digest; we believe it is beyond the power of any but a commission to
recommend, and such commission might well give its entire time to the
work.
We have, however, as I said in our reports, made further inquiries, have
come into closer personal relation, have assisted wherever possible, and
have certainly recognized the needs of many outlying, lonely homes.
You will allow me to give from the experiences of these letters through
our members some few generalizations:
Iowa and Nebraska happened to be grouped together. The eastern and
southeastern part of Nebraska are geographically one with Iowa in
soil, surface and products, and the two states are allied as to their
inhabitants. Except in isolated colonies, the farmers of Iowa and
Nebraska came from the Eastern and Central states. The foreign born
settlers come almost exclusively from Ireland, the north European
countries and Bohemia. The northwest portion of Nebraska, embracing the
“big Sixth” congressional district with the far western part, is grouped
geographically with eastern Colorado and Wyoming, and the problems of the
farmer there differ materially from those of the farmer in the fertile
and populous eastern division of this section.
THE DRAWBACK TO RURAL LIFE.
Everywhere the isolated and primitive character has been the greatest
drawback to rural life. To those who have depended always upon
companionship and society for their interests and enjoyment, this
loneliness is intolerable. Physical conditions are changing this, the
telephone, the rural mail delivery, the automobiles and the interurban
are bringing the comforts and companionship of the town to the farm.
There are farmers’ families who planned ten years ago to move to the town
as soon as a competence had been accumulated, but who now, with more
than the hoped for income, are content to remain on the farm, the active
management having been turned over to a tenant or a son, and to enjoy the
comforts of the country.
In the older settled portions of these states the farms are being
divided. The high price of land is driving the farmer to more intensive
cultivation and this will continue to eliminate the more disagreeable
features of rural life.
Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota were grouped and
the interesting items were as varied as they might be in more widely
separated regions.
There is no “hard luck” tale to tell of poverty and squalor in this
region, although the conditions differ widely from very poor to very
good. Everyone is already familiar with the stories of the poor wives who
have not been away from the farm for five or ten years. There are too
many such in the Northern plains; these pitiful tales are all too true,
but they are not the whole truth. To get at that it is necessary to know
not only the worst, but the best conditions. The best are especially
worthy of mention because they indicate possibilities, and are an example
and inspiration to those not already arrived at prosperity.
While there are still to be found one-room sod houses sheltering whole
families, there are others with all the modern conveniences of steam
heat, good plumbing, electricity for light and power, telephones, and the
rural postal delivery bringing each day from the outside world papers,
books and magazines. And these are the fruit of industry and frugality;
and between these two extremes are many homes of moderate means where
conveniences and luxuries are not yet possible, but where there is
wholesome, normal living.
The great factor in improving rural conditions is education in scientific
farming, and in these states there are excellent educational advantages
offered to the young men and women who wish to make this a business.
Each state has its agricultural college, which is usually a department
of the state university, a school where agriculture and its kindred
subjects rank with the technical or professional courses; the tendency is
to dignify the business of farming, to make it attractive from both the
pleasurable and the practical standpoint. There are traveling libraries
equipped not only with books for entertainment, but books in various
languages for instruction on subjects of rural interest, and these
libraries go to the very remotest corners of the state.
The women who have answered the questions in the rural conditions inquiry
are agreed that the farm presents great possibilities for happiness, if
they could only have a little more help with the farm work, and more
frequent chances for change and recreation. They rarely complain that
their work is too hard, but only of its dreary monotony.
Fraternal societies afford the greatest opportunities for social
intercourse for our country people. Clubs—as we know them—are infrequent.
The varied nationalities represented in new states present no common
ground on which people of widely differing habits of mind and modes of
speech can meet, and this condition and the lack of help enhance the
difficulties of social gatherings.
It is very evident that each section of this great country must present
its own problems. In the part of the country included in “The Rockies”
we find four types of rural life—the small town, the farm, the ranch,
and the mining camp. Answers came from all of these. While the last is
not, strictly speaking, a rural community, it must be so considered in
any effort to brighten the lives of the women who are removed from the
advantages of city life.
THE BUILDERS OF THE WEST.
These people, who are in large measure the builders of the West, have
come from the more thickly settled states, to try their fortunes under
greatly changed conditions; and one of the great hardships that face them
is the fact that their means will not permit their first experiments at
farming—either dry farming or irrigated farming—ranching, or mining to
be a failure. And in the very nature of things, a failure is too often
made the first year. If the family finances permit the partial loss of
the first year’s work, and if the family adopts the methods proved to be
successful, the after years are brighter and not shadowed by poverty.
Poverty in the West is a removable cause.
Loneliness is a second problem which is being rapidly met in these
states by the organization of women’s clubs and the foundation of local
libraries in the towns, and traveling libraries for those outside.
Colorado has done especially good work with her traveling library boxes.
For the most part the people are hopeful and happy. They came into this
mountain region expecting difficulties and they have no complaints to
make that their problems are not all solved. They had the grit to come
into a new and unsettled country, and they desire to stay. Every letter
from the “farm women” of Colorado, Montana and Wyoming was a happy
letter. Such rural problems are hopeful.
The North Pacific shores offer a diversity of agricultural and commercial
interests, and the farmer here differs somewhat from the Eastern farmer
in that he is more of a specialist. He is either a wheat, cattle, fruit
or dairy farmer. He specializes on one thing, and does his work with the
most improved machinery, or under the latest and most modern methods; he
seldom attempts to derive revenue from the hundred and one little things
that, in many districts, are made by the farmer’s wife and hauled to
the corner store to exchange for groceries. In other words, his farming
is more of a business than the old idea of making it a semi-domestic
arrangement. This relieves the wife of much of the drudgery of the
farm and puts her on the same business footing in the home, as the
professional man’s wife.
With rare exceptions, the farmers have rural mail delivery, farmers’
telephones, and very often electricity for light and other purposes. The
roads, as a rule, are good, and the automobile is fast displacing the
farm horse.
The schools of higher education are filled with the children from the
rural districts, and many farmers move into town in the winter, that
their children may have better educational advantages.
In the smaller towns many farmers’ wives join the women’s clubs. While
this is commendable, it is not necessary to the life or happiness of the
women, for in these states the grange is a great educational factor. It
is perhaps the only secret organization in existence where men and women
meet on an exact equality. In it some of the best legislation originates,
and the probe sinks deep into every proposed measure that affects the
farmer; here the conservation of every resource is discussed, and,
knowing that they must enter into these deliberations, the farmers’ wives
read and keep abreast of the times. The grange meetings are all-day
sessions, with a goodly proportion of the day given over to social
pleasures; the young people enjoy all sorts of healthful sports, while
their elders discuss the prospect of parcel post delivery, the threatened
increase of postage on magazines, or the postal savings bank and many
other things that bring comfort or enlightenment to the rural home.
The suggestions that came in the letters from New England will be
very helpful whenever needed, and have already come into some recent
government policies.
The advantages and disadvantages of farm life, in the many letters from
the Pennsylvania settlements, would give thought to the most logical
mind. They have been culled, however, from a more than usually large
number of replies, and due somewhat to the fact that 180 sessions
of farmers’ institutes were held for women in one year throughout
Pennsylvania.
I think I need not enter further into the details of all parts of the
country, or even give recommendations, which a special committee might
better bring to a future meeting; but there are certainly two policies
which are closely allied—conservation and rural life. When public opinion
is thoroughly aroused, it is but a question of time for the will to
find a way. There must be a voluntary effort, and such volition must be
aroused by education.
One of the most vital items to those who are specially interested in the
educational progress of a country is the awakened public opinion in the
Middle West shown by the development of the agricultural courses in all
of our great universities and colleges.
Even public schools in some parts of this region are giving practical
instruction to old and young. Meetings are being held upon the farms;
lectures, experiments and demonstrations are being introduced.
The church has quickly realized that there must be a combination of
emotion and sanity; the practical and ideal have come into closer
relationship; clubs of young men and of women, sometimes of the two
together, are taking up all subjects pertaining to the farm life;
and wherever these subjects are alive, and the social element is
not forgotten, we find distance makes no barrier. At once means of
communication are increased. The telephone is in every home; the trolley
line goes by the farm—even the automobile becomes a necessity, and good
roads are at once established. Distance is therefore annihilated, and the
lonely life is a matter of the past.
How short a time it is since insanity was a large concomitant of the
farm life for women! Recently, at a session of the Charity Conference
in Boston, there seemed to be very little reference to the need for
prevention of insanity among isolated farm women. I found it to be
largely a sorrow of the past; but I do not agree entirely with such
statements, when I recall the letters, from the immense prairie farms.
Woods Hutchinson, in speaking of the change that had come into the homes
of all women—the removal of much of the old-time work from the home
to the factory—says that it is a convincing proof of the stability of
woman’s mental powers that generations of that semi-solitary confinement
at hard labor known as “home life” have not made her a candidate for the
insane asylum. “Man would have gone raving crazy long ago.”
IDEAL CLUBS.
A community club, as we would call a club, must be composed of men and
women, for they must, under ordinary circumstances, go together to their
meetings. The Farmers’ Institute is more in the line of this particular
thought, but the community center or grange covers the ground fully.
The institute comes but once or twice a year, while the club might be
regularly intermittent.
This must mean a central meeting point with the very best and appropriate
reading matter pertaining to equipment of both home and farm; the
solution of the help question (shall we ever reach this millennium?),
certainly demonstrates in cooking and pure food, discussions as to
education of children, and the way to obtain better lighting and heating,
and good roads should be a part of these meetings.
Where shall this center be—the school or the church?
The women’s clubs of the nearby towns have attempted in an entirely
friendly spirit to maintain rest rooms for farmers’ wives when on
shopping bent, with a possible creche for the babies and a caretaker and
amusements for young children. This is excellent, but will never take the
place of the community center.
A change in the attitude of public opinion towards the old question of
town and country means some practical outcome to all this discussion.
The interdependence of the two is real, each having its influence on
the other, the main consideration being human rather than material. The
town representative can talk out his grievances, political and economic;
the farmer has a full stock of grievances, but rarely gives formal
expression to them; and the farmer’s wife acknowledges that her social
life is barren. The two need to bring their problems to each other; and
a community spirit will surely lead to forms of organization for mutual
economic and social advantage. There must be in the rural community such
social life as shall withstand the attractions of the city, if we wish
the farms to remain in the control of their owners, instead of in the
hands of renters.
What can be done to give the farmer’s wife a little leisure in which to
enjoy the advantages that might be hers?
The answer to this is the answer to the question which confronts every
one who is striving to improve social conditions anywhere. It is the
great problem of work and the “out of works,” which city and country
are trying alike to solve, working from opposite horns of the dilemma.
With thousands of hands begging for employment at one end, with thousands
of jobs begging to be done at the other, it is not creditable to our
initiative that we have not discovered some way to equalize the supply
and demand of labor. We are already educating our country youth to stay
on the farm; what we need further is a campaign of education to destroy
the lure of the city, to teach men and women that there is plenty of work
under wholesome conditions awaiting anyone who will take it, that those
who cannot go the pace of the city can find pleasant, profitable living
where there is time enough, and work enough for every one, if they will
but go back to the soil.
The conclusions drawn from the investigations into rural conditions,
which I have been able to make, have changed my opinion very materially.
Life is not so sordid and hard, poverty is not so pinching as I had
thought. That it is narrow and unnecessarily colorless is evident, and
that much can be done to brighten it is certain, but just what form of
help to offer is a grave question.
There is always needed a plan and the machinery to carry it through. I am
not sure of name or method, but a central force there must be, whether of
men or women—possibly it might be well to appeal to the woman, who makes
the home life, to whom it is of so much importance.
From all our letters we note that the women love the country life, both
for themselves and their children. They would doubtless be ready to take
up any coöperative plan that might be suggested. Certain I am that no
committee should be appointed to consider ways and means that did not
have in its membership some thoughtful, progressive farm women. Towards
this common end should be included also representatives from all the
agencies making the community life educational and religious.
It is not difficult to draft a scheme, but it is essential that the
elements most needed to carry it out should feel themselves vitally
interested.
Horace Plunkett suggests “an institution which shall be scientific,
philosophic, research-making.” His arguments are so entirely to the point
that I quote some few sentences:
Every social worker knows how the knowledge of what others are
doing will help him. It is strange how little the problems
of the rural population have entered into the study of
sociologists. At leading universities I have sought in vain
for light.... The fact is the subject must be treated as a new
one, and it is urgently necessary, if the work of the Country
Life Movement is to be based on a solid foundation of fact, to
make good the lack of information, which has resulted from the
general lack of interest.... An institute is wanted to survey
the field, to collect, classify and coördinate information
and to supplement and carry forward the work of research and
inquiry. The rural social worker requires as far as possible to
carry exact statistical methods into his work, so that he may
not have to depend on general statements, but may have at his
command evidence, the validity of which can be trusted, while
its significance can be measured.
In agreeing with his desire for absolute data, let us not forget the
human side, the personal evidence, which can never be obtained through
an institute.
May we hope that the Conservation Congress, which has ever shown a human
interest in the conservation of vital force, will be the leader in
bringing to its own the vital center of the country!
President WALLACE—You will all agree with me, Ladies and Gentlemen, that
we have had one choice treat tonight. There are two more coming. The
Presbyterian Church of the United States has taken a very great deal of
interest in the country church. Do you know that if the Presbyterians do
not revive their country church there won’t be a Presbyterian church in
the next generation, for this reason, that the town, while it can get
all the lawyers it wants, can grow them, and all the doctors, can’t grow
preachers enough to supply their own pulpits. (Applause) Now, we are to
have before us here tonight Dr. Warren H. Wilson of New York City, the
superintendent of the Board of Home Missions of the Presbyterian Church,
and he will give us a new phase of conservation.
[Dr. Wilson’s paper will be found in Supplementary Proceedings.]
President WALLACE—Here endeth the second lesson. (Applause) We have been
told about society. We have heard about the practical everyday religion
of feeding men. And now we are going to be told by Dr. Wiley how to keep
healthy, so that we may enjoy our religion and feed more men. (Applause)
Dr. WILEY—Mr. President and Delegates of the third National Conservation
Congress, Ladies and Gentlemen: My sermon is going to be short. I think
a great many of these country churches were vacated by two and a quarter
hour sermons. (Applause) I want to insist, however, that in this sermon
I am going to preach I want to follow the steps of my illustrious
predecessor. I have been preaching sermons for a number of years, and I
think it is about time I was ordained. I believe in all the principles
of conservation that you have taught this week and many previous weeks.
I was an early and insistent and persistent conserver. I believe I have
the honor of having delivered the first public address that ever took
the term “conservation” as a text. In 1894 I delivered an address on
the conservation of the fertility of the soil, and so, as well as my
dear friends, the Presbyterians, I am a little bit conservative, too.
(Applause) I am sorry that that condition has obtained which he described
here, the empty country churches. But let me tell you they are no more
empty than the country houses of this country. Everybody has been going
to the town. They have taken the greater part of country boys who would
have made good farmers and made pretty poor preachers out of them. On
the whole the country boy thinks it is easier to preach once a week than
it is to plow corn every day and feed the stock on Sunday. And naturally
he chooses the line of least resistance to make a living. That is the
reason that the country is becoming deserted, and just as long as it
is easier to make a living in the city than it is in the country, the
country is going to be empty, and all you preachers can’t fill it up,
and the object of these meetings is to make it easier to make a living
in the country than in the city, and then you will see the tide flow the
other way, and not before. (Applause) One reason people ought to live in
the country is because they can be healthier there. I would rather be
a healthy boy in the country than a sick boy in town. If I have equal
health, I think I would rather stay in town, for a boy has more fun in
town. If you take fun away from the boy you deboyize the boy. Another
thing, there is too much demanizing, and dehorning, in the country life.
I know about this Pennsylvania Dutch people, why they are so prosperous,
because their home life is in their life in the country. It follows the
Pennsylvania Dutchman to the grave. It is a pleasure to go to a funeral
in that community. (Applause) It has got to be a burden, every time I am
invited to a funeral, I don’t want to go. When I was a boy I loved to
go to a funeral. (Applause) They have a good custom up there among the
Pennsylvania Dutch, too. They all go to the funeral, and nobody begins
to cover up the grave until some neighbor goes up, takes off his hat and
says a good word for the departed. Then they can fill up the grave. When
old Jacob Shaffer died he was the meanest man in the community. He was
buried on a cold, rainy day in November, when it was half rain and half
sleet. They stood for ten or fifteen minutes, or half an hour, and nobody
said a word. They had to stay there, and could not leave until the grave
was filled up. Finally one neighbor, in despair, went up and took off
his hat and said, “Well, I can say this about Jake: he wasn’t always so
mean as he was sometimes.” (Applause) Now, I want to say this about the
preacher. He is not always so inhuman as he is sometimes. When I heard
this sermon tonight I almost concluded that a minister of the gospel was
a real human being. (Applause) I want to tell you that he was not that to
me when I was a boy. I did not look upon him as the friend that he ought
to have been to me. And that is the reason one boy did not go to the
country church oftener.
CONSERVATION AND UTILIZATION.