not care to go into country practice. The five years or more that they spend in city environments while completing their medical education almost unfits them for country life. The result is that our cities are filling up with young physicians who can scarcely make aliving. These are men of character and proficiency who would give tone to any country community and supply a public want.”
The Unique Rewards of Country Practice
There are, to be sure, certain serious disadvantages under which the country physician labors, such as distance from hospitals and nurses; but these are overbalanced by the manifest need and greater opportunity. The situation is acute. For earnest college men, willing to invest their lives in rural leadership, this constitutes a real call to a life of service which may be God’s own call to them. No one who has ever read Ian Maclaren’s story of Dr. MacLure, “A Doctor of the Old School,” can fail to appreciate the peculiar devotion of country people to their trusted physician “who for nearly half a century had been their help in sickness, and had beaten back death time after time from their door.”
After the funeral of the good old doctor who had so long sacrificed his comfort for the people of Drumtochty, Lord Kilspindie from Muirtown Castle voiced at the grave this tribute to the faithful physician of country folk: “Friends of Drumtochty, it would not be right that we should part in silence and no man say what is in every heart. We have buried the remains of one that served this Glen with a devotion that has known no reserve, and a kindliness that never failed, for more than forty years. I have seen many brave men in my day, but no man in the trenches of Sebastopol carried himself more knightlythan William MacLure. You will never have heard from his lips what I may tell you to-day, that my father secured for him a valuable post in his younger days; but he preferred to work among his own people. I wished to do many things for him when he was old, but he would have nothing for himself. He will never be forgotten while one of us lives, and I pray that all doctors everywhere may share his spirit.” “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”
The Rural Call to the Legal Profession
Though the legal profession is greatly overcrowded in the city, trained lawyers are scarce in the country. “My impression is,” says a law school dean, “very few of the country lawyers are professionally trained men, especially in the South and some of our western states.” Another dean estimates the number of trained country lawyers as about one-fourth. The older lawyers in the small places are apt to be the best trained, according to the judgment of Dean Irvine at Cornell Law School; though that rule is often reversed in the cities. “Rarely does a law school graduate settle down in a town of less than 5,000 people,” says the dean at Boston University. The great majority of Columbia law graduates remain in New York City. Eighty to ninety per cent. of Cornell lawyers settle in cities above 10,000 people.
The secretary of the law faculty of the University of Michigan believes “there is a need of one or more trained lawyers in every community of a thousandpeople. Such a lawyer would, of course, serve the surrounding country as well as the town in which he lives.” Dean Harlan F. Stone of Columbia writes: “I believe that there will be in the future exceptional opportunities for the well-trained lawyer in the smaller communities. He will probably not make as much money as with a large city practice, but if he possesses good general qualifications andintegrityit is inevitable that he should be an influential man in his community, and live a useful and, from the broad point of view, successful life. His chances of entering politics or going on the bench in the right way are probably better than in the large cities.”
Here, as in the other professions, the choice seems to be between larger earnings in the city and larger rewards in the country; greater fees, with less relative appreciation, or the finer rewards of gratitude for personal services and neighborly kindness and the broad opportunity for influence and leadership in a place where both are greatly needed. The call to college men with the legal mind and a passion for justice, to practice law in the country, is a true call for Christian consecration. It probably will involve some financial sacrifice, but it will mean a life of great satisfaction. The true man who heeds this call will become the trusted adviser of the widow, the protector of the defenseless and the innocent, the righter of many wrongs, the peacemaker in needless feuds, the incorporator of cooperative business projects which will fraternalize old competitions, the public spirited leader in all new movements for the betterment of rural life; and, if God wills and thepeople choose, a career in straight politics, which nowhere needs highminded leadership more than in some rural counties where the ballot is a mere chattel and public office a private graft.
Life Opportunities in Agricultural Professions
College men are apt to overlook the fact that, after all, the fundamental professions in the country are those directly connected with agriculture. The scientific agriculturist, who tills the soil as accurately as the engineer constructs a bridge and with possibly higher scientific requirements, will naturally be the prime agent in rural progress. It is good to see the enthusiasm of students in agriculture after they have caught this vision. “I like farming,” writes a student at the State College of Washington, “and believe there is as much room for scientific work in agriculture as any other line of work.” Another writes, “I think there are great opportunities open for agriculture in this Northwest. At first I thought I never would like the farm because I could see nothing but work; but I have become acquainted with some of the possibilities and find there is something besides drudgery.”
The city person of average intelligence who thinks farming is “just farming” would be amazed to discover the breadth and variety of agricultural professions. Besides scientific husbandry in general, there is animal husbandry and the breeding of blooded stock, dairying, farm management, horticulture, agricultural engineering and technology, particularly inirrigation, forestry, veterinary surgery and medicine, fruit-growing, entomology specializing, parasitology, plant pathology, agronomy and cereal breeding, agricultural chemistry, landscape architecture, agricultural editing, agricultural teaching, from elementary grades to university, institute lecturing, weather bureau service, scientific investigating at government experiment stations, and public service in great variety under state and national departments of agriculture. In all of these there is a chance for college men to invest their lives and reap the rewards of real influence.
Some Special Rural Opportunities
In answer to the question “What special opportunities are there in country life to-day which should appeal to college students to invest their lives in the country?” Secretary Mann of the Cornell faculty summarized as follows: “Successful farming; teaching or supervising the teaching of agriculture; scientific investigations at home or in government stations; rural landscape improvement; agricultural experts as county agents or officers; local agricultural experts on individual responsibility; agricultural police duty, including inspectors of all sorts in state and national departments of agriculture; organizing of cooperative societies; agricultural advisers in the employ of railroads, chambers of commerce and the like; representatives of commercial organizations that desire to extend their operations into the open country, as for farm machinery concerns, manufacturers of packages, dairy supply houses, canning industries andthe like; social betterment; rural Y. M. C. A. work; supervisors of rural playgrounds; and rural civic improvement.” The list is surely a varied one, broad enough to fit any variety of talent, when a man has a real love for rural life and wishes to find his life usefulness in the country.
A most pertinent suggestion comes from Dean Meyer of the Agricultural Department of theUniversityof Missouri which college students may well consider: “The greatest need of the rural community to-day is cooperation; but no plan of cooperation can ever be successful among farmers in the absence of some one, or a very few men who have all the qualifications ofoutstanding leadership. There is a real call for our college trained men to go into the country, study local conditions, and then promote a plan of business cooperation. If this is successful he may then expect with equal success to carry on a plan for social cooperation which will lead to a betterment of the home, the church and the school.” Again we are reminded that the ultimate problem is leadership, the costliest thing in the world; but the very commodity of personality which college men ought to have ready for wise investment. It is the call forcommunity buildersall along the country-side which forces itself upon the strongest men of brave initiative, of courage, tact and ability. This call, a modern call of new insistence and vast significance, should challenge the college man like a call to battle.
The Call of the County Work Secretary
Among the many calls to a life of service whichchallenge the college man, one of the most urgent is the call to rural leadership in the Young Men’s Christian Association. It is peculiarly a college man’s task. Possibly one country lawyer in four is professionally trained. The percentage of educated country ministers is smaller still. Country doctors, though usually medical graduates, are very seldom college men. But the rural secretary of the Young Men’s Christian Association is usually college trained. With wise foresight, the Association is sending many of its best men into the country field where the need of leadership is so acute. No other branch of Association work has so large a proportion of college trained men except the work with college students themselves; this is the right perspective.
The man who aspires to this interesting and strategic work with the boys and young manhood of the country must be a man of large capacity for leadership and with a broad knowledge of human nature. He must be a keen lover of country life and must understand country people and their great interests. The more he knows of scientific agriculture the better; but he must above all be a man of devout Christian spirit and a thorough knowledge of the Bible; with a fine friendliness for all sorts of people, and a great longing to help the country boy to develop into useful Christian manhood.
In most other lines of rural service a man’s influence is ordinarily limited to the single community in which he lives. The County Work Secretary’s field is an entire county. He is not working merely with a single group of people but with similar groups in ascore of townships and usually the finest people in each village, whom he selects for their local Christian influence and their devotion to community welfare. Through these local leaders our Secretary multiplies his own life, as he shares with them his visions and his hopes, as he enlists them for specific tasks and trains them for the service; giving them the benefit of his expert knowledge of country life, of rural sociology and of boy life, of teaching method and the modern interpretation of the Bible.
While his primary task is the discovery and training of local leadership as a Christian community builder, he also makes his office a convenient clearing house of ideas and practical plans for community betterment. As he quietly goes about his work it soon becomes evident that he is a “man who knows”; and his expert knowledge, his cooperation and advice are sought by parents and teachers, churches and Sunday schools, pastors and superintendents, school supervisors, women’s clubs, farmers’ institutes and Granges, and he must be a man of large ability to prove equal to his opportunity. As a trusted neutral among the churches, he of all men has the best chance to overcome church rivalries and bring together jealous churches in a working federation or a real unity. He must be at once a man of prayer and an athletic specialist who can through his local leaders organize wholesome sports among his boys; he must not only have a genius for cooperation and securing the cooperation of others in worth-while tasks, but he must be able to take the single farmer, single-handed, and in a quiet, friendly but masterful way getthat farmer to give his growing boy a fair chance.
The call to the rural secretaryship is as genuine a call to a life of ministering love as is the call to the ministry. As a matter of fact, a few of the most successful rural secretaries are ordained ministers and find their theological training and pastoral experience of great value in their work. These secretaries are not using their present position as a stepping-stone to the city field. Few of them would accept any city opportunity, as experience has proved. They have devoted their lives to the work of rural redemption, especially saving the country boy. They have fitted themselves to be experts in rural work, the work they love, and few of them ever care to leave it. This complete consecration accounts largely for their success. Let a man not attempt to share their work unless he can bear their cross. It is a call to heroic service, but it is irksome only to the man who has missed the joy of complete consecration to the country field and to the Man of Galilee.
B.A CHALLENGE TO COLLEGE WOMEN
I. Some Responsibilities Shared with Men
A Necessary Partnership, and its Increasing Burden
Men can never solve the rural problem without the help of women.
In the primitive days of early barbarism, it was woman that domesticated the farm animals,—while men were away, at war and the chase,—and thus made possible agriculture and the arts of rural life.We may well expect educated modern womanhood to contribute its share even in the development of scientific agriculture; but in all the social problems of the new rural civilization the help of women is indispensable.
The rural home, school, church and grange and every other institution for the social, educational and religious welfare of country folks depend very greatly upon the cooperation and leadership of trained women. To a degree this has always been true; but in several aspects this responsibility is destined in the future to fall more heavily than ever upon women.
Responsibility for Rural Education
For various reasons men are rapidly retiring from the ranks of country school teachers. In a single generation the proportion of male teachers in American schools has diminished 50%. In the North Atlantic states 86% of all teachers are women; while even in the western states over 80% are women, against 55% in 1870.
It appears to be quite a safe statement, even judging by incomplete statistics, that there are more women teachers in the United States and Canada than in all the rest of the world combined. Whereas only 15% of the teachers of Germany are women, and 36% in Switzerland, 47% in France and 64% in Italy, the proportion in the United States the same year (1906) is found to be 76.4%.
While from the viewpoint of the needs of adolescent boys there may be reasons to deplore this increase of women teachers, it is certainly accelerating. Theeducational burdens of the country are falling more and more upon women. College girls should study rural education as a real vocation and realize the vast opportunity for unselfish social service which is involved in it.
The college settlement in the city slum has aroused not merely a romantic interest but the consecration of many earnest college girls. Let more of them feel the same call to altruistic service in the rural school, accepting it with a genuine love for country boys and girls and for country life,—then the problems of rural education will lose much of their seriousness. With increasing centralization of rural schools and ever rising standards, worth-while opportunities in country teaching will rapidly develop. Nor will the need be merely for teachers in the grades and in high school work. Capable women are everywhere needed in educational leadership. Country life specialists are now needed in state and country normal schools, agricultural high schools, and county high schools, as well as the country colleges.
Responsibility for Rural Health and Sanitation
Probably the chief reason for the slow progress of modern sanitation in rural districts is the lack of training of country doctors in the modern aspects of their profession. In the country, sanitation is largely a household matter, and women have most at stake and the greatest influence here. In a few months or years one trained nurse or woman physician could raise the ideals of sanitation and hygiene in the country homes of a large area.
Old-fashioned rural neighborliness and large families have combined in the past to keep trained nurses in the city. The country people have managed to get along without them usually. But both these causes have been diminishing and there is serious need in most country sections for the expert services of trained nurses. The “district nurse association” plan has already gained acceptance in country places and its rapid spread would prevent much hardship. Combined with community ownership of sick-room appliances, this would greatly help to make country life comfortable for people accustomed to city conveniences.
Rural frugality hates to pay a woman nurse a man’s wages! But gradually efficiency will win and the higher life standards prevail, and this will give countless young women splendid opportunities for broad service, with which the petty office positions in the city cannot compare.
Conservative country folks are slow to recognize the professional authority of the woman physician; but the prejudice will soon pass. Certainly a capable woman with a modern medical equipment would not need many months to prove her superiority to the average low-grade country doctor; and she would soon find a great life work. While college men are more and more shirking this great healing profession, let the college women give it large consideration. It offers wonderful scope for serving the deepest needs of humanity as well as their bodily ills; and the college girls who dream of medical missions need not go so far from home as India to realize their visions.
Opportunities for Religious Leadership
The burdens of the country pastorate, like the burden of the ballot, ought not to fall upon the women; but the time seems to have come when there are not enough good intelligent men to maintain either.
It is impossible at present to furnish one-half of the rural churches in the United States withtrained mento be their pastors. Canada imports hundreds of clergymen annually from England. Thousands of rural pulpits in the States are vacant. Tens of thousands of rural churches have merely untrained preachers. Very few have resident pastors. Dr. Wilson of the Presbyterian Board of Home Missions is authority for the statement that of the 192 country Presbyterian ministers in Missouri,only twoof them are living with their people in the open country.
We find the chief reason for country church decay the lack of a trained, resident pastor. Under present conditions it is impossible to meet this need from the supply of college men entering Christian work. To be sure, thousands of these unmanned churches are surplus churches. They have no real field; perhaps never had. And Providence is allowing them to die, for the glory of God! It is far better when they graciously unite with some neighboring church,—but the necessary grace is often lacking.
Very many churches with a real field need ministers and can get only untrained men. Hundreds of such churches write in vain to the seminaries every year, as the writer can testify. There seem to be plenty of untrained ministers, in most states; but it is anopen question whether such leadership does more good than harm. Would not a well-trained woman, with a genuine Christian purpose, gifts of real leadership, and a complete college and theological training, be likely to do better service in the pastorate of such a church than an untrained man? It seems strange that we even consider it a subject for debate!
The number of women ministers seems to be increasing in several denominations, though not rapidly yet. Sometimes they are untrained, but when well equipped they render efficient service. Occasionally you find a woman with the true pastor’s spirit gaining surprising success in a difficult country church after a series of men have conspicuously failed. It might be well to try this experiment oftener.
We are now developing in America the second[42]generation of college women. If eugenics teaches us anything, it gives us the right to expect from these college-bred daughters of college-trained mothers an increased efficiency and a new type of leadership. With every decade, a higher type of American womanhood, the peers of the ablest women of history, is being developed in the land. At last we are obliged to remove all our traditional barriers and to offer them unlimited scope for their life usefulness. Every profession is now open to them, wholly on the basis of merit.
Among these opportunities for the right sort of trained woman is the country pastorate. It requirespossibly a rare type of womanhood, and probably a small percentage would succeed. But mere prejudice against the woman minister should not deprive the country churches of her sympathetic service if she is a woman of the right sort. Let fitness, training and worth decide, not mere traditions and prejudices. Sometimes a man and his wife, both ordained ministers, can together serve two churches acceptably and successfully. In fact, a case can be cited where in a western state the important work of church supervision is done conjointly by the state superintendent of home missions and his equally capable wife, both being trained, ordained ministers.
It is needless to emphasize the fact that womanly sympathy, intuition and tact are needed in the rural pastorate and that the consecration of the right type of college woman’s finest powers can perhaps find no better field, or receive deeper appreciation, than in the service of the rural churches. The question is sometimes asked, If a college woman wished to study for the ministry, how could she secure her training? Would the theological seminaries admit her as a student? The best answer to this question is the fact that there were 467 women enrolled as theological students in 46 of the 193 theological schools of the United States during the last college year, according to the annual report just issued by the National Bureau of Education. Several are non-sectarian schools; the rest represent twenty different denominations.[43]
Quite likely a large proportion of these young women are studying to be foreign missionaries, teachers of the Bible in college, or deaconesses. Not only in the United States, but also in the Presbyterian and Methodist churches of Canada, hundreds of young women are finding splendid scope for consecrated talents in this deaconess work. As yet, however, this branch of Christian service is wholly confined to cities, not necessarily because of greater need there, but because the city has the necessary means to pay for the work. Ordained or not ordained, the rural churches sadly need the inspiring capable leadership of our college women.
II. Some Unique Opportunities for Rural Social Service
The Opportunity of the Village Librarian
As the country grows older the number of rural public libraries increases. Not only are Carnegie libraries rather frequently seen in the smaller towns, but neat little stone structures, erected by some former resident who loved his old country home, are occasionally found even in small communities. It is one of the finest ways to honor one’s family name and to serve the social needs of one’s early home. No family monument could be more sensible or serviceable.
Usually the rural library is more than a mere reading room with book-storage attachment. It is alwaysa center of social interest, and when built on generous lines becomes a real “neighborhood house.” As such institutions multiply,—and they certain will,—many young women of social gifts, as well as technical library training, will be needed to make the library or neighborhood house a center of social power, the value of which will be limited only by the personal resources of the librarian. Without the nerve strain of teaching, it closely parallels the teacher’s opportunity with the boys and girls, and has a growing chance to stimulate the mental life of men and women. As women’s clubs increase in the country, more farm women are cultivating the reading habit. Every year the bulletins of the agricultural colleges with their “Reading Courses for Farmers’ Wives” are getting more popular.
The Specialist in Household Economics
Perhaps the sorest spot in the rural problem is the lot of the neglected farm wife and mother. Even where agricultural prosperity is indicated by great barns filled with plenty, often a dilapidated little farmhouse near by, devoid of beauty, comfort or conveniences, measures the utter disregard for the housewife’s lot.
Money is freely spent when new machinery is needed on the farm, or another fifty-acre piece is added after a prosperous season; but seldom a thought of the needs of the kitchen. While the men of the family ride the sulky plow and riding harrow of the twentieth century, the women have neither a washing machine nor an indoors pump,—to say nothing of runningwater, sanitary plumbing or a bathtub![44]Sometimes the drudgery of the farm kitchen is endured by the mother uncomplainingly, or even contentedly; but the daughters recoil from it with growing discontent.
The life conditions of farm women are rapidly improving; but the gospel of better homes and convenient kitchens needs thousands of gentle apostles, equipped with modern methods of household economy, hygiene, cooking and every domestic art and science. It necessitates rare tact, and it is doubtless most effective when least professional, when its benevolence is simply veiled by neighborliness, joined perhaps with the daily routine of the teacher or librarian. But the purpose involved is a splendidly worthy one, to raise the standards of housekeeping in a whole community of homes and bring in a new comfort and efficiency for both men and women. To do this is to enrich and sweeten country life at its source.
Demonstration Centers of Rural Culture
In the cities a very effective social service is done in the settlements as demonstration centers of refinement and Christian living. We need the same quietly effective plan in thousands of rural communities where life is still crude rather than simple and where the finer life-values are too little appreciated.
As the new rural civilization develops and the higher education becomes more diffused, this gentle but powerful leavening of country life is bound to follow. In very many communities it is already inprocess. It ought to follow as a matter of course that wherever a college-bred woman returns to a country home, or founds a new one, there is developed a real demonstration center of rural culture. The down-drag of environment sometimes proves too strong for weaker natures and higher ideals are gradually forgotten. Sometimes, too, a tactless condescension reveals to sensitive neighbors that fatal sense of superiority which is deadly to all good influence, for rural democracy is passing proud.
But with the right spirit of neighborly helpfulness and an effort to overcome the barrier which is always raised at first by superior advantages, the woman of true unaffected culture has a great chance for fine influence in a rural community.
In such a community not many miles from Buffalo there is such a gentlewoman. She is blessing the whole neighborhood to-day in scores of simple ways. According to her own modest statement, she is just “idling” now, for ill-health interrupted her cherished plans as a successful teacher in a mission school in China.
In keen disappointment but fine cheerfulness she settled in this little village, and soon found ample scope for quiet, happy usefulness. The old house she had bought for a home was remodeled modestly but with rare effectiveness, with verandas, fireplaces, cosy corners and a convenient kitchen. With a distinctly rural note in it all, the house was furnished in inexpensive, elegant simplicity, with a charming effect which became quite the wonder of the community.
Neighborly relations were easily established and the“running in” habit was ere long encouraged. Soon the cheerful living room, so unlike the urbanized parlors of the neighborhood, became a social center for the young folks, and music and good pictures and the joyous life developed undreamed of social resources in the community, hitherto latent but unexpressed. It is a genuine demonstration center of rural culture, but unspoiled by any professional taint. It is just neighborly friendliness, with a well-guarded passion for helpfulness; and it is bringing that true human appreciation which all genuine life-sharing wins. May a thousand other college-bred women see the same vision and earn the same joy.
Womanly Leadership in Church and Club
The college woman who “buries herself” in a rural community has only herself to blame if she finds no opportunity worthy of her talents. There may be no “career” of spectacular success awaiting her, but homespun chances to serve, and be loved for her helpfulness, meet her at every turn.
If she stands off a year or so, in self-pity, bemoaning the meagerness of her environment, she may work for a decade thereafter to regain lost confidence and live down a reputation for snobbishness. But if she shows herself friendly at once; if she leads only when invited, and earns the opportunity by a genuine modesty, ere long her talents, and whatever leadership capacity her college life has given her, will find plenty of exercise.