FOOTNOTES:[32]"Rural Denmark and Its Lessons," by H. Rider Haggard. See also the Bulletins of the International Institute of Agriculture at Rome, Italy.
[32]"Rural Denmark and Its Lessons," by H. Rider Haggard. See also the Bulletins of the International Institute of Agriculture at Rome, Italy.
[32]"Rural Denmark and Its Lessons," by H. Rider Haggard. See also the Bulletins of the International Institute of Agriculture at Rome, Italy.
The weakness of the common schools in American rural communities shows itself in their failure to educate the marginal people of the community, in their failure to train average men and women for life in that community, in their robbing the community of leadership by training those on whom their influence is strongest, so that they go out from the community never to return; and in their general disloyalty to the local community with its needs and its problems.
It is the boast of the people of the country school district that their school has "sent out" so many people of distinction. On a rocky hillside in a New England town there stands, between a wooded slope and a swamp, an unpainted school building. Within and without it is more forbidding than the average stable in that farming region. But the resident of that neighborhood boasts of the number of distinguished persons who have gone forth from the community, under the influence of that school. This is characteristic of country places and country schools. The influence of the school, so far as it has any, is that of disloyalty to the neighborhood. It robs theneighborhood of leadership. It does nothing to cultivate a spirit of sympathy with the life that must be lived there. For every one whom it starts upon the exodus to other places it leaves two at home uninspired, indifferent and mentally degenerate.
Another fault of the one-room country school, which makes it a weak support of the country community, is its lack of professional support. Among four hundred teachers in such schools, throughout the country, not one in a hundred expects to remain as a country schoolteacher for a lifetime. There is no professional class devoted to the country school. Its service is incidental in the lives of men devoted to something else. It is a mere side issue.
Besides, its building is inadequate. Too many needs, impossible to satisfy, are assembled in a single room. Too many grades must be taught there for any one child to receive the intense impression necessary for his education.
The third great fault of the country school is its total lack of intelligent understanding of the country. Its teaching is suited to prepare men for trade, but not for agriculture. Instead of making farmers of the sons of farmers, the majority of whom should expect to follow the profession of their fathers, the country school prepares them for buying and selling, for calculation and for store keeping. It starts the stream of country boys in the direction of the village store, the end of which is the department store or clerical occupation in a great city.
The improvement of the one-room rural school is possible within narrow limits only. A recent book[33]gives most sympathetic attention to this problem of improvement, while asserting that reorganization alone will be adequate to the situation. But there are improvements which, within the limitations of the one-room school, are possible. The supervision of these schools may be made closer and more efficient. By bringing to bear upon them the oversight of experts in education the grade of teaching may be elevated. The important principle is to discover the proper unit of supervision. The town is too small and the county unit too large. It is probable that with some rearrangement the county can be made the proper unit of supervision, but the school should determine its problems on a principle independent of political divisions. The first need of the country school at the present time is to be adapted, by such supervision of the district as shall correlate the country school with the units of population resident in the country. In some places the district to be supervised by one superintendent should be not much larger than a township, in other places it might approach the bounds of a county, but in all instances the supervising officer should have the relation of an employed expert to the problems of the country. It is not enough that untrained farmers or tradesmen occasionally visit the school in an indifferent manner. Their indifference isthe natural attitude of men untrained in the task assigned to them. The officer who supervises should be well adapted to his task and should visit with frequency, criticize with trained intelligence, and train his teachers in a constructive educational policy suitable to the district.
Another improvement in rural schools may be had in a better normal training of the teachers. At the present time the normal schools are inadequate to the task of supplying teachers and beyond the supplying of teachers for the city, they stop short. The training of teachers for country schools must become a part of the normal provision for the states.
The minimum salary for teachers is a most important consideration. A primary difficulty in the present situation is that the country school teacher is ill paid. It is therefore impossible to secure and to retain in the country persons of adequate mental and cultural value. In order to secure funds for better payment of teachers, a readjustment of the taxation in the various states is probably necessary, but this will be slow of accomplishment. Some results may be effected in another way by a minimum salary for teachers throughout the State. In this manner a better grade of teachers can be secured for all schools.
The most important improvement, however, in the country schools is almost impossible in the one-room school. It is the teaching of the gospel of theland. Out around the country school lies the open book of nature. First of books the pupils should learn to read the book of nature. The life of the birds and animals, so familiar to the children yet so little known; the growth of plants, their beauty and their use, and the nature, the tillage and the maintenance of the soil, are all lessons easy to impart to those who are themselves instructed, yet the present system of shifting teachers makes such instruction impossible. It is the opinion of expert educators that the study of agriculture is impossible in the one-room country school. With this opinion the writer agrees, yet so great is the necessity of this very improvement and so slow will be the changes which look to consolidation of schools, that effort should be made at once by those in charge of the country school to teach the children the lesson of the soil, of plant life, of animal and bird life and of the world about them. These lessons are necessary to their economic success. They are the very beginning of their happiness in the country and of love for the country. In teaching them the country school can best perform its duty to the present generation.
The centralizing of country schools is the adequate solution of the present situation. By this means the children from a wide area are brought to a modern school building suitably placed in the country. When necessary they are transported to and from the schools in wagons hired for that purpose, in charge of reliable drivers. In this consolidatedschool building, which has taken the place of three, five or even seven one-room district schools now abandoned, there shall be at least two and it may be five teachers. This group of teachers forms a permanent nucleus and a center for the life of the country. The children are assembled in a sufficient number to provide a large group, and their social life is enjoyable as well as mentally stimulating. The weaknesses of the one-room district school are in this institution corrected. There is permanence in the teaching force, professional service, cumulative influence, and the interests of the community find in the school a loyal center of discussion. The consolidated rural school is an institution for the first time adequate to the task of building up the whole population.
The first use to which the centralized rural school is adapted is to halt the exodus from the country. The country community has now no check upon the departure of its best people. The sifting of the country community is done, not by the community itself, but by outside forces, unfriendly and unintelligent as to the interests of the country. The centralized rural school will retain in the country those who should be interested in the country community. This will be accomplished by the study of agriculture, which can adequately be taught only in a graded school in the country. But much can be done even by the supply of an adequate system of education in the country community.
At Rock Creek, Illinois, the retirement of farmers to the cities and towns had gone so far in 1905 that the intelligent and devoted members of the community, who did not desire to leave the place where their grandfathers had first broken the prairie sod, took counsel as to the welfare of the community. The superficial fact of most consequence was the presence of tenant farmers in the community. These tenants, however desirable personally as neighbors, were of a short term of residence. From one to five years was their longest term on one farm. The social life of the community and its religious interests were beginning to suffer. The sons of the early settlers, therefore, laid their plans by which to control the selection of tenants.
Their first plan was to form a farmer's union or syndicate, which should undertake to run the farms of those who were retiring from the land. This plan seemed promising and the makers of it congratulated themselves upon controlling the future of the community. But reflection showed that this method would have the effect of retiring more farmers from the land and turning over the hiring of tenants to the few remaining loyal owners, who would come in a short time to constitute the local real estate agencies; while the majority of the owners would enjoy themselves in towns and villages round about.
The result was that the farmers undertook not to control the tenancy, but to build up the community itself. They deliberately undertook thereconstruction of the schools. Three school districts were merged in one. An adequate building in which a group of teachers is employed was erected. The children are transported in wagons hired for that purpose. The grounds about the school building are made pleasant; and the school, located near the manse and the church which had most influenced the change, forms now a strong community center for a wide region.
The result is all that could be desired. The retirement from the farms has been checked; the neighborhood has become specially desirable for residence. Farmers who had gone to the town find now that as good or better schools are to be had in the community where their property lies and where they pay their taxes. The rental price of land has increased and it is difficult for tenants to come into the community unless they are willing to pay an added rental in return for better school privileges. The whole countryside has received an impetus and the depression of country life has for this community departed. Mr. R. E. Bone, "the fourth red-headed Presbyterian elder Bone in the Rock Creek Church," takes great pride in the building up of the community which has been effected through the consolidated school.
A more mature example is the John Swaney Consolidated School in Illinois. Here the leadership and generosity of John Swaney, a member of the Society of Friends, have effected the consolidationof four school districts at a point two miles from the village of McNab. This purely rural consolidation was not effected without a contest. Indeed the McNab school has had to fight for the gains it has made from the very beginning. The school-house stands by the roadside, not even surrounded by a group of residences. The grounds are peculiarly beautiful, being shaded by great trees and extending in ample lawn about the building. In the rear are stables for the horses which transport the children daily from the outer bounds of the consolidated district.
The school building contains four class-rooms with physical and chemical laboratories. In one room are apparatus for cooking and sewing. In the basement is a well-lighted shop where benches for manual training are placed at the use of the boys. In the third story is an auditorium so ample as to accommodate a basket-ball game and about two hundred spectators. Frequent gatherings occur here in a simple spontaneous way. This common school has all the social and intellectual power of the old-fashioned country academy which once was so useful in the Eastern States. A principal and four women teachers form the faculty of the John Swaney school. The number of scholars in 1910 was one hundred and five, the number of boys slightly exceeding that of girls. Of these about half were in the primary and the grammar grades and about half in the high school. Of the latter some twenty-five were tuition pupilsfrom outside of the district, so that the actual school group of the McNab consolidated school, the children of the tax-payers, was in that year eighty in number.
The difference between the social life of eighty young people and eight or eighteen young people, which one may find in a one-room school in the country anywhere, is very great. Needless to say that the John Swaney school has athletic teams, tennis tournament, baseball games, literary and debating contests and is a strong aggressive force lending life and vitality to the whole countryside. The older families of the neighborhood are Quakers. The newer half of the population is of Germanic stock. The influence of the school is upon all its pupils. The high school retains practically all the sons of the Quaker families and some of the newer population whose interest in education is less.
But the crowning distinction of the John Swaney school is in its study of agriculture, or broadly speaking in its industrial training. For with agriculture must be classed manual training and domestic science. By John Swaney's generosity twenty acres of land were presented to the State for an experiment farm. This land adjoins the school grounds and a regular part of the curriculum for the young men is the study of agriculture. The result of this interpretation of country life in forms of scholarship is that substantially all the graduates of the high school annually go to the State University for training in scientificagriculture, expecting to return to the farms and become rural residents of Illinois. At the present time no more profitable training could be given these young men and women. But aside from this economic consideration, the social and moral value to the community in the return of these young men and women to their own soil and the scenes of their childhood is beyond estimation. The Quaker Meeting in this community is not "laid down;" the church is not abandoned. Indeed all the activities of the community are built up and the best of the community perpetuated through the medium of this modern consolidated school.
To sum up this chapter, the improvement of the one-room common schools is possible, but for the satisfaction of the needs of the modern country community that improvement is inadequate. The one-room country school is an institution which in itself cannot be made to minister to modern community life. It is simple and modern life is complete. It is casual and irregular while the forces with which it has to deal are steady-going and cumulative in their power. It is inexpert and served by no specialized professional class, while modern life calls for the service of experts in every direction. It has no social value, while modern life is always social in its forms of action and requires social interpretation for its best effects.
A closing word should be said for a type of schools which has been perfected in Denmark. They areknown as the "Folk High Schools." These are popular schools, adapted to the teaching of adults to get a living. Denmark has an adequate supply of technical schools, and these latter are not established to train scholars or scientists. Their use is to fit men and women to meet the issues of life, at home, hand in hand, with skill and enthusiasm. They use few text-books and have no examinations, and six months are sufficient for a course of study. The schools are religious and their foundation was the work of Rev. N. F. S. Grundtvig. In songs and in patriotic exercises, all their own, they idealize country life and the work of the mechanic.
The academies of earlier days in rural America were centers of a similar influence. But with the growth of the public-school system these have been generally abandoned. It is a question whether some of them would not serve a need which is felt today, if only they would train men for modern country life with the same success which they once had in training leaders for a former period.
Then all the people lived in the country. Now only a third of the people are concerned with the farm. So that the education of the modern country boy or girl would require to be carried on in a different manner, in order to retain the best of them in the country. The example of the "Folk Schools" offers an analogy to what might be done in American country life, if the academy could be transformedinto an institution for the education of the young in the country.
All observers testify that the "Folk High Schools" have been the first influence in transforming Denmark in the past forty years, from a nation economically inferior to a nation rich and prosperous. This change has been wrought through the betterment of the farmers and other country people, by means of education in country life; and this education has been economic, patriotic, co-operative and religious. So perfect has it been that it is hard to analyze; but the acknowledged center of it has been a system of schools in which the problem of living is taught as a religion, an enthusiasm and a culture.
FOOTNOTES:[33]"The American Rural School," H. W. Foght.
[33]"The American Rural School," H. W. Foght.
[33]"The American Rural School," H. W. Foght.
The moral standards of the pioneer type and of the land-farmer type prevail in the country. The world economy has precipitated on the farm an era of exploitation which has not yet reached its highest point. Meantime, according to the ethical ideals of the pioneer and of the farmer, country people are moral.
The investigations of the Country Life Commission brought general testimony to the high standards of personal life which prevail in the country. In such a representative state as Pennsylvania the standard of conduct between the sexes was found to be good. The testimony of physicians, among the best of rural observers, was nearly unanimous, in Pennsylvania, to the good moral conditions prevailing in the intercourse of men and women in the country. This indicates that the farmer economy had superseded the economy of the pioneer.
The moral problem of the pioneer period consisted of a struggle for honesty in business contracts, and purity in the relation of men and women. The story of every church in New England and Pennsylvania, until about 1835 at which Professor Rossdates the beginning of the farmer period, shows the bitter struggle between the standard accepted by the church and that of the individuals who failed to conform. The standard was inherited from the older communities of Europe. The conduct of individuals grew out of the pioneer economy in which they were living. Church records in New England and New York State are red with the story of broken contracts, debt and adultery. The writer has carefully studied the records of Oblong Meeting of the Society of Friends in Duchess County, New York, and from a close knowledge of the community through almost twenty years of residence in it, it is his belief that there were more cases of adultery considered by Oblong Meeting in every average year of the eighteenth century than were known to the whole community in any ten years at the close of the nineteenth century. The farmer economy in which the group life of the household prevailed over the individual life had by the nineteenth century superseded the pioneer period, in which individual action and independent personal initiative were the prevailing mode.
The coming of the exploiter into the farm community brings a new set of ethical obligations concerning property and contracts. The farmer has perfected the individual standards of the pioneer but he is not yet endowed with social standards. He knows that it is right to give full measure when he sells a commodity, but he does not yet see the evil of breaches of contract. Farmers of highstanding in their communities for their personal character, who are truthful and "honest" in such contractual relations as come down from their fathers, have been known to use the school system of the town for their own private profit, or that of members of their families, and to ignore financial obligations which belong to the new period, in which money values have taken the place of barter values.
A good illustration is that of a deacon in a country church, whom I once knew. His word was proverbially truthful. As widely as he was known his reputation for piety and simple truthfulness, for honesty and purity of life were universal. I do not think that he was consciously insincere, but as a trustee in administering a fund devoted to public uses he seemed to have a clear eye for only those enterprises through which he or members of his family could indirectly secure incomes. Entrusted with a public service which involved the improvement of the school system, so far as he acted individually and without prompting by those who had been accustomed all their lives to modern methods, his action was that of loyalty to his own family and relationship. In so doing he regularly would betray the community and the public interest. Yet he seemed to do this ingenuously and without any conception of the moral standards of people used to the values of money.
I have known the same man, whose standing among farmers was that of a blameless religious man, to borrow money, and in the period of the loan so toconduct himself as to forfeit the respect of people used to handling money. To them he seemed to be a conscious and deliberate grafter. The explanation in my mind is that he suffered from the transition out of the pioneer and farmer economy into the economy of the exploiter.
The history of the sale of lands in the country, in the recent exploitation of farm-lands, contains many stories of the breach of contract of farmers, and the inability of the farmer to sell wisely and at the same time honestly. Contrasting the farmer in his knowledge of financial obligation with the broker in the Stock Exchange, the latter type stands out in strong contrast as an admirable example of financial honesty to contracts, even if they be verbal only. The farmer on the other hand has no conception of the relations on which the financial system must be built. He is not an exploiter to begin with, but a farmer.
The transition from the older economy to the new is illustrated in the dairy industry which surrounds every great city. The dairy farmer has ideas of right and wrong which are purely individualistic. He believes that he should not cheat the customer in the quantity of milk. He recognizes that it is wrong, therefore, to water the milk, but he has no conception of social morality concerning milk. He gives full measure: but he cares nothing about purity of milk. He is restless and feels himself oppressed under the demands of the inspector fromthe city, for ventilation of his barns and for protection of the milk from impurity. I have known few milk farmers who believed in giving pure milk and I never knew one whose conscience was at ease in watering milk. That is, they all believe in good measure and none believes in the principle of sanitation. They stand at the transition from the old economy to the new.
A story is told among agricultural teachers in New York State to the effect that an inspector following the trail of disease in a small city traced it to impure milk supplied by a certain farm. In the absence of the man he insisted on inspecting the dairy arrangements, being followed from room to room by the farmer's indignant wife. Finally he said, "Show me the strainer which you use in the milk," and she brought an old shirt, very much soiled. Looking at it in dismay the inspector said, "Could you not, at least, use a clean shirt?" At this the woman's patience gave way and she declared, "Well, you needn't expect me to use a clean shirt to strain dirty milk!"
The packing of apples for market illustrates the transition from the farmer economy in which the ethical standards are those of the household, or family group, to the world economy in which the moral standards are those of the world market. Apples are packed by all classes of farmers, regardless of varying religious profession, in an indifferent manner. The typical farmer hopes by competitionwith his neighbors to gain a possibly better price. Instances of such successes as come to certain family groups are endlessly discussed by farmers; and the highest ideal that one meets among farmers who sell apples throughout the Eastern States is expressed in the instance of some family who have improved their own farm and their own orchard, so as to win for the family or the farm a reputation in some particular market and thus to gain a higher price.
Contrast with this the marketing of apples by the Western fruit growers' Associations. Among them, as for instance in the Hood Valley, Oregon, apples are packed not by the farm owner with a view to competing with his neighbors, but by the committee representing the whole district. The individual farmer has no access to the market. He cannot hide his poor fruit in an envelope of his best fruit, so as to deceive the buyer. The committee has a reputation to maintain on behalf of the association, not of the individual. The apples are marketed on their merits in accordance with a certain standard. The impersonal demands of the world economy are kept in mind. The individual farmer and farm are forgotten. The result is that these far western growers, whose fruit is said in the East to be inferior in flavor to the apples of New York and New England, can sell their product in the eastern market at a higher price per box than the New York or New England farmer can secure per barrel.
The transition from farming to exploiting hasbrought out in full view the wastefulness of the farmer economy which is being succeeded by exploitation. The whole doctrine of conservation belongs in this transition. Economy means, literally, housekeeping. The same meaning appears in the word husbandry. It is a principle of saving. Its extraordinary value at the present time is due to our sudden sense of the wastefulness of farm life in recent years. Edward van Alstyne, an agricultural authority in New York, says, "We farmers think we are most economical, but we are the most wasteful of all men." The wastefulness of American farming begins in the tillage of too many acres. The farmer prefers wide fields even at the cost of poor crops.
The New York Central Railroad, which is carrying on a propaganda of husbandry, has appointed a man as expert farmer who increased the yield of potatoes on his land from sixty to three hundred bushels per acre. This brings out clearly that his neighbors are still producing sixty bushels per acre, wasting four-fifths of their land values. This waste is a wrong that should be denounced in the country church just as sternly as doctrinal sins, which have occupied the attention of country ministers in the past.
Expert farmers say that if corn-stalks for fodder are left out in the field until they are fed to the cattle they lose forty to fifty per cent of their food values. This waste is sinful, but the sin is visible only in thenew economy of exploitation which counts all values in terms of cash. No sooner is the sinfulness of waste observed than its connections with moral delinquencies of country people becomes clear. In the improvement of rural morality due to the sifting of country people during the farmer period, it becomes evident that among a people so serious-minded some delinquencies still remain. The immoralities that still lurk and fester in the country are due very largely to waste. This waste of human things is parallel to the waste of economic values.
In a conference there was some difficulty in persuading a certain country minister to speak. When finally he arose he said, "I am not much interested in the scientific analysis of the country church. All I am interested in is sin." One wonders whether he was dealing with the sins of the country in their causes or in their effects, or was he simply concerned with the sins which consist in opposing the doctrines of his particular denomination, whatever it was. This wastefulness of the values in the soil enters into the social life of the country. Farmers care as little for the social values as for land values. Young men and women ignore the moral importance of little things. They are not taught that coarseness is wrong. They are not made to realize that cleanliness and courtesy and reverence for the human body are of vital importance in life.
Country people are prudish and they cover with a strict reserve all discussion of the moral relationsof men and women. Yet in the same communities there is loose private conversation and coarse references are common. The strict standard of the household prevails within its limits. Books and magazines must not discuss, however seriously, the problems of life. But in the intercourse of the community there is not the same care. The moral life of country people requires cultivation of the leisure hours, the casual talk, the occasional meetings of men and women, and especially of young people.
The sale of votes in every election is a fixed quantity in the life of certain country towns. It is to be counted on each year. The number of votes for sale in each town is a known proportion of the whole, and through certain counties the selling of votes is the political factor everywhere present. These uniform facts point to a common cause. That cause is the degeneration of a proportion of the rural population into peasantry.
The growth of a peasant population in America is surely our greatest danger. A peasantry is a rural population whose moral and spiritual state are controlled by their material states. There may be rich peasants, though most peasants are poor. Peasants are a specialized class, incapable of self-government and controlled by some political masters who exercise for them essential rights of citizenship. The peasants in Europe are the last to receive the ballot. In America they are the first to surrender the ballot by selling their votes.
A young minister called to a country parish denounced the sale of votes, in his first year, and publicly fixed the whole blame on a prominent political leader of the town, who was there present in the church. His criticism was resented by the whole community. He was right, and so were they. It is well to denounce the purchase of votes, but the duty of the country church to Americanize the peasant class is the greater duty. The presence of such a class in a town infallibly leads to this iniquity. The sale of votes is as bad as the sale of woman's virtue, and both have an automatic tendency to degrade the population.
The danger sign of peasantry is a degraded standard of life. In this town there is one household in which nobody works but the mother. "How they live beats me," is the public comment of the neighbors. Through the winter into that house are crowded the father and mother, two sons and two daughters, the husband of one daughter and their two children, with three other small children, whose presence in the house is due to the loose good nature of the family. There is an indolent uncle of these children. None of the household follows any gainful occupation. The table is furnished with potatoes and pork. The attraction of the household is the easy, loose, good-nature of all its members. There is no one to complain of the indolence of the five grown men who lounge about through the winter days.
The presence of such a household in a town means degradation. Three of these men can be purchased for money to vote, though they cannot be hired for money to work. The daughters of the household are an equally dangerous factor in the countryside. The cause of this moral peril is the low grade of living to which the family has sunk. There is no known state of ill-health to account for their indolence. The first duty of the church in such a community is to regenerate such a household and to lift the standard of ambition of its members.
Slowly the country town is coming to realize that its reputation as well as its progress is determined by this grade of citizen. No exceptional success on the part of one or more families and no substantial goodness by a whole grade of the population can compensate for the lowering of the standard of the whole town by these people. The life and death, the reputation and the progress of the town are dependent upon the extinguishment of these peasant conditions.
This is illustrated by the fact that where votes are for sale in a town those purchased votes determine the election in the majority of cases. They constitute the movable margin between the two parties; and by shifting them one way or the other the political policy of the town is determined. This fact illustrates the whole moral situation of the town, for just by the same flexible margin is the moral life of the town determined. The duty of the churchtherefore is with the people upon the economic and social margin of the life of the rural community.
The farmer's moral standards are opposed to combination. He believes in personal righteousness and family morals. He does not believe in the moral control of the individual or the household by the economic group. It has been impossible, therefore, to combine the farmers in the East in any general way so as to control their markets by maintaining a high standard of product. The only control that is dreamed of by the leaders of the farmers is the control of the quantity of their products. They do not think of combination which will control themselves, and so maintain a higher quality of product in order that thus they may dominate the market in the great city.
The present state of ethical opinion among Eastern farmers is not in sympathy with the ethical demands of city populations. The Western fruit growers' associations have fixed the standard for the farmers who raise the fruit, first of all, and by means of this standard they have conquered the market in distant cities. The standard to which they compel their members to conform is the standard of the demand in the world market. If the milk farmers about New York City are to combine they must first impose a self-denying ordinance upon their own members and furnish the city with a quality of milk in harmony with the demands of modern sanitary experts. This is an ethical principle not of thepioneer or the farmer economy, but of the new husbandry to which very few farmers have conformed.
In the building of country communities, therefore, the ethical teaching must be of a new order. There is already a general teaching of morality in the country churches. The temperance reform is a moral propaganda born of the farmer economy. The expulsion of the saloon from country places has been in obedience to the farmer's conscience. The temperance reform exhibits the transformation from individual ethics which were advocated in 1880 to communal ethics which are represented in the local option aspects of this reform. In 1880 the individual was asked to sign the pledge of total abstinence. In those days it was as important that innocent children sign the pledge as that drunkards sign it. The lists of pledge signers were padded with the names of persons who had never tasted strong drink. In 1893 the Anti-Saloon League began its agitation, which has proceeded among country people with increasing influence. The individual is ignored and the pledge is signed now by the community, by the county or by the state. The attack is not upon the individual drunkard, but upon the community institution, the saloon. This is a great gain in the direction of social ethics. It illustrates the transformation from the pioneer whose impact was upon the individual to the standards of the exploiter period in which the impact is upon the commercial institution. The local option movement has had itsgrowth in the period of exploitation dated by Prof. Ross from 1890. In this movement the country churches have been distributing centers, the places of discussion and nuclei of moral energy.
If the general moral standards of country people are to be transformed from the pioneer formulae to those of the modern world economy, the country churches must be led by men trained in economics and reinforced by a thorough knowledge of social processes. The temperance movement already begins to show the deficiencies of a propaganda purely negative. Its leaders have shown no conspicuous sympathy with the play-ground movement, which is an essential part of the same ethical process. If the saloon is expelled something must be put in its place, but the temperance reformers have not been wise enough for substitution: they have only been skilful in expulsion. Country life, in its representative communities, suffers today from monotony and emptiness.
The ministers, teachers and other rural leaders need the training which will equip them in positive and aggressive social construction. As the economy of the exploiter comes in to transform the country community it is necessary for the preacher and the teacher to train the population in the ethical standards of the new time. Naturally new contractual relations will prevail in business, and trusts will be committed to the leading men in the farming community, for which they need definite moral preparation. There is many a farmer in the United States who may be safely entrusted with the honor of a woman, but cannot be entrusted with a million dollars to spend in the interest of the community. In many a country community it is perfectly safe to leave the door unlocked, but it is not safe to purchase a quart of milk for a child. There is many a farmer from whom it is morally safe to purchase an acre of ground, but one cannot be sure in purchasing a cow from him that she will not be tuberculous. These are new standards not required by the old economy and not taught in the old meeting-house.
One defect of the country church at the present time is that it has for the countryman no message appropriate to the struggle in which he is actually attempting to do right. Many churches in the country teach only the standards of right and wrong to which the farmers already conform. For a short time a new minister is popular with them because his new voice and his fresh elocution contain a subtle flattery. He denounces the sins to which they are not inclined and praises the virtues which they have learned to practise from their fathers. But after about six months of such preaching the farmer wearies of a preacher with no new message. Indeed the countryman is puzzled and perplexed by modern situations about which the minister has no knowledge. The farmer is forced to be an economist, but the minister has never studied economics. The farmer is face to face with problems of exploitation. Thevalues not merely of land but of money are in his thought. But the preacher has had no training in finance and he cannot speak wisely or surely upon the marginal problems with which the farmer is perplexed.
The household economy of the farm is no longer sufficient. The sins are not merely those of adultery and disobedience and disloyalty. They are the sins of the world market and the world economy. In these moral situations the minister is silent. He knows nothing about them. He is inclined merely to object if the farmer purchases an automobile. He does not see what the automobile is to do for the agriculturist. Sunday observance, total abstinence, family purity, honesty as to personal property, these are his stock in trade and these alone. It requires, therefore, a genius to preach in the country, because only the most brilliant preaching can render traditional moral standards interesting among country people.
It is proverbial among ministers that "the best preachers are needed in the country." The reason for this is that none of the preachers has any but an outworn standard to preach. They must reinforce it with extraordinary eloquence in order to keep it attractive. Very ordinary men, however, if they understand the modern spirit, can hold the attention of country people. The grange has ministered to the farmer's conscience. Yet its leaders have been commonplace men, unknown to the nation at large.The great movements which have influenced the farmer in the past twenty years have most of them been pushed to success by men unknown to any but farmers. What orator has come into national prominence out of the enterprises of agricultural life in the past two decades? The farmer does not need great eloquence, but he does need a thorough understanding of the moral and spiritual situations arising out of the exploiter process in which he is immersed. He needs moral teachers for the era of husbandry which is dawning in the country.
"There is an actual and most conspicuous dearth of leadership of a high order in rural life. This is evident when we consider the economic and social importance of the agriculturists. The agriculturists constitute about half of our population, they owned over 21 per cent of the total wealth in 1900, and in 1909 their products had a value of $8,760,000, or just about one-third that of the entire nation for that year. Yet this vast and fundamental element of our nation elects no farmer presidents, has scarcely any of its members in congress, but few in state legislatures as compared with other classes; it has no governors nor judges. In fact, this class is almost without leadership in the sphere of political life and must depend on representatives of other classes to secure justice. Economically it is relatively powerless likewise, possessing practically no control over markets and prices through organization in an age when organization dominates all economiclines, accepting interest rates and freight rates offered it without the ability to check or regulate them, and buying its goods at whatever prices the industrial producers set. Its leadership up to the present time has been of the sporadic and discontinuous sort. It has been individualistic, lacking social outlook and vision. Consequently for community purposes its significance has been slight."[34]
FOOTNOTES:[34]Prof. John M. Gillette, in American Journal of Sociology, March, 1910.
[34]Prof. John M. Gillette, in American Journal of Sociology, March, 1910.
[34]Prof. John M. Gillette, in American Journal of Sociology, March, 1910.
The time has passed in which the amusements of the community can be neglected or dismissed with mere condemnation. In the husbandry of the country every factor must be counted. We are dealing no longer with a fatalistic country life, but with the economy of all resources. Therefore the neglecting of the play life and ignoring the leisure occupations of a country people are inconsistent with the new economy.
Moreover the ancient method of condemning all recreations passed away with the austere economy of earlier days. The churches in the country no longer discipline their members for "going to frolics." The country community no longer is of one mind as to the standard by which recreation shall be governed. Yet every event of this sort is closely inspected by the general attention.
The experience of the cities, in which social control has gone much farther than in the country under the deliberate harmonizing of life with economic principles, has much to contribute for the building up of rural society through various means, among which is recreation.
The need of recreative activities in the country is shown by recent surveys undertaken in Pennsylvania, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri and Kentucky by the Presbyterian Department of Church and Country Life. Generally, throughout the farming population, it was discovered that no common occasions and no common experiences fell to the lot of the country community. In the course of the round year there is, in thousands of farming communities in Pennsylvania, Indiana and Illinois, no single meeting that brings all the people together. The small town has its fireman's parade, to the small city comes once a year the circus and to the great city comes an anniversary or an exposition. Every year there is some common experience which welds the population, increases acquaintance and intensifies social unity. The tillage of the soil in those farming communities from which the blacksmith, the storekeeper, the peddler and the shoemaker have departed, is very lonely.
The telephone is the new system of nerves for the rural organism, but the telephone is a cold, steel wire instead of the warm and cordial personal meetings with which the countryside was once enlivened. In eighty country towns in Pennsylvania, of which fifty are purely agricultural, we found in our survey only three that had a common leadership and a common assembling. The life of the people in these communities is so solitary as to be almost repellent. Their social habits are those of aggressive loneliness.This isolation in the pioneer days made the country people cordial to the visitor: but in the coming of the new economy the farmer shrinks from strangers, because he has become accustomed to social divisions and classifications in which he feels himself inferior; so that the loneliness of country life has become not merely geographical, but sociological. The farmer is shut in not merely by distances in miles, but by distances of social aversion and suspicion. Difference has become a more hostile influence in the country than distance.
Organized industry necessitates organized recreation. The subjection of mind and body to machine labor requires a reaction in the form of play. All factory and industrial populations, without exception, provide themselves with play-grounds of some sort. In the city where no public provision is made the streets are used by the boys for their games, even at the risk of injury or death from the passing traffic. JaneAddamshas shown, in a fine literary appeal in her "The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets," the necessity of some provision for the recreations of the young and of working people in a great city.
This necessity is not primarily due to congestion of the population. Its real sources are in the system and organization by which modern work is done. This necessity is as characteristic of the rural community as it is of the city, for on the farms as well as in the factory towns labor is performed by machinery. This means that through the workinghours of the day, from eight to twelve in number, the attention of the worker must be concentrated upon one task, patiently and steadfastly pursued. The machine worker exerts himself in the control of great powers, horse power or steam power, committed to his charge. He has no opportunity for languor or rest. He has no choice. His job drives him. His movements are fixed and regulated by the nature of the machine with which he is working, and of the task to be accomplished. At the end of the day he has acted involuntarily and mechanically until his own powers of will and choice are accumulated. Being repressed through long hours of prescribed labor he is ready for a rebound. His nature demands self-expression. Thisself-expressiontakes the form of play.
The recreation which results is organized. The laborer in a factory or on a railroad is conscious of organization by the very nature of his work. He labors with a machine driven by powers unseen but of whose operation he is aware, in a great plant wherein his own labor is co-ordinated with that of other workers like unto himself. The hours of self-devotion and prescribed attention leave him free for sympathy with the other workers, whose action and whose toil are organized with his own, and on whose skill and devotion his life and limb and the continuance of his job are dependent. When he turns to recreation he naturally seeks to continue the silent communion with his fellow-workers. Therepressed personal energies are already prepared for team work. He comes out of the factory bubbling over with good fellowship and seeking for comradeship in the self-expression which the long hours of the day have denied him.
The result is that in every factory town the open spaces are devoted to playground uses. Vacant lots, unoccupied fields, and the open street are used by men and boys for their games.
Exactly the same experience results from school and college organization of education work. The student in the common schools does not choose his course; it is prescribed for him by his family and by society. He does not go to school because he is mentally ambitious, but because the standards of universal education require it of him. Especially in the colleges which inherit a great name and attract young men and women for social advantage, the students are characterized by an involuntary subjection to the routine of modern pedagogy. Educational discipline is imposed upon them through the long hours of lectures and laboratory and recitations. The students in high school and college are accumulating a rebound of voluntary action. This organized self-expression takes the form of school and college athletics, which has long since been adopted as a part of the educational routine. No considerable number of educators are in favor of abolishing it, and only a few venture to believe in restricting college athletics. Its moral value iseverywhere tacitly recognized, and pretty generally it is consciously accepted by college and school faculties.
Play of this sort has great moral value. We are hired to work, and we do it without choice or enthusiasm, but in play the natural forces and the personal choice are at their maximum. Every action is chosen and is saturated with the pleasure of self-expression. The result is that play has high ethical value.
Especially has organized recreation great moral power, because it involves team work, and the subjection of the individual to the success of the team. Organized recreation teaches self-denial in a multitude of experiences which are all the more powerful because they are not prescribed by any teacher or preacher, but are the free natural expression of the human spirit under the government of chosen associates working out together a common purpose.
Therefore it is necessary to use play for the recreation of country life. The word is literal, not figurative. It is not a problem merely of games, nor the question of gymnasium, but a profound ethical enterprise of disciplining the whole population through the use of the play spirit. This question must be approached on the high plane of the teaching of modern theorists, and the experience of such practical organizations as the Young Men's Christian Association.
The Christian Associations began their work in the lifetime of present generations and for accomplishing certain purposes they have used recreation. They provided a gymnasium, at first, in order to get men into the prayer-meeting. They offered social parlors in which young men could always hear the sound of sacred song. But the Young Men's Christian Association has traveled far from its crude and early use of recreation. Some of the early Association leaders are still living and still leading. They have steadily advanced with care and wisdom in the use of recreation. Within very recent years the leaders of the Associations have countenanced the use of billiard tables. No longer is the gymnasium an annex to the prayer-meeting. It has values of its own. Without moralizing, these practical men have discovered that the social parlors were good for ends of their own and not merely as a place for hearing the distant sound of hymns. In other words, recreation is a form of ethical culture.
Rev. C. O. Gill, who was captain of the Yale football team in 1890, has had an extended experience among farmers. He says, "The reason why farmers cannot co-operate is in the fact that they did not play when they were boys. They never learned team work. They cannot yield to one another, or surrender themselves to the common purpose." The writer, observing Mr. Gill coaching a university team, commented upon the good spirits with which a player yielded his place on the team just before the victory. Mr. Gill had removed him, as he explained to him, not because he played poorly, but because a newformation required a rearrangement of the team. In reply to comment upon the player's self-forgetfulness, Mr. Gill said, "Football is the greatest school of morals in the country. I learned more ethics from the coaches when I was an undergraduate in Yale, than from all other sources combined."
It is this high ethical value of recreation which causes the working man to defend his amateur baseball team, and makes it so hard to repress Sunday games. The working man admits the high value of the Sabbath, but he sets a value also upon recreation, and without analysis of the philosophy either of the Sabbath or of the play-ground, stoutly maintains the goodness of recreation and its necessity for those who have labored all the week. "I work six days in the week, and I must have some time for recreation," is the working man's answer to all Sunday reformers. Waiving for a moment the question of the Sabbath, the human process to which the working man testifies is exactly as he describes it. Organized labor and systematic industry will react on any population in the form of systematic recreation.
The Play-ground Movement, therefore, is extending itself throughout the country by the very influence of modern industry. Given intelligence to interpret it, and one understands at once the desire of philanthropic and public spirited men and women to provide "a playground beside every school building, open for all the people."
Dr. Luther H. Gulick, who was born of missionary parents, was trained in religious schools, graduated as a physician, employed for years in the Young Men's Christian Association, and then made Play-Ground Director in the New York Public Schools, has become legitimately the heir of the experiences of the modern social conscience. He has summed up the philosophy of working men, students, and of the people whose lives are systematized, in a sentence: "There is a higher morality in the reactions of play than in the experiences of labor."
The tradition of the church has been opposed to amusement and recreation. The church of our fathers recognized the moral possibilities of play by calling all play immoral. The early Quakers filled their records in the eighteenth century with denunciations of "frollicks." Consciously they denounced amusement, acting no doubt in a wise understanding of the rude, boisterous character of the pioneer's social gatherings. Only unconsciously did the Quakers cultivate the spirit of recreation in their social gatherings. It was permitted to have but few and repressed opportunities. The decadence of the Quaker church is probably due, in a considerable measure, to their stubborn unwillingness to see both sides of this question. They saw that recreation wasimmoral. They refused to see that its possible moral value was as great as its moral danger.
Extensive correspondence with working pastors, by means of a system of questions sent out from aNew York office, has brought this result. In answer to the question, "What amusements of moral value are there in the community?" the answer, "Baseball, boating, tennis, golf, bicycling, etc." A smaller number of recreations was named in answer to the inquiry for immoral sports. The subsequent question, "What is your position before the community?" brought from the minister very often this answer: "I am known to be opposed to all sports." Few ministers realize the inconsistency of this position. They stand before the community as the professed advocates of public and private morality, and they stand also before the community as the professed and violent opponents, often, of the public sports which are known to the young men and workingmen generally as promoters of ethical culture and moral training. Is it any wonder that the churches, in these communities, are often deserted by the common people?
In Lewistown, Pa., the old Presbyterian Church there, seeing the congested character of the town population and the need of breathing-places for the young people and working people, looked about for a recreation field. The only available ground is the old cemetery, in which the earlier members of the congregation have buried their dead. This, the only open spot in the center of the town, it has been proposed to turn into a playground, the bodies of the dead to bedisinterredand laid reverently away in a quieter place, and the ground newly consecratedto the needs of the living, and of the young. The action contemplated by this fine old church is emblematic of the modern spirit. Christianity is no longer a mere reverence for death and the other world. But it is an energetic service to the young, and the working people, in this present world. It is no longer a solemn reverence for the salvation of the individual soul in a heaven unseen, but it is a social service, no less serious, unto the living and unto the young and the employed.
Certain modern sports, such as baseball, are free from the corruption which has attached itself to horse-racing and pugilism. This corruption is not in racing a horse, or punching an opponent. It is in the dishonesty of the race, for horsemen believe that "there never was an honest horse-race," and the followers of the prize ring are constantly suspicious that the fight will be "fixed." The first question they ask after the decision of the referee is generally, "Was it a frame-up?" The moral power of baseball, tennis, football and the other most popular sports, is in the confidence that the game is fairly played. This fairness of the game is the widest extended school of ethical culture that the American and British population know. Honorable recreation trains in courage, manliness, co-operation, obedience, self-control, presence of mind, and in every other of the general social virtues. It makes men citizens and good soldiers when need comes. This was the meaning of the remark of the Duke of Wellington,when, after the conquest of Napoleon, he returned to view the playground at Eton, and said, "Here the Battle of Waterloo was won."
For the building up of a community, therefore, the promotion of recreation is an essential. Just as necessary as the providing of common schools for all the people, is the provision of public play-grounds for all the people. As many as are the school houses so many, generally speaking, should be the play-grounds accessible to all, under the care of trained and responsible leaders, in which, without too much government, the free movements of the young and the abounding self-expression of the great mass of the employed shall have opportunity to work out their own education through play, into public righteousness.
The training of citizens for days to come demands exactly the qualities which are imparted on the play-ground. Morality is not taught and ethical culture is not imparted by precept, though precept and exhortation have their due place in the analysis of moral and spiritual matters, for the thoughtful. But the great number of people are not ethically thoughtful, and in the acquirement of righteousness all people are unconscious. The desired action in moral growth is universally spontaneous. The most sober and intellectual of men must be caught off his guard and must be lured into voluntary actions before any moral habits can be formed in him. Mere analysis of truth or self-examination makes no mangood. But men become good by doing things first, and thinking of them afterward. They can be just as good if they never think about them, though thinking about ethical matters renders a service to the community as a whole.
It should be the duty, therefore, of the churches, who are acknowledged before the whole community as repositories of the conscience of men, to promote public recreation. Where necessary the church should even provide a play-ground. In Galesburg, Ill., fifteen churches are co-operating, through their men's societies, in a central council of forty members. This Council is made up in the form of four Committees of ten. Each Committee considers one great interest of the community. One of these interests is recreation. It is the duty of this Committee in winter to provide musical and literary entertainment and lectures. In the summer this Committee has secured the use of the Knox College recreation field, and employing a trained man, has opened it throughout the summer as a play-ground for all the children of the city.
The use of recreation for the building up of a community seems to involve expensive apparatus and sometimes does so. Mrs. Russell Sage at Sag Harbor, Long Island, has expended many thousands of dollars in the experiment. Interested in the children, of whom there are about eight hundred in the town, through the experience of giving them a Christmas tree, she determined to devote to their use apiece of land on the borders of the village, formerly used as a fair ground. This work is to have local value for the children of this community, and has been used as a demonstration center of the efficiency of recreation as a moral discipline among the young.
But most communities have not so much money to spend. The proposal of a play-ground or of a gymnasium is itself sufficient to condemn the doctrine of play. "We cannot afford it," settles the whole question. In the country expensive apparatus is not necessary; nor do the farmer's son and daughter require in recreation so much physical exercise. The gymnasium is an artificial and expensive machinery for inducing sweat, but the farmer needs no such artificial machine. The problem is purely one of play, not of exercise. For this purpose a careful study of the community, and of its tendencies and inclinations, is necessary. The great essential of recreation in the country is the opportunity to meet and to talk. Therefore the social life of gatherings in the church, and in the schoolhouse, no matter what their program, provided it be innocent, is valuable. Farmers will attend an auction, and go a long way to a horse-race, or gather at a fair, without any intention of buying or selling. The fundamental service rendered by the county fair and the auction is an opportunity afforded to converse. This exercise of the tongue is far more important in rural recreation than the exercise of the biceps. But country people cannot talk without an occasion which unlocks theirtongues. They must not be directly solicited to converse or they are silent. If the occasion is provided and is made to be sufficiently plausible its greatest success will be in conversation.
In almost every country community, therefore, there should be revival, in various forms, of the old "Bees," which had so much of a place in the former economy. If there is a widow who has no one to cut her wood, the men of the country church should assemble to do it. If there is a household whose bread winner and husbandman has died at the time of planting corn, let the men of the community gather at an appointed day and till the ground for the family, whose grief is greater at that moment than their need. Let the women of the community assemble at noon to provide an abundant repast. This was recently done by a countryside, at the instigation of the minister, and the effect of it was lasting in its values as well as intense in the joy of the day's work. It seems, in view of the need of recreation, that no other quality is so important in the country community as a lively leader. Resourceful, energetic and fertile men in the rural ministry can accomplish vastly more than conventional, orderly and proper men.
The church in which I began my ministry used to have a play every Christmas. We built out the pulpit platform with boards, we hung it around with curtains, giving dressing-room space, and we placed lanterns in front for foot-lights. The first play we gave made us anxious, for the neighborhood was anold Quaker settlement; but we found that the Quakers enjoyed the play immensely and were the best actors. We made it a genuine expression of the Christmas spirit. We abolished the old "speaking pieces." Our little stage offered the young people team work, instead of individual elocution. The rehearsals filled a whole month with happy and valuable meetings. Everybody co-operated in the labor necessary to prepare the decorations and to take them down, during Christmas week, and on the night of the play everybody was on hand, Catholic, Protestant and heathen.
The holidays of the passing year suggest the recreations of the country church. These should not necessarily be productive of sweat, but the country boy and girl do need the recreation of laughter and happy meeting and social liveliness. Farm work is lonely and monotonous. Such immorality as there is in the country has direct connection with the tedium and dullness of long hours out-doors, alone. The recreations of country life should be meetings for the celebration of great events of the year. Easter expresses ideas which are age-old among country people: it is both a pagan festival and a Christian anniversary. If Easter is developed in a celebration of song or procession, of sermon and of decoration, with full use of its symbolic value, it is sure to bring the whole countryside together, in an experience of the New Year rising from the grave of winter and of the divine Lord risen from the dead.
Most country communities have no such celebration. In very many the whole year passes without neighbors meeting for a common social experience. This is why people move to the city, because every city, great and small, has in the course of the year some events which bring all the people to the curbstone. Country life has few such times and therefore it is dull, because the richest experience of mankind is the experience of common social joy. The best recreation is acquaintance and conversation. The farmer's son spends many hours in silence. He wants someone to help him to talk, and to talk unto some purpose.
The Fourth of July is celebrated in Rock Creek, an Illinois community, by a "wild animal show." Instead of explosives, which are discouraged, the boys of the community bring together in small cages their animal pets. The boys are encouraged to make small carts for the transportation of their pets, and the crowning event of the day is the procession of these carts, in an open place, before the great dinner, at which the countryside sits down together.
Recreation in the country, above all, should revolve about something to eat. The farmer's business is to feed the world, and country people love, above all things, the social joy of eating. Farmers' wives are the best cooks and the country household perpetuates its culinary traditions. Especially does a permanent farm population enrich its household tradition withdelicious recipes and beautiful customs of the table. Thanksgiving Day should be the great celebration of the round year in the country. What a comment upon the country community it is that so few communities in the country meet together, in response to the President's proclamation of thanksgiving, to express gratitude unto the bountiful Father of all.
The country church should minister to country people in some effective gathering of all the countryside. A most fruitful method now in use is a corn judging contest for the boys.
In the Middle West the Corn Clubs for boys have had an extraordinary value, and in the South, also, the Farmer's Co-operative Demonstration Work has made use of the boys in the country community for demonstrating progressive methods on the farm. Thanksgiving Day can be prepared for in the preceding spring, and the boys and girls who have managed a garden, or half acre, through the summer can make their showing at that time. Such a competitive showing in the country, in the production of the staple crop, is sure to bring together the whole countryside.
The local history of the country community is afruitfulsource of recreation. Farmers look to the past, and even the new people in the country are keen to hear the story of the old settlers and of the early pioneers. Nothing is of greater value in developing and refreshing country life than to enrich it by celebrating its early history.