A SUMMARY OF RECENT PROGRESS
In some respects the most notable recent advance in rural matters
consists in the improved means of communication in rural districts. The
country is relatively isolated, and it is this isolation in its extreme
forms that is the bane of country living. Undue conservatism, lack of
conformity to progressive views, undue prominence of class feeling, and
a tendency to be less alert are things that grow out of this isolation;
but better means of communication decrease these difficulties, and the
last few years have seen a remarkable advance in this respect. For
instance, the rural free mail delivery system is only ten years old, and
yet today there are more than twenty-five thousand routes of this
character in the United States serving possibly twenty million people
with daily mail, a great proportion of whom before had very irregular
mail service. Results are patent and marked. Time is saved in going for
mail; market reports come daily; farmers are more prompt in their
business dealings; roads are kept in better shape; there is an
increased circulation of papers and magazines. Thus the farmer is in
closer touch with affairs and much more alert to business opportunities,
to political activities, and to social movements. The circulation of
daily papers in country districts has increased at a marvelous rate. The
amount of letter-writing has increased. Rural delivery of mail arouses
the spirit of "being in the world." Its results have been almost
revolutionary.
So, too, the rural telephone. Recent investigation in the states of
Ohio, Michigan, and Indiana showed that out of 200,000 subscribers to
the independent telephone companies of those states about one-sixth were
in farm homes. A few years ago, hardly a telephone could be found in a
farmer's family. This business is constantly increasing. The established
telephone companies are pushing their work into the country districts,
small local exchanges are being formed, and soon the farmers, in the
North at least, will be almost as well served by the telephone as are
people of the smaller cities.
Interurban electric railways are being built very rapidly and their
advantage to the farmer is obvious. It is doubtful if their effect has
been quite so far-reaching as some have suggested. At present they very
largely parallel existing steam railways, and while they give better
freight and passenger service and assist materially in diminishing rural
isolation in the areas which they traverse, their influence does not
extend very far from the line itself, and they reach relatively small
areas of the country. However, their value to the farmer is very large,
and, as they increase in number and in efficiency of service, they will
become a powerful factor in rural progress.
The good-roads movement is beginning to take on large proportions. It
is, however, a complicated question. To make first-class roads is a
costly business, and while a few such roads are of great value in a
general social way, they do not quite make general country conditions
ideal. To accomplish this, every road in the country should be a good
road the year through, and this is an ideal very difficult of
realization. However, in general, the roads are improving and as rapidly
as the wealth of the country will permit the road system of the United
States will be developed. Of course, good roads are a prime requisite
for rural betterment.
In general, it may be said that during the past decade the improvement
of means of communication in rural districts has gone forward at a
marvelously rapid pace. Nor is it exaggerating to say that the movements
named are re-creating farm life.
During this same period, there has been an almost equally wonderful
advance in the means of agricultural education. Just twenty years ago
the experiment-station system of this country was established. It took
ten years for the stations to organize their work and to gain the
confidence of the farmers. At present however, they are looked upon with
great favor by the farming class and are doing a magnificent work. Their
function is that of research chiefly, although they attempt some control
service, such as inspection of fertilizers, stock foods, etc. In
research they aim both to study the more intricate scientific questions
that relate to agriculture and to carry on experiments that are of more
obvious and more immediate practical application to existing conditions
in the various states. There is one of these stations in each state and
territory, besides a number of stations supported by state funds. The
Department of Agriculture at Washington has also developed during the
last ten years until it is performing very large service for
agriculture. Its annual expenditures aggregate eight or ten million
dollars, and it has in its employment hundreds of experts carrying on
laboratory and field research, scouring the world for plants and seeds
that may be of economic value, and assisting to control plant and animal
diseases. It is also distributing a vast amount of practical
information, put in readable form and adapted to the average farmer. Its
work of seeking to extend the markets of our agricultural products is
one of its notable successes.
Agricultural schools have been talked about for a century, and during
the early part of the last century several were started. The first
permanent agricultural college was opened in 1857, in Michigan. The
Morrill Act of 1862 gave rise to a system of such colleges and today
there will be found one in every state and territory, besides several
for the colored people of the South. Up to 1890, these colleges had been
not wholly satisfactory and the farming class was not patronizing very
fully their agricultural courses. The fault belonged both to the college
and to the farmers. The farmers were skeptical of the value of
agricultural education, and the colleges were often out of sympathy with
the real needs of the farmers, and in fact found it difficult to break
away from the pedagogical ideals of the old educational regime. Since
1890, however, there has been a complete change of sentiment in this
respect, particularly in the Middle West. There the "land-grant"
colleges, whether separate colleges or whether organized as colleges of
state universities, are securing magnificent buildings for agriculture,
are offering fully equipped courses, and are enrolling as students some
of the best men in college, whom they are educating not only for
agricultural teachers and experimenters but also for practical farmers.
Of course, there are many grave problems connected with this subject,
many farmers who do not yet respond to the call for educated
agriculturists, and some colleges that do not yet appreciate their
opportunity. But the change for the better has been so marked that all
agricultural educators are extremely optimistic.
One of the most difficult and most important phases of agricultural
education is that of a secondary grade. The great proportion of educated
farmers will probably be trained for their business in secondary
schools. This problem is being approached from many standpoints. The
University of Minnesota established, some fourteen years ago, a school
of agriculture, which now enrols several hundred pupils of both sexes.
Wisconsin is trying the experiment of two county schools of agriculture.
Occasionally the public high school will be found offering a course in
agriculture. Several states are experimenting in one or more of these
lines, and during the next few years we shall see a large development of
this phase of agricultural education.
One of the most interesting movements in agricultural education has been
an attempt to introduce nature-study and even the elements of
agriculture into the country schools. Cornell University has taken the
lead in advocating "nature-study" purely, for the schools; and the
University of Missouri has perhaps been the leader in advocating that
the work be made even more definite and practical, and that the country
pupils shall be taught, during their early years even, "the elements of
agriculture." Both plans are being worked out with a fair degree of
success, and many other states are carrying out the work in some form or
other. Of course the idea is not a new one, but its present practical
application is a timely one, and it will not be long before this branch
of agricultural education will become a prominent factor in rural
betterment.
A most suggestive phase of agricultural education is college extension
work. University extension has had a rather meteoric career in this
country, in so far as it has been connected with educational
institutions; although the extension idea is spreading rapidly and is
being worked out through home study and correspondence courses of all
sorts. But I think there is scarcely any field in which the real college
extension idea is today being more successfully applied than in
agriculture. The work started with farmers' institutes, which were
instituted about twenty-five years ago and which have been adopted in
practically all the states of the Union. It has broadened within ten
years, until now it is carried on not only by farmers' institutes, but
through home-correspondence courses, the introduction of millions of
pamphlets into farm homes, demonstrations in spraying, butter-making,
soil testing, milk testing, and so on.
Ontario presents a good illustration of how a new agriculture can be
created, in a dozen years, by co-operating methods of agricultural
education. Her provincial department of agriculture, her experiment
station, her agricultural college, her various forms of extension work,
and her various societies of agriculturists have all worked together
with an unusual degree of harmony for the deliberate purpose of inducing
Canadian agriculturists to produce the things that will bring the most
profit. The results have been most astonishing and most gratifying.
The recent progress in the organization of farmers has been less marked
than has been the development of rural communication and agricultural
education. Organization is a prime requisite for farmers. They feel this
truth themselves. For the last forty years, many attempts--some large,
some small, some successful, some great failures--have been made to this
end. The problem is an extremely difficult one. Business co-operation
among farmers is especially difficult and, while co-operation has
developed quite largely--so much so that the Department of Agriculture
was able to report, a year ago, a list of five thousand co-operative
societies of various kinds among farmers--still it cannot be said that
the farmers are co-operating industrially in a relatively large way.
They have, however, a multitude of associations and societies. They have
also the Grange, which is the most successful of all the general
organizations of farmers in the country. Contrary to public belief, the
Grange is not defunct, but has been growing at a very rapid pace during
the last few years and has a large influence especially in the East and
Middle West. It has practically no existence in the far West and in the
South. It has a national organization, however, representing some
twenty-six states. Its influence in Congress is said to be marked. The
local Granges are doing a very large work, socially, educationally, and
sometimes financially. The Grange seems to understand itself now. Its
ideals have been worked out pretty carefully, and its future growth is
quite certain.
We have suggested that the significant rural social movements of the
past few years have been the improvement of rural communication, the
wonderful development of agricultural education, and the fairly
satisfactory development of organization among farmers. It seems also
apparent that there is a fourth line of development that might be
mentioned as being significant, and it may be expressed in a somewhat
general statement that the interest in agricultural questions has
increased in a very marked way. There is undoubtedly a new emphasis upon
country life generally. The people of the cities have been going to the
country more than ever before. A walk, the length of Beacon Street in
Boston, at any time from the middle of June to late autumn, convinces
one that the majority of the people are somewhere in the country. All
over the North, city people are making country homes for at least a
portion of the year. There is also a growing interest in the farm and
farm problems among the general public. Just now the country schools are
attracting special attention from the educators--so much so that the
late President Harper stated, not long ago, that the rural-school
question is the coming question in education. Even the country church is
being made a subject of discussion in religious circles. It is conceded
that agriculture presents "problems." And while the throbbing, busy,
intense life of the city brings perplexing questions to our
civilization, our people are coming to realize that the agricultural
population and the agricultural industry are still tremendous factors in
our national life and success, and that both social and industrial
conditions in the country are such that there also are grave questions
to be settled.
In view of the facts which have been given, I think if one were asked to
give a direct answer to the question, Is the farmer keeping up? one
could reply, Yes. In some sections of the country, the farmers have not
responded to these forward movements. The countryman is naturally
conservative. Not only that, but there are some serious questions that
he has to meet in his business and in his life. He finds it extremely
and increasingly difficult to get adequate labor. He has not been able
to take sufficient advantage of the power of co-operation. The
industrial and social development of the city has lured away his
children. And yet one cannot help feeling that these really remarkable
advances of the past decade are prophetic of a steady improvement in
rural conditions, of a larger development of rural life, of a greater
prosperity for agriculture.
With regard to the future, it seems to me that, on the social side, the
progress of the next few years is to be along the lines, indicated
above, which have characterized the past ten or a dozen years. Still
further improved means of communication will tend to banish isolation
and its drawbacks. Realization of the benefits of organization and
ability to co-operate will vastly strengthen class power. The means of
agricultural education will be developed very rapidly, with the ideal in
mind of being able to furnish some sort of agricultural training for
every individual who lives upon the farm. The country question, as a
whole, will attract increasing attention. Gradually it will be seen that
the rural problem is one of the greatest interest to all our citizens.
The spirit of co-operation will grow until not only the farmers
themselves unite for their own class interests but the various social
agencies--industrial, religious, educational--ministering to rural
betterment will find themselves also co-operating. Thus, it seems to me,
the outlook for the future is full of hope. A genuine forward movement
for rural betterment has had its beginning, is now gathering volume, and
will soon attain very large proportions.
FORWARD STEPS