laboratories. In one room are apparatus for cooking and sewing. In the
basement is a well-lighted shop where benches for manual training are
placed at the use of the boys. In the third story is an auditorium so
ample as to accommodate a basket-ball game and about two hundred
spectators. Frequent gatherings occur here in a simple spontaneous way.
This common school has all the social and intellectual power of the
old-fashioned country academy which once was so useful in the Eastern
States. A principal and four women teachers form the faculty of the John
Swaney school. The number of scholars in 1910 was one hundred and five,
the number of boys slightly exceeding that of girls. Of these about half
were in the primary and the grammar grades and about half in the high
school. Of the latter some twenty-five were tuition pupils from outside
of the district, so that the actual school group of the McNab
consolidated school, the children of the tax-payers, was in that year
eighty in number.
The difference between the social life of eighty young people and eight
or eighteen young people, which one may find in a one-room school in the
country anywhere, is very great. Needless to say that the John Swaney
school has athletic teams, tennis tournament, baseball games, literary
and debating contests and is a strong aggressive force lending life and
vitality to the whole countryside. The older families of the
neighborhood are Quakers. The newer half of the population is of
Germanic stock. The influence of the school is upon all its pupils. The
high school retains practically all the sons of the Quaker families and
some of the newer population whose interest in education is less.
But the crowning distinction of the John Swaney school is in its study
of agriculture, or broadly speaking in its industrial training. For with
agriculture must be classed manual training and domestic science. By
John Swaney's generosity twenty acres of land were presented to the
State for an experiment farm. This land adjoins the school grounds and a
regular part of the curriculum for the young men is the study of
agriculture. The result of this interpretation of country life in forms
of scholarship is that substantially all the graduates of the high
school annually go to the State University for training in scientific
agriculture, expecting to return to the farms and become rural residents
of Illinois. At the present time no more profitable training could be
given these young men and women. But aside from this economic
consideration, the social and moral value to the community in the return
of these young men and women to their own soil and the scenes of their
childhood is beyond estimation. The Quaker Meeting in this community is
not "laid down;" the church is not abandoned. Indeed all the activities
of the community are built up and the best of the community perpetuated
through the medium of this modern consolidated school.
To sum up this chapter, the improvement of the one-room common schools
is possible, but for the satisfaction of the needs of the modern country
community that improvement is inadequate. The one-room country school is
an institution which in itself cannot be made to minister to modern
community life. It is simple and modern life is complete. It is casual
and irregular while the forces with which it has to deal are
steady-going and cumulative in their power. It is inexpert and served by
no specialized professional class, while modern life calls for the
service of experts in every direction. It has no social value, while
modern life is always social in its forms of action and requires social
interpretation for its best effects.
A closing word should be said for a type of schools which has been
perfected in Denmark. They are known as the "Folk High Schools." These
are popular schools, adapted to the teaching of adults to get a living.
Denmark has an adequate supply of technical schools, and these latter
are not established to train scholars or scientists. Their use is to fit
men and women to meet the issues of life, at home, hand in hand, with
skill and enthusiasm. They use few text-books and have no examinations,
and six months are sufficient for a course of study. The schools are
religious and their foundation was the work of Rev. N. F. S. Grundtvig.
In songs and in patriotic exercises, all their own, they idealize
country life and the work of the mechanic.
The academies of earlier days in rural America were centers of a similar
influence. But with the growth of the public-school system these have
been generally abandoned. It is a question whether some of them would
not serve a need which is felt today, if only they would train men for
modern country life with the same success which they once had in
training leaders for a former period.
Then all the people lived in the country. Now only a third of the people
are concerned with the farm. So that the education of the modern country
boy or girl would require to be carried on in a different manner, in
order to retain the best of them in the country. The example of the
"Folk Schools" offers an analogy to what might be done in American
country life, if the academy could be transformed into an institution
for the education of the young in the country.
All observers testify that the "Folk High Schools" have been the first
influence in transforming Denmark in the past forty years, from a nation
economically inferior to a nation rich and prosperous. This change has
been wrought through the betterment of the farmers and other country
people, by means of education in country life; and this education has
been economic, patriotic, co-operative and religious. So perfect has it
been that it is hard to analyze; but the acknowledged center of it has
been a system of schools in which the problem of living is taught as a
religion, an enthusiasm and a culture.
FOOTNOTE:
[Footnote 33: "The American Rural School," H. W. Foght.]
XII
RURAL MORALITY
The moral standards of the pioneer type and of the land-farmer type
prevail in the country. The world economy has precipitated on the farm
an era of exploitation which has not yet reached its highest point.
Meantime, according to the ethical ideals of the pioneer and of the
farmer, country people are moral.
The investigations of the Country Life Commission brought general
testimony to the high standards of personal life which prevail in the
country. In such a representative state as Pennsylvania the standard of
conduct between the sexes was found to be good. The testimony of
physicians, among the best of rural observers, was nearly unanimous, in
Pennsylvania, to the good moral conditions prevailing in the intercourse
of men and women in the country. This indicates that the farmer economy
had superseded the economy of the pioneer.
The moral problem of the pioneer period consisted of a struggle for
honesty in business contracts, and purity in the relation of men and
women. The story of every church in New England and Pennsylvania, until
about 1835 at which Professor Ross dates the beginning of the farmer
period, shows the bitter struggle between the standard accepted by the
church and that of the individuals who failed to conform. The standard
was inherited from the older communities of Europe. The conduct of
individuals grew out of the pioneer economy in which they were living.
Church records in New England and New York State are red with the story
of broken contracts, debt and adultery. The writer has carefully studied
the records of Oblong Meeting of the Society of Friends in Duchess
County, New York, and from a close knowledge of the community through
almost twenty years of residence in it, it is his belief that there were
more cases of adultery considered by Oblong Meeting in every average
year of the eighteenth century than were known to the whole community in
any ten years at the close of the nineteenth century. The farmer economy
in which the group life of the household prevailed over the individual
life had by the nineteenth century superseded the pioneer period, in
which individual action and independent personal initiative were the
prevailing mode.
The coming of the exploiter into the farm community brings a new set of
ethical obligations concerning property and contracts. The farmer has
perfected the individual standards of the pioneer but he is not yet
endowed with social standards. He knows that it is right to give full
measure when he sells a commodity, but he does not yet see the evil of
breaches of contract. Farmers of high standing in their communities for
their personal character, who are truthful and "honest" in such
contractual relations as come down from their fathers, have been known
to use the school system of the town for their own private profit, or
that of members of their families, and to ignore financial obligations
which belong to the new period, in which money values have taken the
place of barter values.
A good illustration is that of a deacon in a country church, whom I once
knew. His word was proverbially truthful. As widely as he was known his
reputation for piety and simple truthfulness, for honesty and purity of
life were universal. I do not think that he was consciously insincere,
but as a trustee in administering a fund devoted to public uses he
seemed to have a clear eye for only those enterprises through which he
or members of his family could indirectly secure incomes. Entrusted with
a public service which involved the improvement of the school system, so
far as he acted individually and without prompting by those who had been
accustomed all their lives to modern methods, his action was that of
loyalty to his own family and relationship. In so doing he regularly
would betray the community and the public interest. Yet he seemed to do
this ingenuously and without any conception of the moral standards of
people used to the values of money.
I have known the same man, whose standing among farmers was that of a
blameless religious man, to borrow money, and in the period of the loan
so to conduct himself as to forfeit the respect of people used to
handling money. To them he seemed to be a conscious and deliberate
grafter. The explanation in my mind is that he suffered from the
transition out of the pioneer and farmer economy into the economy of the
exploiter.
The history of the sale of lands in the country, in the recent
exploitation of farm-lands, contains many stories of the breach of
contract of farmers, and the inability of the farmer to sell wisely and
at the same time honestly. Contrasting the farmer in his knowledge of
financial obligation with the broker in the Stock Exchange, the latter
type stands out in strong contrast as an admirable example of financial
honesty to contracts, even if they be verbal only. The farmer on the
other hand has no conception of the relations on which the financial
system must be built. He is not an exploiter to begin with, but a
farmer.
The transition from the older economy to the new is illustrated in the
dairy industry which surrounds every great city. The dairy farmer has
ideas of right and wrong which are purely individualistic. He believes
that he should not cheat the customer in the quantity of milk. He
recognizes that it is wrong, therefore, to water the milk, but he has no
conception of social morality concerning milk. He gives full measure:
but he cares nothing about purity of milk. He is restless and feels
himself oppressed under the demands of the inspector from the city, for
ventilation of his barns and for protection of the milk from impurity. I
have known few milk farmers who believed in giving pure milk and I never
knew one whose conscience was at ease in watering milk. That is, they
all believe in good measure and none believes in the principle of
sanitation. They stand at the transition from the old economy to the
new.
A story is told among agricultural teachers in New York State to the
effect that an inspector following the trail of disease in a small city
traced it to impure milk supplied by a certain farm. In the absence of
the man he insisted on inspecting the dairy arrangements, being followed
from room to room by the farmer's indignant wife. Finally he said, "Show
me the strainer which you use in the milk," and she brought an old
shirt, very much soiled. Looking at it in dismay the inspector said,
"Could you not, at least, use a clean shirt?" At this the woman's
patience gave way and she declared, "Well, you needn't expect me to use
a clean shirt to strain dirty milk!"
The packing of apples for market illustrates the transition from the
farmer economy in which the ethical standards are those of the
household, or family group, to the world economy in which the moral
standards are those of the world market. Apples are packed by all
classes of farmers, regardless of varying religious profession, in an
indifferent manner. The typical farmer hopes by competition with his
neighbors to gain a possibly better price. Instances of such successes
as come to certain family groups are endlessly discussed by farmers; and
the highest ideal that one meets among farmers who sell apples
throughout the Eastern States is expressed in the instance of some
family who have improved their own farm and their own orchard, so as to
win for the family or the farm a reputation in some particular market
and thus to gain a higher price.
Contrast with this the marketing of apples by the Western fruit growers'
Associations. Among them, as for instance in the Hood Valley, Oregon,
apples are packed not by the farm owner with a view to competing with
his neighbors, but by the committee representing the whole district. The
individual farmer has no access to the market. He cannot hide his poor
fruit in an envelope of his best fruit, so as to deceive the buyer. The
committee has a reputation to maintain on behalf of the association, not
of the individual. The apples are marketed on their merits in accordance
with a certain standard. The impersonal demands of the world economy are
kept in mind. The individual farmer and farm are forgotten. The result
is that these far western growers, whose fruit is said in the East to be
inferior in flavor to the apples of New York and New England, can sell
their product in the eastern market at a higher price per box than the
New York or New England farmer can secure per barrel.
The transition from farming to exploiting has brought out in full view
the wastefulness of the farmer economy which is being succeeded by
exploitation. The whole doctrine of conservation belongs in this
transition. Economy means, literally, housekeeping. The same meaning
appears in the word husbandry. It is a principle of saving. Its
extraordinary value at the present time is due to our sudden sense of
the wastefulness of farm life in recent years. Edward van Alstyne, an
agricultural authority in New York, says, "We farmers think we are most
economical, but we are the most wasteful of all men." The wastefulness
of American farming begins in the tillage of too many acres. The farmer
prefers wide fields even at the cost of poor crops.
The New York Central Railroad, which is carrying on a propaganda of
husbandry, has appointed a man as expert farmer who increased the yield
of potatoes on his land from sixty to three hundred bushels per acre.
This brings out clearly that his neighbors are still producing sixty
bushels per acre, wasting four-fifths of their land values. This waste
is a wrong that should be denounced in the country church just as
sternly as doctrinal sins, which have occupied the attention of country
ministers in the past.
Expert farmers say that if corn-stalks for fodder are left out in the
field until they are fed to the cattle they lose forty to fifty per cent
of their food values. This waste is sinful, but the sin is visible only
in the new economy of exploitation which counts all values in terms of
cash. No sooner is the sinfulness of waste observed than its connections
with moral delinquencies of country people becomes clear. In the
improvement of rural morality due to the sifting of country people
during the farmer period, it becomes evident that among a people so
serious-minded some delinquencies still remain. The immoralities that
still lurk and fester in the country are due very largely to waste. This
waste of human things is parallel to the waste of economic values.
In a conference there was some difficulty in persuading a certain
country minister to speak. When finally he arose he said, "I am not much
interested in the scientific analysis of the country church. All I am
interested in is sin." One wonders whether he was dealing with the sins
of the country in their causes or in their effects, or was he simply
concerned with the sins which consist in opposing the doctrines of his
particular denomination, whatever it was. This wastefulness of the
values in the soil enters into the social life of the country. Farmers
care as little for the social values as for land values. Young men and
women ignore the moral importance of little things. They are not taught
that coarseness is wrong. They are not made to realize that cleanliness
and courtesy and reverence for the human body are of vital importance in
life.
Country people are prudish and they cover with a strict reserve all
discussion of the moral relations of men and women. Yet in the same
communities there is loose private conversation and coarse references
are common. The strict standard of the household prevails within its
limits. Books and magazines must not discuss, however seriously, the
problems of life. But in the intercourse of the community there is not
the same care. The moral life of country people requires cultivation of
the leisure hours, the casual talk, the occasional meetings of men and
women, and especially of young people.
The sale of votes in every election is a fixed quantity in the life of
certain country towns. It is to be counted on each year. The number of
votes for sale in each town is a known proportion of the whole, and
through certain counties the selling of votes is the political factor
everywhere present. These uniform facts point to a common cause. That
cause is the degeneration of a proportion of the rural population into
peasantry.
The growth of a peasant population in America is surely our greatest
danger. A peasantry is a rural population whose moral and spiritual
state are controlled by their material states. There may be rich
peasants, though most peasants are poor. Peasants are a specialized
class, incapable of self-government and controlled by some political
masters who exercise for them essential rights of citizenship. The
peasants in Europe are the last to receive the ballot. In America they
are the first to surrender the ballot by selling their votes.
A young minister called to a country parish denounced the sale of votes,
in his first year, and publicly fixed the whole blame on a prominent
political leader of the town, who was there present in the church. His
criticism was resented by the whole community. He was right, and so were
they. It is well to denounce the purchase of votes, but the duty of the
country church to Americanize the peasant class is the greater duty. The
presence of such a class in a town infallibly leads to this iniquity.
The sale of votes is as bad as the sale of woman's virtue, and both have
an automatic tendency to degrade the population.
The danger sign of peasantry is a degraded standard of life. In this
town there is one household in which nobody works but the mother. "How
they live beats me," is the public comment of the neighbors. Through the
winter into that house are crowded the father and mother, two sons and
two daughters, the husband of one daughter and their two children, with
three other small children, whose presence in the house is due to the
loose good nature of the family. There is an indolent uncle of these
children. None of the household follows any gainful occupation. The
table is furnished with potatoes and pork. The attraction of the
household is the easy, loose, good-nature of all its members. There is
no one to complain of the indolence of the five grown men who lounge
about through the winter days.
The presence of such a household in a town means degradation. Three of
these men can be purchased for money to vote, though they cannot be
hired for money to work. The daughters of the household are an equally
dangerous factor in the countryside. The cause of this moral peril is
the low grade of living to which the family has sunk. There is no known
state of ill-health to account for their indolence. The first duty of
the church in such a community is to regenerate such a household and to
lift the standard of ambition of its members.
Slowly the country town is coming to realize that its reputation as well
as its progress is determined by this grade of citizen. No exceptional
success on the part of one or more families and no substantial goodness
by a whole grade of the population can compensate for the lowering of
the standard of the whole town by these people. The life and death, the
reputation and the progress of the town are dependent upon the
extinguishment of these peasant conditions.
This is illustrated by the fact that where votes are for sale in a town
those purchased votes determine the election in the majority of cases.
They constitute the movable margin between the two parties; and by
shifting them one way or the other the political policy of the town is
determined. This fact illustrates the whole moral situation of the town,
for just by the same flexible margin is the moral life of the town
determined. The duty of the church therefore is with the people upon
the economic and social margin of the life of the rural community.
The farmer's moral standards are opposed to combination. He believes in
personal righteousness and family morals. He does not believe in the
moral control of the individual or the household by the economic group.
It has been impossible, therefore, to combine the farmers in the East in
any general way so as to control their markets by maintaining a high
standard of product. The only control that is dreamed of by the leaders
of the farmers is the control of the quantity of their products. They do
not think of combination which will control themselves, and so maintain
a higher quality of product in order that thus they may dominate the
market in the great city.
The present state of ethical opinion among Eastern farmers is not in
sympathy with the ethical demands of city populations. The Western fruit
growers' associations have fixed the standard for the farmers who raise
the fruit, first of all, and by means of this standard they have
conquered the market in distant cities. The standard to which they
compel their members to conform is the standard of the demand in the
world market. If the milk farmers about New York City are to combine
they must first impose a self-denying ordinance upon their own members
and furnish the city with a quality of milk in harmony with the demands
of modern sanitary experts. This is an ethical principle not of the
pioneer or the farmer economy, but of the new husbandry to which very
few farmers have conformed.