FOOTNOTE:

I am aware that this very uneconomic procedure is capable of some plausible explanations. The opening up of the vast new territory by the provision of local traffic for transcontinental lines was an object of national urgency and importance. Nevertheless, I think it must now be regretted that a little more thought was not given to the general problem of rural economy, of which transit is but one factor. This may be that irritating kind of wisdom which comes after the event, but I cannot help regarding the policy of rewarding railroad enterpriseswith unconditional grants of vast areas of agricultural land as one of the many evidences of the urban domination over rural affairs.

Of the earlier settled portions of this section I cannot speak from personal knowledge. But a recent magazine article,[3]"The Agrarian Revolution in the Middle West," follows closely the line of my own thoughts. In this article Mr. Joseph B. Ross, of Lafayette, Indiana, who is making a special study of the evolution of American rural life, considers it in three periods: from 1800 to 1835, from 1835 to 1890, and from 1890 to the present time. In the middle period he shows how the most progressive families raised their standard of living steadily with the growing prosperity of the country. They built themselves stately homes with substantial barns. The farmer was developing into a citizen with the solid virtues, the virile independence, the strong political opinions, religiousinterest, and social instincts which characterised the English yeoman of the preceding century. The social life which these communities built up, as soon as their economic position was assured, was a reflection of the best English traditions—it centred round the churches and the Sunday-school. There was a growing distribution of literature as well as organisation for intellectual, educational and social purposes. Mr. Ross notes the winter excursions to Florida and California, the adornment of the homes, and many other evidences of a social progress developing a character of its own. During this period there was a migration from the country homes to the cities; but it was only the natural outflow of the surplus members of the rural families into the professional and business life of the growing centres of commerce and industry.

In the period through which we are now passing a transformation is taking place. The rural exodus is no longer that ofindividuals, but of whole families. The farms thus vacated are let to tenants, generally on a three years' lease, at a competition rent. The Country Life Commission says that this tendency to move to the cities "is not peculiar to any region. In difficult farming regions, and where the competition with other farming sections is most severe, the young people may go to town to better their condition. In the best regions the older people retire to town because it is socially more attractive, and they see a prospect of living in comparative ease and comfort on the rental of their lands. Nearly everywhere there is a townward movement for the purpose of securing school advantages for the children. All this tends to sterilize the open country and to lower its social status." The Commission points out that the new addition of what is likely to be a stationary element, whose economic interests lie elsewhere, to the citizenship of the town, may create there a new social problem, while thetenant in the country will not have that interest in building up rural society which might be expected in the owners of land. Mr. Ross's studies lead him very definitely to the same conclusion. Churches and educational institutions, he tells us, are being starved, and rural society is fast reverting to the type which was prevalent from thirty to fifty years ago. But there is one great difference between then and now. Then, rural civilisation was passing through a stage of marked social advancement which was common throughout the country; now, there are distinct indications of social degeneration, which Mr. Ross regards as the inevitable consequence of the new landlord and tenant system. Many members of these communities must have left the Old World to escape from the selfsame conditions which they are reproducing in the New.

Rural society in the Middle West, as it presents itself to the observer whose authority I have cited, is obviously in atransitional stage. The lack of farm labourers, which is the common subject of complaint by farmers in all parts of the United States, cannot fail to be aggravated by the change in the conditions of tenancy just noted. The man whose chief concern is to get the most out of the land, at the least expense, in two or three years, will not treat his labourers so well—nor the land so well—as will the man who means to spend his life on the farm; and therefore the labourers will not stay. This scarcity of labour may be met to some extent by an increased use of machinery; but it is more likely to lead to poorer cultivation, which means the depopulation of agricultural districts. England and Ireland furnish too many examples of the rural decay immortalised in Goldsmith's "Deserted Village." It would be strange and sad if the experience were to be repeated on the richest soil of America.

In the Southern section we find a wastefulness similar to that in the corn belt, but dueto wholly different causes. The communities are old-settled, but in many instances they are still abnormally depressed by the terrible effects of the great war, followed by a period of social and economic stagnation. Here there was little but agriculture for the people to rely upon, and their methods have, until recent years, been very backward. The growing of the same crops year after year upon the same fields, the neglect of precaution against the washing away of the soil surface, and the failure to use fertilisers, have made the profits of tillage disappointingly small. Billions of dollars have been lost by these communities through persistent soil exhaustion and erosion. In the last few years the Federal Department of Agriculture has maintained a most efficient staff of agricultural experts under the direction of Dr. Knapp, one of the ablest organisers of farm improvement I have ever met. The General Education Board, who administer large sums provided by Mr. Rockefeller, recognisingthe educational value of Dr. Knapp's operations, are contributing about one hundred thousand dollars a year to his work. Dr. Knapp and his field agents have no difficulty at all in demonstrating that the yield may be doubled, and the cost of production greatly reduced, merely by the application of the most elementary science to agriculture. I heard him tell of a farmer whom he had induced to allow his boy—still attending school—to cultivate one acre under his instructions. In the result the boy quadrupled the number of bushels of corn to the acre that his father, following the traditional methods, was able to raise. It would be easy to multiply such instances of thriftlessness and neglected opportunity, of poverty within easy reach of abundance, which have brought it about that the future of the nation is actually endangered by the failure of the food supply to keep pace with the increase of its still relatively sparse population.

The Southern section furnishes twoillustrations of long-standing neglect, both well worthy of consideration for their pregnant suggestiveness. The Federal Department of Agriculture recently scored a notable success in dealing with an insect pest which was threatening the cotton-growing industry with economic ruin. The boll-weevil, like the legal and medical professions, thrives upon the follies of humanity. It attacks the cotton plants which have been weakened by bad husbandry. The scientists did not succeed in finding in the commonwealth of bugs the natural enemy of the pest they were after, but Dr. Knapp, with the wisdom which prefers prevention to cure, seized the opportunity of teaching cotton-growers to diversify their cultivation. The consequence was that the cotton crop itself is gradually responding to the treatment. Many other crops are adding their quota to the produce of the Southern farms, and an all-round improvement, moral as well as material, is accompanying the educational disciplinethrough which this reformer is putting the communities with whom and for whom he is working.

There is another pest in the South which does not attack the farm crops, but goes straight for the farmer. If the Country Life Commission had done nothing more, they would have justified their appointment by the attention they called to the ravages of the hookworm, which have, no one knows how long, scourged the poor white communities in the Southern States. The effect of the disease set up by the hookworm, which infests the intestines, is a complete sapping of all energy, mental and physical. Mr. Rockefeller has provided a million dollars for the necessary research work and for such subsequent organisation of sanitary effort as may be required to extirpate this unquestionably preventable evil. I wonder how long such a state of affairs would have been permitted to interfere with the health and to paralyse the industry of urbancommunities. Had the hookworm, instead of lurking in country lanes, walked the streets, how would it have fared?

These two pests furnish a fine illustration of the length to which the neglect of rural life has been allowed to go in the Southern States.

Neither the Eastern nor the Far Western section presents aspects of special interest to the foreign student of the Rural problem in the United States, but in both the constructive statesman and the social worker will find a rich field for their efforts. In the New England States—more especially in the manufacturing districts—the competition between town and country for labour is as marked as in Industrial England. In this section, however, the lure of the city has a rival in the call of the West, which still makes its appeal to the farmer's boy. Secretary Wilson has recently given it as his opinion that land-seekers who pass by the farms now offered for sale in the western portionsof New York State often go further and fare worse. In these relatively low-priced lands, it ought not to be difficult for agricultural communities to establish permanently a rural society worthy of American ideas of progress. But to do this is to solve the problem we are discussing. We have some other aspects of that problem to consider before we can agree upon the essentials of a philosophic and comprehensive scheme for the rehabilitation of rural life—before we can lay down the lines of a movement to give effect to our plan.

The Far Western section has hardly yet emerged from the frontier-pioneer stage, and its rural problem is still below the horizon. I may, however, note in passing a few evidences that the people of this section have already shown a very real concern for rural progress. The fruit-growers of the Pacific Coast have, in the coöperative marketing of their produce, made an excellent beginning in a matter of first importance in any schemeof rural development. On irrigation farm lands there has been developed, in connection with the upkeep and control of the water systems, a community spirit which will surely lead to many forms of organisation for mutual economic and social advantage. In the city of Spokane, Washington, the Chamber of Commerce has aroused a public interest in the work of the Country Life Commission which, so far as my information goes, has not been equalled elsewhere in the United States. The Chamber is republishing the Report of the Commission, for which no Federal appropriation appears to have been made. It would seem to be a not wild speculation that the statesmen and social workers who will first solve the rural problem of the English-speaking peoples may be found in the Far West of the New World as well as of the Old.

I must now conclude the diagnosis of rural decadence by a consideration of what in my judgment is the chief cause of the malady,and so get to a point where we can determine the nature of the remedy. It will then remain only to sketch the outlines of the movement which is to give practical effect to the agreed principles in the life of rural communities.

FOOTNOTE:[3]North American Review, September, 1909.

[3]North American Review, September, 1909.

The evidence of competent American witnesses proves that there is, in the United States, notwithstanding its immense agricultural wealth, a Rural Life problem. Here, as elsewhere, on a fuller analysis, the utmost variety of race, soil, climate and market facilities serve but to emphasise the importance of the human factor. But this consideration does not lessen the need for a sternly practical treatment of the rural social economy under review. In this chapter, I propose to go right down to the roots of the rural problem, find what is wrong with the industry by which the country people live, and see how it can be righted. We should thenhave clearly in our minds the essentials of prosperity in a rural community.

Agriculture, the basis of a rural existence, must be regarded as a science, as a business and as a life. I have already adverted to President Roosevelt's formula for solving the rural problem—"better farming, better business, better living." Better farming simply means the application of modern science to the practice of agriculture. Better business is the no less necessary application of modern commercial methods to the business side of the farming industry. Better living is the building up, in rural communities, of a domestic and social life which will withstand the growing attractions of the modern city.

This threefold scheme of reform covers the whole ground and will become the basis of the Country Life movement to be suggested later. But in the working out of the general scheme, there must be one important change in the order of procedure—'better business' must come first. The dull commercial details of agriculture have been sadly neglected, perhaps on account of the more human interest of the scientific and social aspects of country life. Yet my own experience in working at the rural problem in Ireland has convinced me that our first step towards its solution is to be found in a better organisation of the farmer's business. It is strange but true that the level of efficiency reached in many European countries was due to American competition, which in the last half of the nineteenth century forced Continental farmers to reorganise their industry alike in production, in distribution and in its finance. Both Irish experience and Continental study have convinced me that neither good husbandry nor a worthy social life can be ensured unless accompanied by intelligent and efficient business methods. We must, therefore, examine somewhat critically the agricultural system of the American farmer, and see wherein its weakness lies.

The superiority of the business methods of the town to those of the country is obvious, but I do not think the precise nature of that superiority is generally understood. What strikes the eye is the material apparatus of business,—the street cars, the advertisements, the exchange, the telephone, the typewriter; all these form an impressive contrast with the slow, simple life of the farmer, who very likely scratches his accounts on a shingle or keeps them in his head. But most of this city apparatus is due merely to the necessity of swift movement in the concentrated process of exchange and distribution. Such swiftness is neither necessary nor possible in the process of isolated production. But there is an economic law, applicable alike to rural and to urban pursuits, which is being more and more fully recognised and obeyed by the farmers of most European countries, including Ireland, but which has been too little heeded by the farmers of the United States and Great Britain. Under moderneconomic conditions, things must be done in a large way if they are to be done profitably; and this necessitates a resort to combination.

The advantage which combination gives to the town over the country was recognised long before the recent economic changes forced men to combine. In the old towns of Europe all trades began as strict and exclusive corporations. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries new scientific and economic forces broke up these combinations, which were far too narrow for the growing volume of industrial activity, and an epoch of competition began. The great towns of America opened their business career during this epoch, and have brought the arts of competition to a higher perfection than exists in Europe. But it has always been known that competition did not exclude combination against the consumer; and it is now beginning to be perceived that the fiercer the competition, the more surely does it lead in the end to such combination.

A trade combination has three principal objects: it aims, first, at improving what I may call the internal business methods of the trade itself by eliminating the waste due to competition, by economising staff, plant, etc., and by the ready circulation of intelligence, and in other ways. In the second place, it aims at strengthening the trade against outside interests. These may be of various kinds; but in the typical case we are considering, namely, the combination of great middlemen who control exchange and distribution, the outside interests are those of the producer on one side and the consumer on the other; and the trade combination, by its organised unity of action, succeeds in lowering the prices it pays to the unorganised producer and in raising the prices it charges to the unorganised consumer. In the third place, the trade combination seeks to favour its own interests in their relation to other interests through political control—control not so much of the machinery of politics as ofits products, legislation and administration. I am not now arguing the question whether or how far this action on the part of trade combinations is morally justifiable. My point is simply that the towns have flourished at the expense of the country by the use of these methods, and that the countryman must adopt them if he is to get his own again. Moreover, as organisation tends to increase the volume and lower the cost of agricultural production and to make possible large transactions between organised communities of farmers and the trade, it will be seen that the organised combination of farmers will simplify the whole commerce of those countries where it is adopted, and thus benefit alike the farmer and the trader.

This truth will be easily realised if we consider for a moment the system of distribution which the food demand of the modern market has evolved. Agricultural produce finds its chief market in the great cities. Their populations must have their food sosent in that it can be rapidly distributed; and this requires that the consignments must be delivered regularly, in large quantities, and of such uniform quality that a sample will give a correct indication of the whole. These three conditions are essential to rapid distribution, but their fulfilment is not within the power of isolated farmers, however large their operations. It is an open question whether farmers should themselves undertake the distribution of their produce through agencies of their own, thus saving the wholesale and possibly the retail profits. But unquestionably they should be so well organised at home that they can take this course if they are unfairly treated by organised middlemen. The Danish farmers, whose highly organised system of distribution has made them the chief competitors of the Irish farmers, have established (with Government assistance which their organisation enabled them to secure) very efficient machinery for distributing their butter, bacon and eggs inthe British markets. Other European farming communities are becoming equally well organised, and similarly control the marketing of their produce. But where, as in America and the United Kingdom, the town dominates the country, and the machinery of distribution is owned by the business men of the towns, it is worked by them in their own interests. They naturally take from the unorganised producers as well as from the unorganised consumers the full business value of the service they render. With the growing cost of living, this has become a matter of urgent importance to the towns. In the cheaper-food campaign which began in the late fall of 1909, voices are heard calling the farmers to account for their uneconomical methods, while here and there organisations of consumers are endeavouring to solve the problem to their own satisfaction by acquiring land and raising upon it the produce which they require.

In the face of such facts it is not easy toaccount for the backwardness of American and British farmers in the obviously important matter of organisation. The farmer, we know, is everywhere the most conservative and individualistic of human beings. He dislikes change in his methods, and he venerates those which have come down to him from his fathers' fathers. Whatever else he may waste, these traditions he conserves. He does not wish to interfere with anybody else's business, and he is fixedly determined that others shall not interfere with his. These estimable qualities make agricultural organisation more difficult in Anglo-Saxon communities than in those where clan or tribal instincts seem to survive.[4]

Now it is fair to the farmer to admit that his calling does not lend itself readily to associative action. He lives apart; most of his time is spent in the open air, and in the evening of the working day physical repose is more congenial to him than mental activity. But when all this is said, we have not a complete explanation of the fact that, by failing to combine, American and British farmers, persistently disobey an accepted law, and refuse to follow the almost universal practice of modern business. I believe the true explanation to be one that has somehow escaped the notice of the agricultural economist. Those who accept it will feel that they have found the weak spot in American farming, and that the remedy is neither obscure nor difficult to apply.

The form of combination which the towns have invented for industrial and commercial purposes is the Joint Stock Company. Here a number of persons contribute their capital to a common fund and entrust the directionto a single head or committee, taking no further part in the business except to change the management if the undertaking does not yield a satisfactory dividend. Our urban way of looking at things has made us assume that this city system must be suitable to rural conditions. The contrary is the fact. When farmers combine, it is a combination not of money only, but of personal effort in relation to the entire business. In a coöperative creamery, for example, the chief contribution of a shareholder is in milk; in a coöperative elevator, corn; in other cases it may be fruit or vegetables, or a variety of material things rather than cash. But it is, most of all, a combination of neighbours within an area small enough to allow of all the members meeting frequently at the business centre. As the system develops, the local associations are federated for larger business transactions, but these are governed by delegates carefully chosen by the members of the constituent bodies.

The object of such associations is, primarily, not to declare a dividend, but rather to improve the conditions of the industry for the members. After an agreed interest has been paid upon the shares, the net profits are divided between the participants in the undertaking, to each in proportion as he has contributed to them through the business he has done with the institution. And the same idea is applied to the control of the management. It is recognised that the poor man's coöperation is as important as the rich man's subscription. 'One man, one vote,' is the almost universal principle in coöperative bodies.[5]

The distinction between the capitalistic basis of joint stock organisation and the more human character of the coöperative system is fundamentally important. It isrecognised by law in England, where the coöperative trading societies are organised underThe Industrial and Provident Societies' Act, and the coöperative credit associations underThe Friendly Societies' Act. In the United States (I am told by friends in the legal profession), the Articles of Association of an ordinary limited liability company can be so drafted as to meet all the requirements I have named. Most countries have enacted laws specially devised to meet the requirements of coöperative societies. However it is done, the essential of success in agricultural coöperation is that the terms and conditions upon which it is based shall be accepted by all concerned as being equitable in the distribution of profits, risks and control. It then becomes the interest of every member to give his whole-hearted support and aid to the common undertaking. To accomplish this, it is necessary to explain and secure the acceptance of a constitution and procedure carefully thought out to suit eachcase. It will be readily believed that associations of farmers which will meet these conditions are not likely to be spontaneously generated; hence the necessity for a plan and for the machinery to carry it through.

In this matter I am here speaking from practical experience in Ireland. Twenty years ago the pioneers of our rural life movement found it necessary to concentrate their efforts upon the reorganisation of the farmer's business. They saw that foreign competition was not, as was commonly supposed, a visitation of Providence upon the farmers of the British Islands, but a natural economic revolution of permanent effect. Our message to Irish farmers was that they must imitate the methods of their Continental competitors, who were defeating them in their own markets simply by superior organisation. After five years of individual propagandism, the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society was formed in 1894 to meet the demand for instruction as to the formation and theworking of coöperative societies, a demand to which it was beyond the means of the few pioneers to respond.

Two decades of steady development have confirmed the soundness of the original scheme, and a brief account of agricultural coöperation in Ireland will be of interest to any reader who has persevered so far. The conditions were in some respects favourable. The farms are small and their owners belong to the class to which coöperation brings most immediate benefit. The Irish peasantry are highly intelligent. They lack the strong individualism of the English, but they have highly developed associative instincts. For this reason coöperation, an alternative to communism,—which they abhor,—comes naturally to them. On the other hand, the ease with which they can be organised makes them peculiarly amenable to political influence. In backward rural communities the trader is almost invariably the political boss. He is a leader of agrarian agitation,in which he can safely advocate principles he would not like to see applied to the relations between himself and his customers. He bitterly opposes coöperation, which throws inconvenient light upon those relations. We are able to persuade the more enlightened rural traders that economies effected in agricultural production will raise the standard of living of his customers and make them larger consumers of general commodities and more punctual in their payments. But in the majority of cases the agricultural organiser finds politics in sharp conflict with business, and has a hard row to hoe. So, while we have advantages in organising Irish farmers, we have also, largely owing to well-known historical causes, to overcome difficulties which have no counterpart in the United States or England.

Nevertheless, we managed to make progress. We began with the dairying industry, and already half the export of Irish butter comes from the coöperative societies weestablished. Organised bodies of farmers are learning to purchase their agricultural requirements intelligently and economically. They are also beginning to adopt the methods of the organised foreign farmer in controlling the sale of their butter, eggs and poultry in the British markets. And they not only combine in agricultural production and distribution, but are also making a promising beginning in grappling with the problem of agricultural finance. It is in this last portion of the Irish programme that by far the most interesting study of the coöperative system can be made, on account of its success in the poorest parts of the Island. Furthermore, the attempt to enable the most embarrassed section of the Irish peasantry to procure working capital illustrates some features of agricultural coöperation which will have suggestive value for American farmers. I will therefore give a brief description of our agricultural coöperative credit associations.

The organisation was introduced in the middle of the last century by a German Burgomaster, the now famous Herr Raiffeisen. He set himself to provide the means of escape from the degrading indebtedness to storekeepers and usurers which is the almost invariable lot of poor peasantries. His scheme performs an apparent miracle. A body of very poor persons, individually—in the commercial sense of the term—insolvent, manage to create a new basis of security which has been somewhat grandiloquently and yet truthfully called the capitalisation of their honesty and industry. The way in which this is done is remarkably ingenious. The credit society is organised in the usual democratic way explained above, but its constitution is peculiar in one respect. The members have to become jointly and severally responsible for the debts of the association, which borrows on this unlimited liability from the ordinary commercial bank, or, in some cases, from Government sources. Afterthe initial stage, when the institution becomes firmly established, it attracts local deposits, and thus the savings of the community, which are too often hoarded, are set free to fructify in the community. The procedure by which the money borrowed is lent to the members of the association is the essential feature of the scheme. The member requiring the loan must state what he is going to do with the money. He must satisfy the committee of the association, who know the man and his business, that the proposed investment is one which will enable him to repay both principal and interest. He must enter into a bond with two sureties for the repayment of the loan, and needless to say the characters of both the borrower and his sureties are very carefully considered. The period for which the loan is granted is arranged to meet the needs of the case, as determined by the committee after a full discussion with the borrower. Once the loan has been made, it becomes the concern ofevery member of the association to see that it is applied to the 'approved purpose'—as it is technically called. What is more important is that all the borrower's fellow-members become interested in his business and anxious for its success.

The fact that nearly three hundred of these societies are at work in Ireland, and that, although their transactions are on a very modest scale, the system is steadily growing both in the numbers of its adherents and in the business transacted is, I think, a remarkable testimony to the value of the coöperative system. The details I have given illustrate the important distinction between coöperation, which enables the farmer to do his business in a way that suits him, and the urban form of combination, which is unsuited to his needs. The ordinary banks lend money to agriculturists for a term (generally ninety days) which has been fixed to suit the needs of town business. Thus, a farmer borrowing money to sow acrop, or to purchase young cattle, is obliged to repay his loan, in the first instance, before the crop is harvested, and in the second, before the cattle mature and are marketable. Far more important, however, than these not inconsiderable economic advantages are the social benefits which are derived by bringing people together to achieve in a very definite and practical way the aim of all coöperative effort—self-help by mutual help.

Our coöperative movement, taken as a whole, is to-day represented by nearly one thousand farmers' organisations, with an aggregate membership of some one hundred thousand persons, mostly heads of families. Its business turnover last year was twelve and a half million dollars. In estimating the significance of these figures, American readers must not 'think in continents,' and must give more weight to the moral than to the material achievement. As I have explained, the coöperative systemrequires for its success the exercise of higher moral qualities than does the joint stock company. Once a coöperative society becomes a soulless corporation, its days are numbered. It requires also the diffusion of a good deal of economic thought among its members, and this, also, is no small matter in the conditions. The most striking fact about this work in Ireland is that while in its earlier years organisation consisted mainly in expounding and commending to farmers the coöperative principle, we now find that the principle is taken for granted and the only question upon which advice is needed is how to apply it. The progress of agricultural coöperation depends largely on the character of the community; its commercial value may be measured by the extent to which it develops in the community the mental and moral qualities essential to success.[6]

In agricultural coöperation, Ireland can claim to have shown the way to the United Kingdom. Ten years ago, after the Irish movement had been launched, the English rural reformers started a movement on exactly the same lines, even founding on the Irish model an English Agricultural Organisation Society. An Irishman, who had studied coöperation at home, was selected as its chief executive officer. Five years later, a Scottish Agricultural Organisation Society took the field. Both in England and in Scotland the chief difficulty to be overcome is the intense individualism of the farmers, and perhaps some lack of altruism. The large farmers did not feel the need of coöperation, and where the natural leader of the rural community will not lead, the small cultivator cannot follow. Whether the same difficulties have prevented any considerable adoption of agricultural coöperation in the United States, it is not necessary to inquire. It is certain that the underlying principlesapproved by every progressive rural, community in Europe have not so far exercised more than an occasional and fitful influence upon the rural economy of the American Republic.

If I have given in these pages a true explanation of the deplorable backwardness of American farmers in the matter of business combination when compared with all other American workers, those who take part in the movement which is to provide the remedy will have set themselves a task as hopeful as it is interesting. Americans as a people are addicted to associated action. I have seen the principle of coöperation developed to the highest point in the ranching industry in the days of the unfenced range. Our cattle used to roam at large, the only means of identifying them being certain registered marks made by the branding-iron and the knife. The individual owner would have had no more property in his herd than he would have had in so many fishes in the seabut for a very effective coöperative organisation. The Stock Association, with its 'round-ups' and its occasional resort to the Supreme Court of Judge Lynch, were an adequate substitute for the title deeds to the lands, and for fences horse-high, bull-strong and hog-tight. But then we were in the Arid Belt and the frontier-pioneer stage; we had no politics and no politicians. I must return, however, to the less exciting, but I suppose more important, life of the regular farmer, and consider his efforts at organisation.

Instances can be multiplied where the coöperative system has been adopted with immensely beneficial results; but in too many cases it has been abandoned. On the other hand, Granges, Institutes, Clubs, Leagues, Alliances and a multitude of miscellaneous farmers' associations have been organised for social, religious, political and economic objects. From my study of the work done by these bodies, the impression left is that almost everything that can be done better byworking together than by working separately has been at some time the subject of organised effort. But these manifestations of activity have been fitful and sporadic. They were commonly marked by some or all of the same defects—mutual distrust, divided counsels, ignorance of what others were doing, want of continuity and impatience of results. Many organisations, after winning some advantages,—over the railroads for instance,—fell into abeyance or even out of existence; others lapsed under the enervating influence of a little temporary prosperity, such as a few years of better prices. The truth is, American farmers have had the will to organise, but they have missed the way.[7]

The political influence of the farming community has for this reason never been commensurate either with the numerical strength of its members or the magnitude of theirshare in the nation's work. It is true that the Federal Department of Agriculture, appropriations for Agricultural Colleges, some railway legislation and other boons to farmers, are to be attributed to the efforts of their organisations. Yet, as compared with the influence exercised upon National affairs by the farmers of, say, France and Denmark, the American farmer has but a small influence upon legislation and administration affecting his interests. What better proof of this could be given than the absence of a Parcels Post in the United States? The whole farming community are agreed as to the need for this boon to the dwellers of the open country, and yet they have not succeeded in winning it against the opposition of the Express Companies, because it is merely a farmers' and not a townsmen's grievance. And not only political impotence, but political inertia, result from the lack of organisation. The state of the country roads—one of the greatest disabilities under which country life inthe United States still suffers—is as good an instance as I know. Congress has shown itself well disposed towards the farmer, but not always so the State governments, and the good intentions of Congress on the roads question are largely nullified owing to the failure of one-third of the States to establish highway commissions, or make other provision for expending such amounts as might be voted to them by Congress. Here, as in the cases of the transit and marketing problems, we see the need for a strong, central, permanent organisation, fitted alike to direct local or promote National action; an association capable of securing the legislative protection of the farmer's interests, and an organisation fitted to further the business side of his industry. In fact, this need is urgent, and a coöperative movement of National dimensions should be established to meet it. Had such a movement been started after the War, or even twenty years later, the American farmer would be in a far stronger positionto-day, and much misdirected effort would have been saved.

I have now tried to explain the weak spot in American rural economy. It may be regarded from a more general point of view. If we were considering the life of some commercial or industrial community and trying to forecast its future development, one of the first things we should note would be its general business methods. No manufacturing concern with a defective office administration and incompetent travellers could survive, even if it had an Archimedes or an Edison in supreme control. I cannot see any reason why an agricultural community should expect to prosper while the industry by which its members live retains its present business organisation. I have urged that as things are, the farming interest is at a fatal disadvantage in the purchase of agricultural requirements, in the sale of agricultural produce, and in obtaining proper credit facilities. Whatever the cause—and I haveset down those which I regard as the chief among them—American farmers have still to learn that they are subject to a law of modern business which governs all their country's industrial activities—the law that each body of workers engaged in supplying the modern market must combine, or be worsted at every turn in competition with those who do.

I do not much fear that this general principle, overlooked, perhaps, because it was too obvious to be worth enforcing, will be disputed. I hope I may gain acceptance for my further contention that the inability of American farmers to sustain an effective business organisation has been due simply to the fact that the not obvious distinction between the capitalistic and the coöperative basis of combination suitable to town and country respectively was missed. For it will then be clear why, in the working out of Mr. Roosevelt's formula, better business must precede and form the basis of better farmingand better living. The conviction that in this general procedure lies the one hope of solving the problem under review accounts for the otherwise disproportionate space given to that aspect of rural life which is of the least interest to the general reader.

I shall now attempt to determine the principles which must be applied to the solution of our problem. Those who have followed the arguments up to this point will have a pretty clear idea of the general drift of my conclusions. The substitution in rural economy of the coöperative for the competitive principle, which I have so far advocated as a matter of business prudence, will be seen to have a wider import. This course will be shown to have an important bearing upon the application of the new knowledge to the oldest industry and also upon the building of a new rural civilisation we must provide for the dwellers of the open country a larger share of the intellectual and social pleasures for the want of which those most needed in the country are too often drawn to the town.

FOOTNOTES:[4]I should expect the negroes in the Southern States to be very good subjects for agricultural organisation. I have discussed this question with the staff of the Hampton Institute in Virginia—a fine body of men, doing noble work. The Principal, the Rev. H. B. Frissell, D.D., whose judgment in this matter is probably the weightiest in the United States, and his leading assistants, both white and coloured, are of the same opinion.[5]Where capital is, in rare instances, subscribed by persons other than farmers, it is usually invested less as a commercial speculation than as an act of friendship on the part of the investor, who in no case exercises more control than his one vote affords.[6]Readers who are sufficiently interested in the rural life movement in Ireland will find a full description of it in my book, "Ireland in the New Century," John Murray, London, and E. P. Dutton, New York.[7]Mr. John Lee Coulter contributed to theYale Reviewfor November, 1909, an article on Organization among the farmers of the United States which is a most valuable summary of the important facts.

[4]I should expect the negroes in the Southern States to be very good subjects for agricultural organisation. I have discussed this question with the staff of the Hampton Institute in Virginia—a fine body of men, doing noble work. The Principal, the Rev. H. B. Frissell, D.D., whose judgment in this matter is probably the weightiest in the United States, and his leading assistants, both white and coloured, are of the same opinion.

[5]Where capital is, in rare instances, subscribed by persons other than farmers, it is usually invested less as a commercial speculation than as an act of friendship on the part of the investor, who in no case exercises more control than his one vote affords.

[6]Readers who are sufficiently interested in the rural life movement in Ireland will find a full description of it in my book, "Ireland in the New Century," John Murray, London, and E. P. Dutton, New York.

[7]Mr. John Lee Coulter contributed to theYale Reviewfor November, 1909, an article on Organization among the farmers of the United States which is a most valuable summary of the important facts.

In no way is the contrast between rural and urban civilisation more marked than in the application of the teachings of modern science to their respective industries. Even the most important mechanical inventions were rather forced upon the farmer by the efficient selling organisation of the city manufacturers than demanded by him as a result of good instruction in farming. On the mammoth wheat farms, where, as the fable ran, the plough that started out one morning returned on the adjoining furrow the following day, mechanical science was indeed called in, but only to perpetrate the greatest soil robbery in agricultural history. Application of science to legitimate agriculture iscomparatively new. In my ranching and farming days I well remember how general was the disbelief in its practical value throughout the Middle and Far West. In cowboy terminology, all scientists were classified as "bug-hunters," and farmers generally had no use for the theorist. The non-agricultural community had naturally no higher appreciation of the farmer's calling than he himself displayed. When some Universities first developed agricultural courses, the students who entered for them were nicknamed "aggies," and were not regarded as adding much to the dignity of a seat of higher learning. The Department of Agriculture was looked upon as a source of jobs, graft being the nearest approach to any known agricultural operation.

All this is changing fast. The Federal Department of Agriculture is now perhaps the most popular and respected of the world's great administrative institutions. In the Middle West, a newly awakened publicopinion has set up an honourable rivalry between such States as Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Nebraska and Minnesota, in developing the agricultural sides of their Universities and Colleges. None the less, Mr. James J. Hill has recently given it as his opinion that not more than one per cent of the farmers of these regions are working in direct touch with any educational institution. It is probable that this estimate leaves out of account the indirect influence of the vast amount of extension work and itinerant instruction which is embraced in the activities of the Universities and Colleges. I fear it cannot be denied that in the application of the natural sciences to the practical, and of economic science to the business of farming, the country folk are decades behind their urban fellow-citizens. And again I say the disparity is to be attributed to the difference in their respective degrees of organisation for business purposes.

The relation between businessorganisation and economic progress ought, I submit, to be very seriously considered by the social workers who perceive that progress is mainly a question of education. Speaking from administrative experience at home, and from a good deal of interested observation in America, I am firmly convinced that the new rural education is badly handicapped by the lack of organised bodies of farmers to act as channels for the new knowledge now made available. In some instances, I am aware, great good has been done by the formation of farmers' institutes which have been established in order to interest rural communities in educational work and to make the local arrangements for instruction by lectures, demonstrations and otherwise. But all European experience proves the superiority for this purpose of the business association to the organisationad hoc, and has a much better chance of permanence.

Again, the influence upon rural life of the agricultural teaching of the Colleges andUniversities, as exercised by their pupils, may be too easily accepted as being of greater potential utility than any work which these institutions can do amongst adults. This is a mistake. The thousands of young men who are now being trained for advanced farming too often have to restrict the practical application of their theoretic knowledge to the home circle, which is not always responsive, for a man is not usually a prophet in his own family. It is here that the educational value of coöperative societies comes in; they act as agencies through which scientific teaching may become actual practice, not in the uncertain future, but in the living present. A coöperative association has a quality which should commend it to the social reformer—the power of evoking character; it brings to the front a new type of local leader, not the best talker, but the man whose knowledge enables him to make some solid contribution to the welfare of the community.

I come now to the last part of the threefoldscheme—that which aims at a better life upon the farm. The coöperative association, in virtue of its non-capitalistic basis of constitution and procedure (which, as I have explained, distinguishes it from the Joint Stock Company), demands as a condition of its business success the exercise of certain social qualities of inestimable value to the community life. It is for this reason, no doubt, that where men and women have learned to work together under this system in the business of their lives, they are easily induced to use their organisation for social and intellectual purposes also.

The new organisation of the rural community for social as well as economic purposes, which should follow from the acceptance of the opinion I have advanced, would bring with it the first effective counter-attraction to the towns. Their material advantages the country cannot hope to rival; nor can any conceivable evolution of rural life furnish a real counterpart to the cheap and garishentertainments of the modern city. Take, for example, the extravagant use of electric light for purposes of advertisement, which affords a nightly display of fireworks in any active business street of an American city far superior to the occasional exhibition at the Crystal Palace in London, which was the rare treat of my childhood days. These delights—if such they be—cannot be extended into remote villages in Kansas or Nebraska; but their enchantment must be reckoned with by those who would remould the life of the open country and make it morally and mentally satisfying to those who are born to it, or who, but for its social stagnation, would prefer a rural to an urban existence.

In one of his many public references to country life, President Roosevelt attributed the rural exodus to the desire of "the more active and restless young men and women" to escape from "loneliness and lack of mental companionship."[8]He is hopefulthat the rural free delivery, the telephone, the bicycle and the trolley will do much towards "lessening the isolation of farm life and making it brighter and more attractive." Many to whom I have spoken on this subject fear that the linking of the country with the town by these applications of modern science may, to some extent, operate in a direction the opposite of that which Mr. Roosevelt anticipates and desires. According to this view, the more intimate knowledge of the modern city may increase the desire to be in personal touch with it; the telephone may fail to give through the ear the satisfaction which is demanded by the eye; among the "more active and restless young men and women" the rural free delivery may circulate the dime novel and the trolley make accessible the dime museum. In the total result the occasional visit may become more and more frequent, until the duties of country life are first neglected and then abandoned.

I do not feel competent to decide between these two views, but I offer one consideration with which I think many rural reformers will agree. The attempt to bring the advantages of the city within the reach of the dwellers in the country cannot, of itself, counteract the townward tendency in so far as it is due to the causes summarised above. However rapidly, in this respect, the country may be improved, the city is sure to advance more rapidly and the gap between them to be widened. The new rural civilisation should aim at trying to develop in the country the things of the country, the very existence of which seems to have been forgotten. But, after all, it is the world within us rather than the world without us that matters in the making of society, and I must give to the social influence of the coöperative idea what I believe to be its real importance.

In Ireland, from which so much of my experience is drawn, we have found a tendency growing among farmers whose combinationsare successful, to gather into one strong local association all those varied objects and activities which I have described as advocated by the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society. These local associations are ceasing to have one special purpose or one object only. They absorb more and more of the business of the district. One large, well-organised institution is being substituted for the numerous petty transactions of farmers with middlemen and small country traders. Gradually the Society becomes the most important institution in the district, the most important in a social as well as in an economic sense. The members feel a pride in its material expansion. They accumulate large profits, which in time become a kind of communal fund. In some cases this is used for the erection of village halls where social entertainments, concerts and dances are held, lectures delivered and libraries stored. Finally, the association assumes the character of a rural commune, where, instead of the oldbasis of the commune, the joint ownership of land, a new basis for union is found in the voluntary communism of effort.

A true social organism is thus being created with common human and economic interests, and the clan feeling, which was so powerful an influence in early and mediæval civilisations, with all its power of generating passionate loyalties, is born anew in the modern world. Our ancient Irish records show little clans with a common ownership of land hardly larger than a parish, but with all the patriotic feeling of large nations held with an intensity rare in our modern states. The history of these clans and of very small nations like the ancient Greek states shows that the social feeling assumes its most binding and powerful character where the community is large enough to allow free play to the various interests of human life, but is not so large that it becomes an abstraction to the imagination. Most of us feel no greater thrill in being one of a State with fifty million inhabitants thanwe do in recognising we are citizens of the solar system. The rural commune and the very small States exhibit the feeling of human solidarity in its most intense manifestations, working on itself, regenerating itself and seeking its own perfection. Combinations of agriculturists, when the rural organisation is complete, re-create in a new way the conditions where these social instincts germinate best, and it is only by this complete organisation of rural life that we can hope to build up a rural civilisation, and create those counter-attractions to urban life which will stay the exodus from the land.

I do not wish to exaggerate the interest which the rural life of my own little island may have for those who are concerned for the vast and wealthy expanses of the American farm lands. But, even here there is a genuine desire for the really simple life, which in its commonest manifestation is a thing that rather simple people talk about. In a properly organised ruralneighbourhood could be developed that higher kind of attraction which is suggested by the very wordneighbourhood. Once get the farmers and their families all working together at something that concerns them all, and we have the beginning of a more stable and a more social community than is likely to exist amid the constant change and bustle of the large towns, where indeed some thinkers tell us that not only the family, but also the social life, is badly breaking down. When people are really interested in each other—and this interest comes of habitually working together—the smallest personal traits or events affecting one are of interest to all. The simplest piece of amateur acting or singing, done in the village hall by one of the villagers, will arouse more criticism and more enthusiasm among his friends and neighbours than can be excited by the most consummate performance of a professional in a great city theatre, where no one in the audience knows or cares for the performer.

But if this attraction—the attraction of common work and social intercourse with a circle of friends—is to prevail in the long run over the lure which the city offers to eye and ear and pocket, there must be a change in rural education. At present country children are educated as if for the purpose of driving them into the towns. To the pleasure which the cultured city man feels in the country—because he has been taught to feel it—the country child is insensible. The country offers continual interest to the mind which has been trained to be thoughtful and observant; the town offers continual distraction to the vacant eye and brain. Yet, the education given to country children has been invented for them in the town, and it not only bears no relation to the life they are to lead, but actually attracts them towards a town career. I am aware that I am here on ground where angels—even if specialised in pedagogy—may well fear to tread. Upon the principles of a soundagricultural education pedagogues are in a normally violent state of disagreement with each other. But whatever compromise between general education and technical instruction be adopted, the resulting reform that is needed has two sides. We want two changes in the rural mind—beginning with the rural teacher's mind. First, the interest which the physical environment of the farmer provides to followers of almost every branch of science must be communicated to the agricultural classes according to their capacities. Second, that intimacy with and affection for nature, to which Wordsworth has given the highest expression, must in some way be engendered in the rural mind. In this way alone will the countryman come to realize the beauty of the life around him, as through the teaching of science he will learn to realise its truth.

Upon this reformed education, as a basis, the rural economy must be built. It must, if my view be accepted, ensure, first and foremost, the combination of farmers forbusiness purposes in such a manner as will enable them to control their own marketing and make use of the many advantages which a command of capital gives. In all European countries—with the exception of the British Isles—statesmen have recognised the national necessity for the good business organisation of the farmer. In some cases, for example France, even Government officials expound the coöperative principle. In Denmark, the most predominantly rural country in Europe, the education both in the common and in the high school has long been so admirably related to the working lives of the agricultural classes that the people adopt spontaneously the methods of organisation which the commercial instinct they have acquired through education tells them to be suitable to the conditions. The rural reformer knows that this is the better way; but our problem is not merely the education of a rising, but the development of a grown-up generation. We cannot waitfor the slow process of education to produce its effect upon the mind of the rural youth, even if there were any way of ensuring their proper training for a progressive rural life without first giving to their parents such education as they can assimilate. Direct action is called for; we have to work with adult farmers and induce them to reorganise their business upon the lines which I have attempted to define. Moreover, this is essential to the future success of the work done in the schools, in order that the trained mind of youth may not afterwards find itself baulked by the ignorant apathy or lazy conservatism of its elders.

I hold, then, that the new economy will mean a more scientific mastery of the technical side of farming, for farmers will make a much larger use of the advice, instruction and help which the Nation and the States offer them through the Department of Agriculture and the Colleges. It is equally certain that there will arise a more humansocial life in the rural districts, based upon the greater share of the products of the farmer's industry, which the new business organisation will enable him to retain; stimulated by the closer business relations with his fellows which that organisation will bring about, and fostered by the closer neighbourhood which is implied in a more intensive cultivation.

The development of a more intensive cultivation must carry with it a much more careful consideration of the labour problem. The difficulty of getting and keeping labour on the farm is a commonplace. I think farmers have not faced the fact that this difficulty is due in the main to their own way of doing their business. Competent men will not stay at farm labour unless it offers them continuous employment as part of a well-ordered business concern; and this is not possible unless with a greatly improved husbandry.

To-day agriculture has to compete in thelabour market against other, and to many men more attractive, industries, and a marked elevation in the whole standard of life in the rural world is the best insurance of a better supply of good farm labour. Only an intensive system of farming can afford any large amount of permanent employment at decent wages to the rural labourer, and only a good supply of competent labour can render intensive farming on any large scale practicable. But the intensive system of farming not only gives regular employment and good wages; it also fits the labourer of to-day—in a country where a man can strike out for himself—to be the successful farmer of to-morrow. Nor, in these days of impersonal industrial relations, should the fact be overlooked that under an intensive system of agriculture, we find still preserved the kindly personal relation between employer and employed which contributes both to the pleasantness of life and to economic progress and security.

Moreover, in a country where advanced farming is the rule, there is a remarkable, and, from the standpoint of national stability, most valuable, steadiness in employment. Good farming, by fixing the labourer on the soil, improves the general condition of rural life, by ridding the countryside of the worst of its present pests. Those wandering dervishes of the industrial world, the hobo, the tramp—the entire family of Weary Willies and Tired Timothys—will no longer have even an imaginary excuse for their troubled and troublesome existence. But the farmer who was the prey of these pests must, if he would be permanently rid of them, learn to respect his hired farm hand. He must provide him with a comfortable cottage and a modest garden plot upon which his young family may employ themselves; otherwise, whatever the farmer may do to attract labour, he will never retain it. In short, the labourer, too, must get his full and fair share of the prosperity of the coming good time in the country.

There is one particular aspect of this improved social life which is so important that it ought properly to form the subject of a separate essay; I mean the position of women in rural life. In no country in the world is the general position of woman better, or her influence greater, than in the United States. But while woman has played a great part there in the social life and economic development of the town, I hold that the part she is destined to play in the future making of the country will be even greater.

In the more intelligent scheme of the new country life, the economic position of woman is likely to be one of high importance. She enters largely into all three parts of our programme,—better farming, better business, better living. In the development of higher farming, for instance, she is better fitted than the more muscular but less patient animal, man, to carry on with care that work of milk records, egg records, etc., which underlies the selection on scientific lines of the moreproductive strains of cattle and poultry. And this kind of work is wanted in the study not only of animal, but also of plant life.

Again, in the sphere of better business, the housekeeping faculty of woman is an important asset, since a good system of farm accounts is one of the most valuable aids to successful farming. But it is, of course, in the third part of the programme,—better living,—that woman's greatest opportunity lies. The woman makes the home life of the Nation. But she desires also social life, and where she has the chance she develops it. Here it is that the establishment of the coöperative society, or union, gives an opening and a range of conditions in which the social usefulness of woman makes itself quickly felt. I do not think that I am laying too much stress on this matter, because the pleasures, the interests and the duties of society, properly so called,—that is, the state of living on friendly terms with our neighbours,—are always more central andimportant in the life of a woman than of a man. The man needs them, too, for without them he becomes a mere machine for making money; but the woman, deprived of them, tends to become a mere drudge. The new rural social economy (which implies a denser population occupying smaller holdings) must therefore include a generous provision for all those forms of social intercourse which specially appeal to women. The Women's Sections of the Granges have done a great deal of useful work in this direction; we need a more general and complete application of the principles on which they act.

I have now stated the broad principles which must govern any effective scheme for correcting the present harmful subordination of rural life to a civilisation too exclusively urban. Before I bring forward my definite proposal for a remedy calculated to meet the needs of the situation, I must anticipate a line of criticism which may occur to the mind of any social worker whodoes not happen to be very familiar with the conditions of country life.

I can well imagine readers who have patiently followed my arguments wishing to interrogate me in some such terms as these: "Assuming," they may say, "that we accept all you tell us about the neglect of the rural population, and agree as to the grave consequences which must follow if it be continued, what on earth can we do? Of course the welfare of the rural population is a matter of paramount importance to the city and to the nation at large; but may we remind you that you said the evil and the consequences can be removed and averted only by those immediately concerned—the actual farmers—and that the remedy for the rural backwardness was to be sought for in the rural mind? 'Canst thou minister to a mind diseased?' Must not the patient 'minister' to himself?"

Fair questions these, and altogether to the point. I answer at once that the patientought to minister to himself, but he won't. He has acquired the habit of sending for the physician of the town, whose physic but aggravates the disease. Dropping metaphor, the farmer does not think for himself. In rural communities, there is as great a lack of collective thought as of coöperative action. All progress is conditional on public opinion, and this, even in the country, is a very much town-made thing.

So I am, then, in this difficulty. My subject is rural, my audience urban. I have to commend to the statesmen and the philanthropists of the town the somewhat incongruous proposal that they should take the initiative in rural reform. Neither the thought nor the influence which can set in motion what in agricultural communities is no less than an economic revolution are to be found in the open country. To the townsmen I now address my appeal and submit a plan.

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