distribution, but are also making a promising beginning in grappling
with the problem of agricultural finance. It is in the last portion of
the Irish programme that by far the most interesting study of the
co-operative 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 co-operation which will have
suggestive value for American farmers.
"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
capitalization of their honesty and industry.' The way in which this is
done is remarkably ingenious. The credit society is organized 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. After the 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 of every 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 turnover,--this fact is, I think, a remarkable
testimony to the value of the co-operative system. The details I have
given illustrate one important distinction between co-operation, 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 traditional economy that centered in the farm household was
independent. The ethical standards of country life recognized but small
obligations to those outside the household. Farmers still idealize an
individual, or rather a group, success. They entertain the hope that
their farm may raise some specialty for which a better price shall be
gained and by which an exceptional advantage in the market shall be
possessed. The conditions of the world economy are imposing upon the
farmer the necessity of co-operation.
The prices of all the farmers' products are fixed by the marginal goods
put upon the market. For instance, the standard milk for which the price
is paid to dairy farmers, is the milk which can barely secure a
purchaser. The poor quality, relative uncleanness, and the low grade of
the marginal milk dominate the general market in every city, and the
farmer who produces a better grade gets nothing for the difference. It
is true that there is a special price paid by hospitals and a limited
market may be established by special institutions, but we are dealing
here with general conditions such as affect the average milk farmer and
the great bulk of the farmers. It is on these average conditions alone
that the country community can depend.
Co-operation is the essential measure by which the producer of marginal
goods can be influenced. To raise the standard of his product it is
necessary to have a combination of producers. So long as the better
farmer is dependent by economic law upon those prices paid for marginal
goods, the only way for the better farmer to secure a better gain is to
engage in co-operation which shall include the poorer and the marginal
farmer.
In the Kentucky counties which raise Burley tobacco, a few years ago the
tenant farmer was an economic slave. He sold his crop at a price
dictated by a combination of buyers. He lived throughout the year on
credit. His wife and his children were obliged to work in the field in
summer. He had nothing for contribution to community institutions.
Indeed, he very frequently ended the year without paying his debts for
food and clothing.
The organizations of these farmers which have been formed in recent
years for self-protection have been blamed for some outrageous deeds.
Persons in sympathy with these organizations have burned the barns of
farmers unwilling to enter the combination. They have administered
whippings and threats right and left in the interest of the farmers'
organization. In their contest with the buyers to secure a better price
they have reduced to ashes some of the warehouses of the monopoly to
which they were obliged to sell their tobacco. These public outrages are
worthy of condemnation. The writer believes that they were not essential
to the process of co-operation by which the farmers fought their way to
better success, though the effect of these acts is a part of the
historical process.
But the combination of farmers has redeemed the poorer, the tenant
farmer and the small farmer from economic slavery. His representatives
now fix the price of the product. There is one buyer and one seller,
competition being eliminated; and the price at which the tobacco is sold
is the farmers' price, not the manufacturer's price. As a result the
farmers are able to hire help. The wife and children no longer work in
the field. The bills are paid as they are incurred, instead of credit
slavery binding the farmer from year to year. Last of all this
prosperity has taken form in better roads, better schools and better
churches. It remains only to be said that among the farmers engaging in
this co-operative union there were many preachers and pastors of the
region. They took a large part in the combinations of farmers which
affected this great gain. They recognized that the fight of the farmers
for self-respect and for free existence was a religious struggle and
that the church had a common interest in the well being of the
population to which it ministered.
Another instance of co-operation is seen in Delaware and on the "Eastern
Shore" where the soil had been exhausted. Methods of slavery days were
unfavorable to the land and after the War it was long neglected. In
recent years a new type of farmer has come into this territory. By
intensive cultivation with scientific methods, he is raising small
fruits, berries, vegetables and other products, for the nearby markets
in the great cities. The success of these farmers has been dependent
upon their produce exchanges. They have learned, contrary to the
traditional belief of farmers, that there is a greater profit for the
individual farmer in raising the same crop as his neighbor, than there
is in an especial crop which competes in the market for itself. That is
to say, in shipping a carload of strawberries the farmer gets a better
price when the car is filled with one kind of berry than he would
receive if the car was made up of a number of separate consignments
under different names and of different varieties. Co-operation has been
better for the individual than competition.
It at once becomes evident that co-operation is an ethical and a
religious discipline. As soon as the farming population is saturated
with the idea, which these farmers fully understand who have prospered
by co-operation, the religious message in these territories will be a
new message of brotherhood. The old gospel of an individual salvation
apart from men and often at the expense of other men will be enlarged
and renewed into a gospel of social salvation. No man will be saved to a
Heaven apart or to a salvation which he attains by competition or by
comparison, but men shall be saved through their fellows and with their
fellows. The country church, of all our churches, will teach in the days
to come the gospel of unity.
The writer's own experience as a country minister was a perfect
illustration of this union of all members of a community. In the
community Quakers, Irish Catholics, Episcopalians, Presbyterians and
Baptists were represented in nearly equal numbers. With people widely
diverse in their economic position, though dependent upon one another,
it became evident to all that the only religious experience of the
community must be an experience of unity. Under the leadership of an old
Quaker who supplied the funds and of two others of gracious spirit and
broad intellect, the whole community was united, on the condition that
all should share in that which any did. One church was organized to
receive all the adherents of Protestant faith and one service of worship
united all, whether within or without the church. Even the Roman
Catholics once or twice a year for twenty years have been brought
together in meetings which express the unity of the countryside.
Other instances there are of co-operation among churches in the country,
but their number is not great. There is a supplementary co-operation in
the division of territory in some states. The church at Hanover, N. J.,
has a territory six miles by four, in which no other church has been
established. This old Presbyterian congregation has peopled its
countryside with its chapels and has assembled the chapel worshippers
regularly at its services in the old church at the graveyard and the
manse.
In Rock Creek, Illinois, the Presbyterian Church has a community to
itself, and ministers in its territory with the same efficiency with
which the Baptist church across the creek ministers to its territory, in
which it also has a religious monopoly. These two congregations respect
one another and have a sense of supplementing one another, which is a
form of co-operation. The ideal expressed in these two instances is
cherished by many. It is hoped that religious bodies may agree in time
to divide the territory, to give up churches, to sell or transfer
property rights and to shift their ministers from communities which have
too many to those communities not served at all. But the way for this
co-operation as an active principle has not yet opened. Its value is in
those communities which have had it from the first as an inheritance.
It has so far not proven a remedy to be applied for the cure of existing
evils.
The writer believes that the path of co-operation is the efficient and
slow one of economic and social organization rather than the delusive
short-cut of religious union. People cannot be united in religion until
they are united in their social economy. The business of the church is
to organize co-operative enterprises, economic, social and educational,
and to school the people in the joy, to educate them in the advantages,
of life together. Co-operation must become a gospel. Union requires to
be a religious doctrine. It will be well for a long time to come to say
but little about organic union of churches and to say a great deal about
the union in the life of the people themselves.
FOOTNOTE:
[Footnote 32: "Rural Denmark and Its Lessons," by H. Rider Haggard. See
also the Bulletins of the International Institute of Agriculture at
Rome, Italy.]
XI
COMMON SCHOOLS
The weakness of the common schools in American rural communities shows
itself in their failure to educate the marginal people of the community,
in their failure to train average men and women for life in that
community, in their robbing the community of leadership by training
those on whom their influence is strongest, so that they go out from the
community never to return; and in their general disloyalty to the local
community with its needs and its problems.
It is the boast of the people of the country school district that their
school has "sent out" so many people of distinction. On a rocky hillside
in a New England town there stands, between a wooded slope and a swamp,
an unpainted school building. Within and without it is more forbidding
than the average stable in that farming region. But the resident of that
neighborhood boasts of the number of distinguished persons who have gone
forth from the community, under the influence of that school. This is
characteristic of country places and country schools. The influence of
the school, so far as it has any, is that of disloyalty to the
neighborhood. It robs the neighborhood of leadership. It does nothing
to cultivate a spirit of sympathy with the life that must be lived
there. For every one whom it starts upon the exodus to other places it
leaves two at home uninspired, indifferent and mentally degenerate.
Another fault of the one-room country school, which makes it a weak
support of the country community, is its lack of professional support.
Among four hundred teachers in such schools, throughout the country, not
one in a hundred expects to remain as a country schoolteacher for a
lifetime. There is no professional class devoted to the country school.
Its service is incidental in the lives of men devoted to something else.
It is a mere side issue.
Besides, its building is inadequate. Too many needs, impossible to
satisfy, are assembled in a single room. Too many grades must be taught
there for any one child to receive the intense impression necessary for
his education.
The third great fault of the country school is its total lack of
intelligent understanding of the country. Its teaching is suited to
prepare men for trade, but not for agriculture. Instead of making
farmers of the sons of farmers, the majority of whom should expect to
follow the profession of their fathers, the country school prepares them
for buying and selling, for calculation and for store keeping. It starts
the stream of country boys in the direction of the village store, the
end of which is the department store or clerical occupation in a great
city.
The improvement of the one-room rural school is possible within narrow
limits only. A recent book[33] gives most sympathetic attention to this
problem of improvement, while asserting that reorganization alone will
be adequate to the situation. But there are improvements which, within
the limitations of the one-room school, are possible. The supervision of
these schools may be made closer and more efficient. By bringing to bear
upon them the oversight of experts in education the grade of teaching
may be elevated. The important principle is to discover the proper unit
of supervision. The town is too small and the county unit too large. It
is probable that with some rearrangement the county can be made the
proper unit of supervision, but the school should determine its problems
on a principle independent of political divisions. The first need of the
country school at the present time is to be adapted, by such supervision
of the district as shall correlate the country school with the units of
population resident in the country. In some places the district to be
supervised by one superintendent should be not much larger than a
township, in other places it might approach the bounds of a county, but
in all instances the supervising officer should have the relation of an
employed expert to the problems of the country. It is not enough that
untrained farmers or tradesmen occasionally visit the school in an
indifferent manner. Their indifference is the natural attitude of men
untrained in the task assigned to them. The officer who supervises
should be well adapted to his task and should visit with frequency,
criticize with trained intelligence, and train his teachers in a
constructive educational policy suitable to the district.
Another improvement in rural schools may be had in a better normal
training of the teachers. At the present time the normal schools are
inadequate to the task of supplying teachers and beyond the supplying of
teachers for the city, they stop short. The training of teachers for
country schools must become a part of the normal provision for the
states.
The minimum salary for teachers is a most important consideration. A
primary difficulty in the present situation is that the country school
teacher is ill paid. It is therefore impossible to secure and to retain
in the country persons of adequate mental and cultural value. In order
to secure funds for better payment of teachers, a readjustment of the
taxation in the various states is probably necessary, but this will be
slow of accomplishment. Some results may be effected in another way by a
minimum salary for teachers throughout the State. In this manner a
better grade of teachers can be secured for all schools.
The most important improvement, however, in the country schools is
almost impossible in the one-room school. It is the teaching of the
gospel of the land. Out around the country school lies the open book of
nature. First of books the pupils should learn to read the book of
nature. The life of the birds and animals, so familiar to the children
yet so little known; the growth of plants, their beauty and their use,
and the nature, the tillage and the maintenance of the soil, are all
lessons easy to impart to those who are themselves instructed, yet the
present system of shifting teachers makes such instruction impossible.
It is the opinion of expert educators that the study of agriculture is
impossible in the one-room country school. With this opinion the writer
agrees, yet so great is the necessity of this very improvement and so
slow will be the changes which look to consolidation of schools, that
effort should be made at once by those in charge of the country school
to teach the children the lesson of the soil, of plant life, of animal
and bird life and of the world about them. These lessons are necessary
to their economic success. They are the very beginning of their
happiness in the country and of love for the country. In teaching them
the country school can best perform its duty to the present generation.
The centralizing of country schools is the adequate solution of the
present situation. By this means the children from a wide area are
brought to a modern school building suitably placed in the country. When
necessary they are transported to and from the schools in wagons hired
for that purpose, in charge of reliable drivers. In this consolidated
school building, which has taken the place of three, five or even seven
one-room district schools now abandoned, there shall be at least two and
it may be five teachers. This group of teachers forms a permanent
nucleus and a center for the life of the country. The children are
assembled in a sufficient number to provide a large group, and their
social life is enjoyable as well as mentally stimulating. The weaknesses
of the one-room district school are in this institution corrected. There
is permanence in the teaching force, professional service, cumulative
influence, and the interests of the community find in the school a loyal
center of discussion. The consolidated rural school is an institution
for the first time adequate to the task of building up the whole
population.
The first use to which the centralized rural school is adapted is to
halt the exodus from the country. The country community has now no check
upon the departure of its best people. The sifting of the country
community is done, not by the community itself, but by outside forces,
unfriendly and unintelligent as to the interests of the country. The
centralized rural school will retain in the country those who should be
interested in the country community. This will be accomplished by the
study of agriculture, which can adequately be taught only in a graded
school in the country. But much can be done even by the supply of an
adequate system of education in the country community.
At Rock Creek, Illinois, the retirement of farmers to the cities and
towns had gone so far in 1905 that the intelligent and devoted members
of the community, who did not desire to leave the place where their
grandfathers had first broken the prairie sod, took counsel as to the
welfare of the community. The superficial fact of most consequence was
the presence of tenant farmers in the community. These tenants, however
desirable personally as neighbors, were of a short term of residence.
From one to five years was their longest term on one farm. The social
life of the community and its religious interests were beginning to
suffer. The sons of the early settlers, therefore, laid their plans by
which to control the selection of tenants.
Their first plan was to form a farmer's union or syndicate, which should
undertake to run the farms of those who were retiring from the land.
This plan seemed promising and the makers of it congratulated themselves
upon controlling the future of the community. But reflection showed that
this method would have the effect of retiring more farmers from the land
and turning over the hiring of tenants to the few remaining loyal
owners, who would come in a short time to constitute the local real
estate agencies; while the majority of the owners would enjoy themselves
in towns and villages round about.
The result was that the farmers undertook not to control the tenancy,
but to build up the community itself. They deliberately undertook the
reconstruction of the schools. Three school districts were merged in
one. An adequate building in which a group of teachers is employed was
erected. The children are transported in wagons hired for that purpose.
The grounds about the school building are made pleasant; and the school,
located near the manse and the church which had most influenced the
change, forms now a strong community center for a wide region.
The result is all that could be desired. The retirement from the farms
has been checked; the neighborhood has become specially desirable for
residence. Farmers who had gone to the town find now that as good or
better schools are to be had in the community where their property lies
and where they pay their taxes. The rental price of land has increased
and it is difficult for tenants to come into the community unless they
are willing to pay an added rental in return for better school
privileges. The whole countryside has received an impetus and the
depression of country life has for this community departed. Mr. R. E.
Bone, "the fourth red-headed Presbyterian elder Bone in the Rock Creek
Church," takes great pride in the building up of the community which has
been effected through the consolidated school.
A more mature example is the John Swaney Consolidated School in
Illinois. Here the leadership and generosity of John Swaney, a member of
the Society of Friends, have effected the consolidation of four school
districts at a point two miles from the village of McNab. This purely
rural consolidation was not effected without a contest. Indeed the McNab
school has had to fight for the gains it has made from the very
beginning. The school-house stands by the roadside, not even surrounded
by a group of residences. The grounds are peculiarly beautiful, being
shaded by great trees and extending in ample lawn about the building. In
the rear are stables for the horses which transport the children daily
from the outer bounds of the consolidated district.