COUNTRY LIFE LEADERSHIP 225
A Challenge to College Men and Women.
APPENDIX 269
INDEX 277
ILLUSTRATIONS
The Country Boy _Frontispiece_
Rural Schools in Daviess County, Ind. _Facing page_ 12
An Abandoned Church " " 18
Rural Redirection " " 48
School Garden Work at Guelph, Canada " " 82
Plan of Macdonald Consolidated School Grounds " " 86
A Modern Fruit and Truck Farm " " 98
Pennsylvania Farm Land " " 108
Cooperation on the Playground " " 134
Types of Consolidated Schools " " 158
Vocational Training in Rural Schools " " 162
An Over-Churched Community " " 184
Presbyterian Church, Winchester, Ill. " " 236
INTRODUCTION
COUNTRY LIFE OPPORTUNITY
The glare of the city dazzles the eyes of many a man in college. For a
generation college debates, in class, club and fraternity, have
popularized all phases of the city problem, the very difficulties of which
have challenged many a country-bred boy to throw in his life where the
maelstrom was the swiftest.
In recent years however the country problem has been claiming its share of
attention. It has grown to the dignity of a national issue. The great
Rural Life Movement, starting from the Agricultural Colleges, has enlisted
the intelligent cooperation of far-visioned men in many professions.
Thinking people see clearly that in spite of the growth of cities, the
nation is still rural. Agriculture is still the main business of our
people. The nation's prosperity still depends upon "bumper crops." The
nation's character still depends upon country conscience. Not only is it
true that most of our leaders in politics, in the pulpit, in all
professions and in the great industries were born and bred in the country;
the city is still looking to the country to develop in large degree the
leadership of the future.
Were it not for the immigration tides and the continuous supply of fresh
young life from the country, the city would be unable to maintain itself;
it would be crushed beneath its burdens. For the city is the "Graveyard of
the national physique." With its moral and industrial overstrain, it is
the burial place of health, as well as youthful ambitions and hopes, for
many a young person not accustomed to its high-geared life. The nervous
system rebels against the city pace. In an incognito life the character
crumbles under the subtle disintegration of city temptations. The young
man with exceptional ability finds his way to high success in the city;
the average man trudges on in mediocrity, lost in the crowd--just a "high
private in the rear rank," when he might have stayed in the country home
and won a measure of real influence and substantial happiness in his
natural environment.
Not only has the lure of the city drawn thousands of young people who were
better off in their country homes, the real claims of the country village
upon those young people have but timidly been uttered. Not only has the
call of the city been magnified by artificial echoes, the call of the open
country has scarcely been sounded at all. The opportunity of the city as a
life arena has been advertised beyond all reason. It is time to talk of
the life chance for stalwart young Americans to stay right in the country
and realize their high privileges.
One per cent. of our young manhood and womanhood is found in college
halls. They are in many respects the chosen youth of the land. A few are
sent there by indulgent parents, but the great majority are there mainly
because of personal ambition, the urge of a mighty impulse to make their
lives count, and to get the best preparation for the work of life,
wherever their lot may be cast. Yet selfishness is not the main element in
this ambition. The truest idealists, the finest altruists are right here
among these eager college students. In their four years of liberal
training they are often reminded that the real motive of it all is
"Education for power and power for service."
The subtle sarcasm "You may lead a boy to college but you cannot make him
think" is quite needless in most cases. It would be truer to say you
cannot stop his thinking. Increasingly, in the later years of college
life, the thinking takes the direction of life planning, the discussion of
a real life-mission. Not only in the so-called Christian colleges, but
even in the State universities, which are fast becoming centers of real
religious life and power, the best men and women are now planning their
future according to what they believe to be the will of God for them. Many
have caught the vision of the possibility of genuine consecration in any
honorable life calling, making it a life of genuine service, which after
all is life's greatest opportunity. For such young men and women the
question simply is: What shall this service be and where shall it be
rendered?
The same problem of life investment is confronting the young men and women
who are not in the colleges. Idealism is not at all confined to college
halls. Wherever this book may find young men and women weighing seriously
their great life question, may it help them to see the real opportunity
offered them in the roomy fields of rural life and leadership.
CHAPTER I
THE RURAL PROBLEM
CHAPTER I
THE RURAL PROBLEM
I. _The Problem Stated and Defined_
Definition and analysis.
A classification of urban and rural communities.
II. _City and Country_
How the growing city developed the problem.
The surprising growth of rural America.
A false and misleading comparison.
III. _Rural Depletion and Rural Degeneracy_
The present extent of rural depletion.
Losses in country towns.
The need of qualitative analysis of the census.
The question of degeneracy in city and country.
Stages and symptoms of rural decadence.
The Nam's Hollow case.
A note of warning.
IV. _The Urgency of the Problem_
A hunt for fundamental causes.
The unfortunate urbanizing of rural life.
Why country boys and girls leave the farm.
The folly of exploiting the country boy.
The city's dependence on the country.
V. _A Challenge to Faith_
The Challenge of the Country
CHAPTER I
THE RURAL PROBLEM
ITS DEVELOPMENT AND PRESENT URGENCY
I. The Problem Stated and Defined.
Early in the year 1912, some five hundred leading business and
professional men of the cities of New York state met at a banquet, under
the auspices of the Young Men's Christian Association. During the evening
it was discovered that nine-tenths of these influential city leaders had
come from country homes. They were born on farms in the open country or in
rural villages of 2,500 population or less.
Facts like these no longer surprise intelligent people. They are common to
most cities, at least on our American continent; and herein is the crux of
the rural problem. At great sacrifice for a century the country has been
making the city. Doubtless thousands of incompetent citizens have been
forced off the farms by the development of farm machinery; and the country
was little poorer for their loss. But in surrendering to the city
countless farm boys of character and promise who have since become the
city's leaders, many a rural village has suffered irreparably. To be sure
this seems to be one of the village's main functions, to furnish leaders
for the city; and it has usually been proud of its opportunity. It is the
_wholesale_ character of this generous community sacrifice which has
developed trouble.
The rural problem is the problem of maintaining in our farm and village
communities a Christian civilization with modern American ideals of
happiness, efficiency and progress.
It is a problem of industrial efficiency, of economic progress, of social
cooperation and recreation, of home comfort, of educational equipment for
rural life, of personal happiness, of religious vitality and of
institutional development for community service. Though the problem would
exist independently of the city, its acuteness is due to city competition.
The fact that city leadership is still largely drawn from the country
makes the rural problem of vital importance to the welfare of the city and
in a real sense a national issue.
_A Classification of Communities_
The terms rural and urban, country and city, town, village and township
are so variously used they cause much ambiguity. The last is primarily
geographical rather than social. The word town means township in New
England and nothing in particular anywhere else. The others are relative
terms used differently by different people. For years the line between
rural and urban was arbitrarily set at the 8,000 mark, but the thirteenth
census has placed it at 2,500. It seems petty however to dub a village of
2,501 people a city! This is convenient but very inaccurate. There are 38
"towns" in Massachusetts alone having over 8,000 people which refuse to be
called cities.
Cities of the first class have a population of 100,000 upwards; cities of
the second class number from 25,000 to 100,000 people; and communities
from 8,000 to 25,000 may well be styled small cities. The term village is
naturally applied to a community of 2,500 or less. When located in the
country it is a country village; when near a city it is a suburban village
and essentially urban. When no community center is visible, the term "open
country" best fits the case.
The disputed territory between 2,500 and 8,000 will be urban or rural,
according to circumstances. A community of this size in the urban tract is
by no means rural. But if away from the domination of city life it is
purely country. The best term the writer has been able to find for this
comfortable and prosperous type of American communities,--there are over
4,500 of them, between the village of 2,500 and the city of 8,000
people,--is the good old New England term _town_; which may be either
rural or urban according to its distance from the nearest city.
In the last analysis the terms rural and urban are qualitative rather than
quantitative. In spite of the apparent paradox, there are rural cities and
urban villages; small provincial cities where the people are largely
rural-minded, and suburban villages of a few hundred people whose
interests are all in the life of the city. But in general, the scope of
the term "country life" as used in this book will be understood to include
the life of the open country, the rural village and most country towns of
8,000 people or less, whose outlook is the sky and the soil rather than
the brick walls and limited horizon of the city streets.
II. City and Country.
_How the Growing City Developed the Problem_
We can almost say the growth of the city made the country problem. It
would be nearer the truth to say, it made the problem serious. The problem
of rural progress would still exist, even if there were no cities; but had
the city not been drafting its best blood from the villages for more than
half a century, we should probably not be anxious about the rural problem
to-day, for it is this loss of leadership which has made rural progress so
slow and difficult.
It is well to remember that the growth of cities is not merely an American
fact. It is universal in all the civilized world. Wherever the modern
industrial system holds sway the cities have been growing phenomenally. In
fact the city population in this country is less in proportion than the
city population of England, Scotland, Wales, Australia, Belgium, Saxony,
The Netherlands and Prussia.
The present gains of American cities are largely due to immigration and to
the natural increase of births over deaths, especially in recent years
with improved sanitation, but for many decades past the city has gained
largely at the expense of the country. Chicago became a city of over two
million before the first white child born there died, in March, 1907.
Meanwhile, in the decade preceding 1890, 792 Illinois rural townships lost
population, in the following decade 522, and in the decade 1900-1910,
1113, in spite of the agricultural wealth of this rich prairie state.
Likewise New York city (with Brooklyn) has doubled in twenty years since
1890; while in a single decade almost 70% of the rural townships in the
state reported a loss. The rural state of Iowa actually reports a net loss
of 7,000 for the last decade (1900), though Des Moines alone gained
24,200, and all but two of the cities above 8,000 grew.[1]
Naturally in the older sections of the country the rural losses hitherto
have been most startling. In the rural sections of New Hampshire Dr. W. L.
Anderson found serious depletion from 1890 to 1900, "a great enough loss
to strain rural society"; and the 1910 census reports even worse losses.
The same has been only less true of the rural districts in Maine, Vermont,
eastern Connecticut and portions of all the older states. The cities'
gains cost the country dear, in abandoned farms, weakened schools and
churches and discouraged communities drained of their vitality.
_The Surprising Growth of Rural America_
However, in spite of this story of rural depletion which has been often
rehearsed, the rural sections of our country altogether have made
surprising gains. City people especially are astonished to learn that our
country, even if the cities should be eliminated entirely from the
reckoning, has been making substantial progress. The 8,000 mark was for
years reckoned as the urban point. Counting only communities of less than
8,000 people we find that in 1850 the country population numbered
20,294,290; in 1890, 44,349,747; and in 1906, 54,107,571. If we consider
only communities of 2,500 or less, we find 35-1/3 millions in 1880; over
45 millions in 1900; and nearly 50 millions in 1910. The last census
reports almost 53-1/2 millions of people living in villages of 5,000 or
less; or 58.2% of the population.
It is obvious that in spite of dismal prophecies to the contrary from city
specialists, and in spite of the undeniable drift to the city for decades,
the total country population in America has continued to grow. Rural
America is still growing 11.2% in a decade. Outside of the densely
populated north-eastern states, the nation as a whole is still rural and
will long remain so. Where the soil is poor, further rural depletion must
be expected; but with normal conditions and with an increasingly
attractive rural life, most country towns and villages may be expected to
hold their own reasonably well against the city tide.
We hear little to-day about the abandoned farms of New England. In the
decade past they have steadily found a market and hundreds of them have
been reclaimed for summer occupancy or for suburban homes for city men.
Even in rural counties where decay has been notable in many townships,
there are always prosperous towns and villages, along the rivers and the
railroads, where substantial prosperity will doubtless continue for many
years to come.
_A False and Misleading Comparison_
Unquestionably a false impression on this question has prevailed in the
cities for a generation past because of obviously unjust comparisons.
Families coming from decadent villages to prosperous cities have talked
much of rural decadence. Stories of murders and low morals in neglected
rural communities have made a great impression on people living in clean
city wards. Meanwhile, not five blocks away, congested city slums never
visited by the prosperous, concealed from popular view, festering social
corruption and indescribable poverty and vice. Let us be fair in our
sociological comparisons and no longer judge our rural worst by our urban
best. Let the rural slum be compared with the city slum and the city
avenues with the prosperous, self-respecting sections of the country; then
contrasts will not be so lurid and we shall see the facts in fair
perspective.
As soon as we learn to discriminate we find that country life as a whole
is wholesome, that country people as a rule are as happy as city people
and fully as jovial and light-hearted and that the fundamental prosperity
of most country districts has been gaining these past two decades. While
rural depletion is widespread, rural _decadence_ must be studied not as a
general condition at all, but as the abnormal, unusual state found in
special sections, such as regions handicapped by poor soil, sections
drained by neighboring industrial centers, isolated mountain districts
where life is bare and strenuous, and the open country away from railroads
and the great life currents. With this word of caution let us examine the
latest reports of rural depletion.
III. Rural Depletion and Rural Degeneracy.
_The Present Extent of Rural Depletion_
The thirteenth census (1910) shows that in spite of the steady gain in the
country districts of the United States as a whole, thousands of rural
townships have continued to lose population. These shrinking communities
are found everywhere except in the newest agricultural regions of the West
and in the black belt of the South. The older the communities the earlier
this tendency to rural depletion became serious. The trouble began in New
England, but now the rural problem is moving west. Until the last census
New England was the only section of the country to show this loss as a
whole; but the 1910 figures just reported give a net rural loss for the
first time in the group of states known as the "east north central." Yet
in both cases, the net rural loss for the section was less than 1%.
Taking 2,500 as the dividing line, the last census reports that in every
state in the country the urban population has increased since 1900, but in
six states the rural population has diminished. In two states, Montana and
Wyoming, the country has outstripped the city; but in general, the country
over, the cities grew from 1900 to 1910 three times as fast as the rural
sections. While the country communities of the United States have grown
11.2% the cities and towns above 2,500 have increased 34.8%. In the
prosperous state of Iowa, the only state reporting an absolute loss, the
rural sections lost nearly 120,000. Rural Indiana lost 83,127, or 5.1%;
rural Missouri lost 68,716, or 3.5%; rural villages in New Hampshire show
a net loss of 10,108, or 5.4%; and rural Vermont has suffered a further
loss of 8,222, or 4.2%, though the state as a whole made the largest gain
for forty years.
These latest facts from the census are valuable for correcting false
notions of rural depletion. It is unfair to count up the number of rural
townships in a state which have failed to grow and report that state
rurally decadent. For example, a very large majority of the Illinois
townships with less than 2,500 people failed to hold their own the past
decade,--1,113 out of 1,592. But in many cases the loss was merely
nominal; consequently we find, in spite of the tremendous drain to
Chicago, the rural population of the state as a whole made a slight gain.
This case is typical. Thousands of rural villages have lost population;
yet other thousands have gained enough to offset these losses in all but
the six states mentioned.
_Losses in Country Towns_
New England continues to report losses, not only in the rural villages,
but also in the country towns of between 2,500 and 5,000 population. This
was true the last decade in every New England state except Vermont.
Massachusetts towns of this type made a net loss of about 30,000, or 15%;
although nearly all the larger towns and many villages in that remarkably
prosperous state made gains. This class of towns has also made net losses
the past decade in Indiana, Iowa, South Dakota, South Carolina, Alabama
and Mississippi, although in these last four states the smaller
communities under 2,500 made substantial gains. This indicates in some
widely different sections of the country an apparently better prosperity
in the open country than in many country towns. Similarly in several
states, the larger towns between five and ten thousand population have
netted a loss in the last decade, as in New York State, although the
smaller villages have on the average prospered.
_The Need of Qualitative Analysis of the Census_
We must not be staggered by mere figures. A _qualitative_ analysis of the
census sometimes saves us from pessimism. Someone has said "Even a
_growing_ town has no moral insurance." Mere growth does not necessarily
mean improvement either in business or morals. It is quite possible that
some of the "decadent" villages which have lost 15% of their population
are really better places for residence than they were before and possibly
fully as prosperous. It depends entirely on the kind of people that
remain. If it is really the survival of the fittest, there will be no
serious problem. But if it is "the heritage of the unfit," if only the
unambitious and shiftless have remained, then the village is probably
doomed.
In any case, the situation is due to the inevitable process of social and
economic adjustment. Changes in agricultural method and opportunity are
responsible for much of it. Doubtless farm machinery has driven many
laborers away. Likewise the rising price of land has sent away the
speculative farmer to pastures new, especially from eastern Canada and the
middle west in the States to the low-priced lands of the rich Canadian
west.[2] The falling native birthrate, especially in New England, has
been as potent a factor in diminishing rural sections as has the lure of
the cities.
"In the main," says Dr. Anderson in his very discriminating study of the
problem, "rural depletion is over. In its whole course it has been an
adjustment of industrial necessity and of economic health; everywhere it
is a phase of progress and lends itself to the optimist that discerns
deeper meanings. Nevertheless depletion has gone so far as to affect
seriously all rural problems within the area of its action.
"The difficult and perplexing problems are found where the people are
reduced in number. That broad though irregular belt of depleted rural
communities, stretching from the marshes of the Atlantic shore to the
banks of the Missouri, which have surrendered from ten to forty per cent.
of their people, within which are many localities destined to experience
further losses, calls for patient study of social forces and requires a
reconstruction of the whole social outfit. But it should be remembered
that an increasing population gathers in rural towns thickly strewn
throughout the depleted tract, and that the cheer of their growth and
thrift is as much a part of the rural situation as the perplexity incident
to a diminishing body of people."[3]
Whereas the main trend in rural districts is toward better social and
moral conditions as well as material prosperity, we do not have to look
far to find local degeneracy in the isolated places among the hills or in
unfertile sections which have been deserted by the ambitious and
intelligent, leaving a pitiable residuum of "poor whites" behind. Such
localities furnish the facts for the startling disclosures which form the
basis of occasional newspaper and magazine articles such as Rollin Lynde
Hartt's in the _Atlantic Monthly_, Vol. 83, _The Forum_, June 1892, the
_St. Albans Messenger_ Jan. 2, 1904, et cetera.
_The Question of Degeneracy in City and Country_
The question has long been debated as to whether criminals and defectives
are more common in the city or the country. Dwellers in prosperous,
well-governed suburban cities, that know no slums, are positive that the
rural districts are degenerate. Country people in prosperous rural
sections of Kansas, for instance, where no poor-house or jail can be found
for many miles, insist that degeneracy is a city symptom! It is obvious
that discrimination is necessary. The great majority of folks in both city
and country are living a decent life; degeneracy is everywhere the
exception. It would be fully as reasonable to condemn the city as a whole
for the breeding places of vice, insanity and crime which we call the
slums, as it is to characterize rural life in general as degenerate.
In view of the evident fact that both urban and rural communities have
their defectives and delinquents, in varying ratio, depending on local
conditions, Professor Giddings suggests a clear line of discrimination.
"Degeneration manifests itself in the protean forms of suicide, insanity,
crime and vice, which abound in the highest civilization, where the
tension of life is extreme, and in those places from which civilization
has ebbed and from which population has been drained, leaving a
discouraged remnant to struggle against deteriorating conditions.... Like
insanity, crime occurs most frequently in densely populated towns on the
one hand, and on the other in partially deserted rural districts. Murder
is a phenomenon of both the frontier life of an advancing population and
of the declining civilization in its rear; it is preeminently the crime of
the new town and the decaying town.... Crimes of all kinds are less
frequent in prosperous agricultural communities and in thriving towns of
moderate size, where the relation of income to the standard of living is
such that the life struggle is not severe."[4]
[Illustration: Rural Schools in Daviess County, Indiana.]
_Stages and Symptoms of Rural Decadence_
In his discussion of the country problem, Dr. Josiah Strong reminds us
that rural decadence comes as an easy evolution passing through rather
distinct stages, when the rural community has really lost its best blood.
Roads deteriorate,--those all-important arteries of country life; then
property soon depreciates; schools and churches are weakened; often
foreign immigrants crowd out the native stock, sometimes infusing real
strength, but often introducing the continental system of rural peasantry,
with absentee landlords. Then isolation increases, with a strong tendency
toward degeneracy and demoralization.
Where this process is going on we are not surprised to find such
conditions as Rev. H. L. Hutchins described in 1906 in an address before
the annual meeting of the Connecticut Bible Society at New Haven. From a
very intimate experience of many years in the rural sections of
Connecticut, he gave a most disheartening report, dwelling upon the
increasing ignorance of the people, their growing vices, the open contempt
for and disregard of marriage, the alarming growth of idiocy, partly the
result of inbreeding and incest, some localities being cited where
practically all the residents were brothers and sisters or cousins, often
of the same name, so that surnames were wholly displaced by nicknames; the
omnipresence of cheap whiskey with its terrible effects, the resulting
frequency of crimes of violence; the feebleness and backwardness of the
schools and the neglect and decay of the churches, resulting in inevitable
lapse into virtual paganism and barbarism, in sections that two
generations ago were inhabited by stalwart Christian men and women of the
staunch old New England families.
Doubtless similar illustrations of degradation could be cited from the
neglected corners of all the older states of the country, where several
generations of social evolution have ensued under bad circumstances. In
all the central states, conditions of rural degeneracy now exist which a
few years ago were supposed to be confined to New England; for the same
causes have been repeating themselves in other surroundings.
An illustration of "discouraged remnants" is cited by Dr. Warren H.
Wilson. "I remember driving, in my early ministry, from a prosperous
farming section into a weakened community, whose lands had a lowered value
because they lay too far from the railroad. My path to a chapel service
on Sunday afternoon lay past seven successive farmhouses in each of which
lived one member of a family, clinging in solitary misery to a small
acreage which had a few years earlier supported a household. In that same
neighborhood was one group of descendants of two brothers, which had in
two generations produced sixteen suicides. 'They could not stand trouble,'
the neighbors said. The lowered value of their land, with consequent
burdens, humiliation and strain, had crushed them. The very ability and
distinction of the family in the earlier period had the effect by contrast
to sink them lower down."[5]
_The Nam's Hollow Case_
Ordinary rural degeneracy, however, is more apt to be associated with
feeble-mindedness. An alarming, but perhaps typical case is described in a
recent issue of _The Survey_. A small rural community in New York state,
which the author calls for convenience Nam's Hollow, contains 232
licentious women and 199 licentious men out of a total population of 669;
the great proportion being mentally as well as morally defective. A great
amount of consanguineous marriage has taken place,--mostly without the
formalities prescribed by law. Sex relations past and present are
hopelessly entangled. Fifty-four of the inhabitants of the Hollow have
been in custody either in county houses or asylums, many are paupers, and
forty have served terms in state's prison or jail. There are 192 persons
who are besotted by the use of liquor "in extreme quantities."
Apparently most of this degeneracy can be traced back to a single family
whose descendants have numbered 800. With all sorts of evil traits to
begin with, this family by constant inbreeding have made persistent these
evil characteristics in all the different households and have cursed the
whole life of the Hollow, not to mention the unknown evil wrought
elsewhere, whither some of them have gone. "The imbeciles and harlots and
criminalistic are bred in the Hollow, but they do not all stay there." A
case is cited of a family of only five which has cost the county up to
date $6,300, and the expense likely to continue for many years yet. "Would
you rouse yourself if you learned there were ten cases of bubonic plague
at a point not 200 miles away?" asks the investigator of Nam's Hollow. "Is
not a breeding spot of uncontrolled animalism as much of a menace to our
civilization?"[6]
_A Note of Warning_
These sad stories of rural degeneracy must not make us pessimists. We need
not lose our faith in the open country. It is only the exceptional
community which has really become decadent and demoralized. These
communities however warn us that even self-respecting rural villages are
in danger of following the same sad process of decay unless they are kept
on the high plane of wholesome Christian living and community efficiency.
What is to prevent thousands of other rural townships, which are now
losing population, gradually sinking to the low level of personal
shiftlessness and institutional uselessness which are the marks of
degeneracy? Nothing can prevent this but the right kind of intelligent,
consecrated leadership. It is not so largely a quantitative matter,
however, as Dr. Josiah Strong suggested twenty years ago in his stirring
treatment of the subject. After citing the fact that 932 townships in New
England were losing population in 1890, and 641 in New York, 919 in
Pennsylvania, 775 in Ohio, et cetera, he suggests: "If this migration
continues, and no new preventive measures are devised, I see no reason why
isolation, irreligion, ignorance, vice and degradation should not increase
in the country until we have a rural American peasantry, illiterate and
immoral, possessing the rights of citizenship, but utterly incapable of
performing or comprehending its duties."
After twenty years we find the rural depletion still continuing. Though
New England in 1910 reports 143 fewer losing towns than in 1890, the
census of 1910 in general furnishes little hope that the migration from
the country sections is diminishing.[7] Our hope for the country rests in
the fact that the problem has at last been recognized as a national issue
and that a Country Life Movement of immense significance is actually
bringing in a new rural civilization. "We must expect the steady
deterioration of our rural population, unless effective preventive
measures are devised," was Dr. Strong's warning two decades ago. To-day
the challenge of the country not only quotes the peril of rural depletion
and threatened degeneracy, but also appeals to consecrated young manhood
and womanhood with a living faith in the permanency of a reconstructed
rural life.
Our rural communities must be saved from decadence, for the sake of the
nation. Professor Giddings well says: "Genius is rarely born in the city.
The city owes the great discoveries and immortal creations to those who
have lived with nature and with simple folk. The country produces the
original ideas, the raw materials of social life, and the city combines
ideas and forms the social mind." In the threatened decadence of depleted
rural communities, and in the lack of adequate leadership in many places,
to revive a dying church, to equip a modern school, to develop a new rural
civilization, to build a cooperating community with a really satisfying
and efficient life, we have a problem which challenges both our patriotism
and our religious spirit, for the problem is fundamentally a religious
one.
IV. The Urgency of the Problem.
A broad-minded leader of the religious life of college men has recently
expressed his opinion that _the rural problem is more pressing just now
than any other North American problem_. He is a city man and is giving his
attention impartially to the needs of all sections. Two classes of people
will be surprised by his statement. Many of his city neighbors are so
overwhelmed by the serious needs of the city, they near-sightedly cannot
see any particular problem in the country,--except how to take the next
train for New York! And doubtless many country people, contented with
second-rate conditions, are even unaware that they and their environment
are being studied as a problem at all. Some prosperous farmers really
resent the "interference" of people interested in better rural conditions
and say "the country would be all right if let alone." But neither sordid
rural complacency nor urban obliviousness can satisfy thinking people. We
know there is something the matter with country life. We discover that the
vitality and stability of rural life is in very many places threatened. It
is the business of Christian students and leaders to study the conditions
and try to remove or remedy the causes.
[Illustration: An Abandoned Church, Daviess County, Indiana.]
_A Hunt for Fundamental Causes_
Depletion added to isolation, and later tending toward degeneracy, is what
makes the rural problem acute. It is the growth of the city which has made
the problem serious. If we would discover a constructive policy for
handling this problem successfully by making country life worth while, and
better able to compete with the city, then we must find out why the boys
and girls go to the big towns and why their parents rent the farm and
move into the village.
For two generations there has been a mighty life-current toward the
cities, sweeping off the farm many of the brightest boys and most
ambitious girls in all the country-side, whom the country could ill afford
to spare. The city needed many of them doubtless; but not all, for it has
not used all of them well. Everywhere the country has suffered from the
loss of them. Why did they go? It is evident that a larger proportion of
the brightest country boys and girls must be kept on the farms if the
rural communities are to hold their own and the new rural civilization
really have a chance to develop as it should.
_The Unfortunate Urbanizing of Rural Life_
As a rule the whole _educational_ trend is toward the city. The teachers
of rural schools are mostly from the larger villages and towns where they
have caught the city fever, and they infect the children. Even in the
lower grades the stories of city life begin early to allure the country
children, and with a subtle suggestion the echoes of the distant city's
surging life come with all the power of the Arabian Nights tales. Early
visits to the enchanted land of busy streets and wonderful stores and
factories, the circus and the theater, deepen the impression, and the
fascination grows.
In proportion to the nearness to the city, there has been a distinct
urbanizing of rural life. To a degree this has been well. It has raised
the standard of comfort in country homes and has had a distinct influence
in favor of real culture and a higher plane of living. But the impression
has come to prevail widely that the city is the source of all that is
interesting, profitable and worth while, until many country folks have
really come to think meanly of themselves and their surroundings, taking
the superficial city estimate of rural values as the true one.
A real slavery to city fashions has been growing insidiously in the
country. So far as this has affected the facial adornments of the farmer,
it has made for progress; but as seen in the adoption of unhospitable
vertical city architecture for country homes,--an insult to broad acres
which suggest home-like horizontals,--and the wearing by the women of
cheap imitations of the flaunting finery of returning "cityfied"
stenographers, it is surely an abomination pure and simple.
Bulky catalogs of mail-order houses, alluringly illustrated, have added to
the craze, and the new furnishings of many rural homes resemble the tinsel
trappings of cheap city flats, while substantial heirlooms of real taste
and dignity are relegated to the attic. Fine rural discrimination as to
the appropriate and the artistic is fast crumbling before the
all-convincing argument, "It is _the thing_ now in the city." To be sure
there is much the country may well learn from the city, the finer phases
of real culture, the cultivation of social graces in place of rustic
bashfulness and boorish manners, and the saving element of industrial
cooperation; but let these gains not be bought by surrendering rural
self-respect or compromising rural sincerity, or losing the wholesome
ruggedness of the country character. The new rural civilization must be
indigenous to the soil, not a mere urbanizing veneer. Only so can it
foster genuine community pride and loyalty to its own environment. But
herein is the heart of our problem.
_Why Country Boys and Girls Leave the Farm_
The mere summary of reasons alleged by many individuals will be sufficient
for our purpose, without enlarging upon them. Many of these were obtained
by Director L. H. Bailey of Cornell, the master student of this problem.
Countless boys have fled from the farm because they found the work
monotonous, laborious and uncongenial, the hours long, the work
unorganized and apparently unrewarding, the father or employer hard,
exacting and unfeeling. Many of them with experience only with
old-fashioned methods, are sure that farming does not pay, that there is
no money in the business compared with city employments, that the farmer
cannot control prices, is forced to buy high and sell low, is handicapped
by big mortgages, high taxes, and pressing creditors. It is both
encouraging and suggestive that many country boys, with a real love for
rural life, but feeling that farming requires a great deal of capital, are
planning "to farm someday, after making enough money in some other
business."
The phantom of farm drudgery haunts many boys. They feel that the work is
too hard in old age, and that it cannot even be relieved sufficiently by
machinery, that it is not intellectual enough and furthermore leaves a man
too tired at night to enjoy reading or social opportunities. The work of
farming seems to them quite unscientific and too dependent upon luck and
chance and the fickle whims of the weather.
Farm life is shunned by many boys and girls because they say it is too
narrow and confining, lacking in freedom, social advantages, activities
and pleasures, which the city offers in infinite variety. They see their
mother overworked and growing old before her time, getting along with few
comforts or conveniences, a patient, uncomplaining drudge, living in
social isolation, except for uncultivated neighbors who gossip
incessantly.
Many ambitious young people see little future on the farm. They feel that
the farmer never can be famous in the outside world and that people have a
low regard for him. In their village high school they have caught visions
of high ideals; but they fail to discover high ideals in farm life and
feel that high and noble achievement is impossible there, that the farmer
cannot serve humanity in any large way and can attain little political
influence or personal power.
With an adolescent craving for excitement, "something doing all the time,"
they are famished in the quiet open country and are irresistibly drawn to
the high-geared city life, bizarre, spectacular, noisy, full of variety in
sights, sounds, experiences, pleasures, comradeships, like a living
vaudeville; and offering freedom from restraint in a life of easy
incognito, with more time for recreation and "doing as you please." But
with all the attractiveness of city life for the boys and girls, as
compared with the simplicity of the rural home, the main pull cityward is
probably "the job." They follow what they think is the easiest road to
making a living, fancying that great prizes await them in the business
life of the town.
Superficial and unreasonable as most of these alleged reasons are to-day,
we must study them as genuine symptoms of a serious problem. If country
life is to develop a permanently satisfying opportunity for the farm boys
and girls, these conditions must be met. Isolation and drudgery must be
somehow conquered. The business of farming must be made more profitable,
until clerking in the city cannot stand the competition. The social and
recreative side of rural life must be developed. The rural community must
be socialized and the country school must really fit for rural life. The
lot of the farm mothers and daughters must be made easier and happier.
Scientific farming must worthily appeal to the boys as a genuine
profession, not a mere matter of luck with the weather, and the farm boy
must no longer be treated as a slave but a partner in the firm.[8]
_The Folly of Exploiting the Country Boy_
An eminent Western lawyer addressing a rural life conference in Missouri a
few weeks ago explained thus his leaving the farm: "When I was a boy on
the farm we were compelled to rise about 4 o'clock every morning. From the
time we got on our clothes until 7:30 we fed the live stock and milked the
cows. Then breakfast. After breakfast, we worked in the field until 11:30,
when, after spending at least a half hour caring for the teams we went to
dinner. We went back to work at 1 o'clock and remained in the field until
7:30 o'clock. After quitting the fields we did chores until 8:30 or 9
o'clock, and then we were advised to go to bed right away so that we would
be able to do a good day's work on the morrow."
No wonder the boy rebelled! This story harks back to the days when a
father owned his son's labor until the boy was twenty-one, and could
either use the boy on his own farm or have him "bound out" for a term of
years for the father's personal profit. Such harsh tactlessness is seldom
found today; but little of it will be found in the new rural
civilization.[9] Country boys must not be exploited if we expect them to
stay in the country as community builders. Many of them will gladly stay
if given a real life chance.
_The City's Dependence upon the Country_
The country is the natural source of supply for the nation. The city has
never yet been self-sustaining. It has always drawn its raw materials and
its population from the open country. The country must continue to produce
the food, the hardiest young men and women, and much of the idealism and
best leadership of the nation. All of these have proven to be indigenous
to country life. Our civilization is fundamentally rural, and the rural
problem is a national problem, equally vital to the city and the whole
country. The cities should remember that they have a vast deal at stake in
the welfare of the rural districts.
The country for centuries got along fairly well without the city, and
could continue to do so; but the city could not live a month without the
country! The great railway strike last fall in England revealed the fact
that Birmingham _had but a week's food supply_. A serious famine
threatened, and this forced a speedy settlement. Meanwhile food could not
be brought to the city except in small quantities, and the people of
Birmingham learned in a striking way their utter dependence upon the
country as their source of supply. The philosophy of one of the sages of
China, uttered ages ago, is still profoundly true: "The well-being of a
people is like a tree; agriculture is its root, manufactures and commerce
are its branches and its life; but if the root be injured, the leaves
fall, the branches break away and the tree dies."[10]
That far-seeing Irish leader, Sir Horace Plunkett, after a searching study
of American conditions, is inclined to think that our great prosperous
cities are blundering seriously in not concerning themselves more
earnestly with the rural problem: "Has it been sufficiently considered how
far the moral and physical health of the modern city depends upon the
constant influx of fresh blood from the country, which has ever been the
source from which the town draws its best citizenship? You cannot keep on
indefinitely skimming the pan and have equally good milk left. Sooner or
later, if the balance of trade in this human traffic be not adjusted, the
raw material out of which urban society is made will be seriously
deteriorated, and the symptoms of national degeneracy will be properly
charged against those who neglected to foresee the evil and treat the
cause.... The people of every state are largely bred in rural districts,
and the physical and moral well-being of those districts must eventually
influence the quality of the whole people."[11]
V. A Challenge to Faith.
The seriousness of our problem is sufficiently clear. Our consideration in
this chapter has been confined mainly to the personal factors. Certain
important social and institutional factors will be further considered in
Chapter V under Country Life Deficiencies. With all its serious
difficulties and discouragements the rural problem is a splendid challenge
to faith. There are many with the narrow city outlook who despair of the
rural problem and consider that country life is doomed. There are still
others who have faith in the country town and village but have lost their
faith in the open country as an abiding place for rural homes. Before
giving such people of little faith further hearing, we must voice the
testimony of a host of country lovers who have a great and enduring faith
in the country as the best place for breeding men, the most natural arena
for developing character, the most favorable place for happy homes, and,
for a splendid host of country boys and girls the most challenging
opportunity for a life of service.
TEST QUESTIONS ON CHAPTER I
1.--How would you define the Rural Problem?
2.--Illustrate how the growth of the city has affected the rural problem.
3.--Explain the terms rural, urban, city, town, and village.
4.--What misleading comparisons have been made between city and country
conditions?
5.--In what six states has the rural population, as a whole, shown a net
loss in the last ten years?
6.--To what extent has rural America grown in population the past half
century?
7.--Describe the symptoms of a decadent village.
8.--Under what conditions do you find a village improving even when losing
population?
9.--Discuss carefully the comparative degeneracy of the city and the
country.
10.--Describe some of the stages of rural degeneracy.
11.--What signs of rural degeneracy have come under your personal
observation and how do you account for the conditions?
12.--What evidences have you seen of the "urbanizing" of rural life, and
what do you think about it?
13.--Why do country boys and girls leave the farm and go to the city?
14.--What must be done to make country life worth while, so that a fair
share of the boys and girls may be expected to stay there?
15.--How do you think a farmer ought to treat his boys?
16.--To what extent is the city dependent upon the country.
17.--Why do so many prosperous farmers rent their farms and give up
country life?
18.--How does the village problem differ from the problem of the open
country?
19.--Do you believe the open country will be permanently occupied by
American homes, or must we develop a hamlet system, as in Europe and Asia?
20.--To what extent have you faith in the ultimate solution of the country
problem?
CHAPTER II
COUNTRY LIFE OPTIMISM
CHAPTER II
COUNTRY LIFE OPTIMISM
I. _Signs of a New Faith in Rural Life_
A tribute from the city.
The Country Boy's Creed.
City-bred students in agricultural colleges.
Reasons for this city-to-country movement.
II. _The Privilege of Living in the Country_
Some city life drawbacks.
The attractiveness of country life.
The partnership with nature.
Rural sincerity and real neighborliness.
The challenge of the difficult in rural life.
III. _The Country Life Movement_
Its real significance.
Its objective: a campaign for rural progress.
Its early history: various plans for rural welfare.
Its modern sponsors: the agricultural colleges.
The Roosevelt Commission on Country Life.
Its call for rural leadership.
Its constructive program for rural betterment.
IV. _Institutions and Agencies at Work_
Organized forces making for a better rural life.
CHAPTER II
COUNTRY LIFE OPTIMISM
I. Signs of a New Faith in Rural Life.
THE FARM: BEST HOME OF THE FAMILY: MAIN SOURCE OF NATIONAL WEALTH:
FOUNDATION OF CIVILIZED SOCIETY: THE NATURAL PROVIDENCE
This tribute to the fundamental value of rural life is a part of the
classic inscription, cut in the marble over the massive entrances, on the
new union railroad station at Washington, D. C. Its calm, clear faith is
reassuring. It reminds us that there is unquestionably an abiding optimism
in this matter of country life. It suggests, that in spite of rural
depletion and decadence here and there, country life is so essential to
our national welfare it will permanently maintain itself. So long as there
is a city civilization to be fed and clothed, there must always be a rural
civilization to produce the raw materials. The question is, will it be a
_Christian_ civilization?
Our opening chapter has made it clear, that if the rural problem is to be
handled constructively and successfully, rural life must be made
permanently satisfying and worth while. It must not only be attractive
enough to retain _a fair share_ of the boys and girls, but also rich
enough in opportunity for self-expression, development and service to
warrant their investing a life-time there without regrets.
The writer believes there are certain great attractions in country life
and certain drawbacks and disadvantages in city life which, if fairly
considered by the country boy, would help him to appreciate the privilege
of living in the country. It is certainly true that there is a strong and
growing sentiment in the city favoring rural life. Many city people are
longing for the freedom of the open country and would be glad of the
chance to move out on the land for their own sake as well as for the sake
of their children.
In this connection the most interesting fact is the new interest in
country life opportunity which city boys and young men are manifesting.
The discontented country boy who has come to seek his fortune in the city
finds there the city boy anxious to fit himself for a successful life in
the country! In view of the facts, the farm boy tired of the old farm
ought to ponder well Fishin' 'Zeke's philosophy:
"Fish don't bite just for the wishin',
Keep a pullin'!
Change your bait and keep on fishin';
Keep a pullin'!
Luck ain't nailed to any spot;
_Men you envy, like as not,
Envy you your job and lot!_
Keep a pullin'!"
In many agricultural colleges and state universities, we find an
increasing proportion of students _coming from the cities_ for training in
the science of agriculture and the arts of rural life. This is a very
significant and encouraging fact. It shows us that the tide has begun to
turn. Rural life is coming to its own, for country life is beginning to be
appreciated again after several decades of disfavor and neglect. Our
purpose in this chapter is to discuss these matters in detail.
It is difficult to find a more comprehensive statement of the
attractiveness of country life, in concrete terms, than this fine bit of
rural optimism entitled The Country Boy's Creed:
THE COUNTRY BOY'S CREED
"I believe that the country which God made is more beautiful than the
city which man made; that life out-of-doors and in touch with the
earth is the natural life of man. I believe that work is work
wherever I find it; but that work with Nature is more inspiring than
work with the most intricate machinery. I believe that the dignity of
labor depends not on what you do, but on how you do it; that
opportunity comes to a boy on the farm as often as to a boy in the
city; that life is larger and freer and happier on the farm than in
the town; that my success depends not upon my location, but upon
myself,--not upon my dreams, but upon what I actually do, not upon
luck but upon pluck. I believe in working when you work and playing
when you play, and in giving and demanding a square deal in every act
of life."[12]
There are many contented country boys in comfortable modern homes and
prosperous rural communities, who heartily assent to this rural
confession of faith. "For substance of _doctrine_" many a man would
frankly accept it after a more or less disappointing life in the city
whirl. It is not difficult to find men who really regret that they left
the farm in young manhood, now that country life has so greatly increased
in attractiveness. "Farm life has changed a great deal," says one with a
tone of regret, "since I left the farm twelve years ago. Machinery has
been added, making the work easier; farming has become more scientific,
giving scope to the man who does not wish to be a mere nobody. For the
last few years there has been more money in farming."
Every year now at Cornell University, some men change their course from
the overcrowded engineering to the agricultural department. This
confession of a late change of heart about country life comes from one of
the engineers who apparently wishes he had done likewise: "When I entered
the university and registered in mechanical engineering, I had the idea
that a fellow had to get off the farm, as the saying goes, 'to make
something of himself in the world,' and that a living could be made more
easily, with more enjoyment, in another profession. But now, after seeing
a little of the other side of the question, if I had the four years back
again, agriculture would be my college course. As for country life being
unattractive, I have always found it much the reverse. The best and
happiest days of my life have been on the farm, and I cannot but wish that
I were going back again when through with school work."
_City-bred Students in Agricultural Colleges_
In reply to the question "Why are so many city boys studying agriculture?"
a dean of a college of agriculture replied, "I think it is safe to say
that a large number of city-bred boys are attracted to the agricultural
colleges as a result of _the general movement of our cities toward the
country_. The agitation which has caused the business man to look upon the
rural community as more desirable than the city, leads him to send his son
to an agricultural college in preference to other departments of the
university."
This city-to-country movement is naturally strongest where the
country-to-city movement has long been developing. The Massachusetts State
College reports only about 25% of its new students sons of farmers and 50%
of its enrollment from the cities. Yet even in the rural state of North
Carolina, with 86% in rural territory (under 2,500), the number of city
boys studying agriculture in the state college is "large enough to make
the fact striking."
In the College of Agriculture of the University of Illinois, there are 756
students enrolled this year. Eighty-one of these came from Chicago and 257
from other cities and towns above $5,000; making 45% from urban
centers.[13]
One-third of the agricultural students at the University of Missouri last
year enrolled from cities of 8,000 or over, communities which formed 36%
of the state's population. In general it seems to be true that the
proportion of city boys in the various agricultural colleges is
approximately as large as the ratio of city population in the state; which
indicates that city boys are almost as likely to seek technical training
for country professions as the country boys are. In a few cases, as in
Massachusetts, it is partly accounted for by the fact that the
Agricultural College is the only state institution with free tuition. The
breadth of the courses also draws many who do not plan for general farming
but for specialized farming and the increasing variety of the modern rural
professions. The facts clearly show that the city boys in state after
state are seeing the vision of country life opportunity.
A study of the home addresses of American students at the New York State
College of Agriculture, Cornell University, for a period of twelve years
prior to 1907 shows 19% from large cities, 34% from small cities and
towns, and 47% from rural communities under 2,000. The proportion of city
students is evidently now increasing, as indicated by this year's figures.
Of the new students entering this year from within the state 57% came from
cities of 5,000 or over, 51% of whom came from cities of 10,000 upwards.
Making considerable allowance for the neglect to add "R. F. D." in
registration, it is still evident that the splendid equipment for country
life leadership offered at Cornell is attracting more and more young men
and women from the cities.
_Reasons for this City-to-Country Movement_
Two months ago the agricultural students at the University of Illinois who
came from cities and larger towns were asked, "What were the
considerations which led you to choose an agricultural course?" Over two
hundred gave their answers in writing. Love of country life was the main
reason mentioned by 131; dislike for the city, 22; the financial
inducements, 62; and, land in the family, 36. Farming was stated as the
ambition of 167, teaching 21, experiment station work 23, landscape
gardening 6, and other rural professions 15.
In a similar referendum at Cornell the city students mentioned many
reasons for choosing their life work in the country. Among them were cited
the love of nature and farm life, the desire to live out of doors, love
for growing things, and love for animals, the financial rewards of
farming, its independence, its interesting character and the healthful
life it makes possible. Other interesting reasons given will be cited
later in this chapter.
II. The Privilege of Living in the Country.
_Some City Life Drawbacks_
Millions of people unquestionably live in the country from choice. They
would not live in the city unless compelled to do so. A peculiarly amusing
kind of provincialism is the attitude of the superficial city dweller who
cannot understand why any one could possibly prefer to live in the
country! Yet an unusually able college professor with a national
reputation recently remarked that he could not conceive of anything which
could induce him to live in the city.
With all the attractions of the city, it has serious drawbacks which are
not found in the country. If country boys actually understood the
conditions of the struggle into which they were entering in the city, more
of them would stay on the farm. "I lived one year in the city; which was
long enough," writes a country boy. The severe nervous tension of city
life, the high speed of both social life and industry and the tyranny to
hours and close confinement in offices, banks and stores are particularly
hard for the country bred. The many disadvantages of the wage-earner,
slack work alternating with the cruel pace, occasional strikes or
lockouts, and the impersonal character of the corporation employer,
coupled with the fact often realized that in spite of the crowds there are
"no neighbors" in the city, reminds the country-bred laborer of the truth
of President Roosevelt's words: "There is not in the cities the same sense
of common underlying brotherliness which there is still in the country
districts."
A striking cartoon was recently published by the _Paterson_ (N. J.)
_Guardian_ entitled "The City Problem." It represented "Mr. Ruralite" in
the foreground halting at the road which leads down to the city, while
from the factory blocks by the river two colossal grimy hands are raised
in warning, with the message, GO BACK! On one hand is written HIGH PRICES;
on the other POOR HEALTH.
With the recent improvement in city sanitation, which has perceptibly
lowered the death rate, the city is physically a safer place to live in
than it used to be; but slum sections are still reeking with contagion,
and through most of the city wilderness the smoke and grime is perpetual
and both pure air and clear sunshine are luxuries indeed. For most people
the crowded city offers little attraction for a home. The heart of great
cities has ceased to grow. The growing sections are the outlying wards and
the suburbs, for obvious reasons. The moral dangers of the city where the
saloon is usually entrenched in politics and vice is flagrantly tolerated
if not actually protected help to explain the fact that a continuous
procession of city families is seeking homes in suburban or rural towns
where the perils surrounding their children are not so serious.
_The Attractiveness of Country Life_
It is evidently true, as Dean Bailey suggests, "Even in this epoch of
hurried city-building, the love of the open country and of plain, quiet
living still remains as a real and vital force." The chance to live in the
open air, to do out of door work and enjoy consequently a vigorous health,
is a great boon which is coming to be more and more appreciated. "I intend
to stick to farm life," writes a Cornell agricultural student, "for I see
nothing in the turmoil of city life to tempt me to leave the quiet, calm
and nearness to nature with which we, as farmers, are surrounded. I also
see the possibilities of just as great financial success on a farm as in
any profession which my circumstances permit me to attain." Another
contented country boy writes, "I think the farm offers the best
opportunity for the ideal home. I believe that farming is the farthest
removed of any business from the blind struggle after money, and that the
farmer with a modest capital can be rich in independence, contentment and
happiness."
A variety of other significant reasons have been collected by Director
Bailey from boys who are loyal to their country homes. Many speak of the
profitableness of scientific farming, but the majority are thinking of
other privileges in rural life which outweigh financial rewards, such as
the fact that the farmer is really producing wealth first-hand and is
serving the primary needs of society. "I expect to make a business of
breeding live-stock. I like to work out of doors, where the sun shines and
the wind blows, where I can look up from my work and not be obliged to
look at a wall. I dislike to use a pen as a business. I want to make new
things and create new wealth, not to collect to myself the money earned by
others. I cannot feel the sympathy which makes me a part of nature, unless
I can be nearer to it than office or university life allows. I like to
create things. Had I been dexterous with my hands, I might have been an
artist; but I have found that I can make use of as high ideals, use as
much patience, and be of as much use in the world by modeling in flesh and
bone as I can by modeling in marble."
In spite of the common notion of the farm boys who shirk country life,
there is a great attraction now in the fact that farming really requires
brains of a high order, offers infinite opportunity for broad and deep
study, a chance for developing technical skill and personal initiative in
quite a variety of lines of work, all of which means a growing,
broadening life and increasing self-respect and satisfaction.
_The Partnership With Nature_
Any briefest mention of the attractiveness of country life would be
incomplete without reference to the nearness to nature and the privilege
of her inspiring comradeship. Not only is the farmer's sense of
partnership with nature a mighty impulse which tends to make him an
elemental man; but every dweller in the country with any fineness of
perception cannot fail to respond to the subtle appeal of the beautiful in
the natural life about him. As Washington Irving wrote, in describing
rural life in England, "In rural occupation there is nothing mean and
debasing. It leads a man forth among scenes of natural grandeur and
beauty; it leaves him to the working of his own mind, operated upon by the
purest and most elevating of external influences. Such a man may be simple
and rough, but he cannot be vulgar."
As young Bryant wrote among the beautiful Berkshire hills, "To him who in
the love of nature holds communion with her visible forms, she speaks a
various language." Without an interpreter, sometimes the message to the
soul is heard as in a foreign tongue; but the message is voiced again like
the music of perennial springs, and others hear it with ear and heart, and
it brings peace and comfort and God's love. In his beautiful chapter on
this topic Dr. W. L. Anderson writes: "By a subtle potency the rural
environment comes to be not the obtrusive masses of earth, nor the
monotonous acres of grass, nor the dazzling stress of endless flowers, nor
the disturbing chatter of the birds; but instead of these, hills that
speak of freedom, a sky that brings the infinite near, meadows verdant
with beauty, air vocal with song. Beauty, sublimity, music, freedom, are
in the soul."[14] Surely the uplifting influence of nature is a wonderful
gift to those who are fortunate enough to live in the country. It takes
the petty and sordid out of life. It transfigures common things with
beauty and fresh meaning, with the cycle of the seasons and ever freshness
of the days. It brings to those who listen a quiet message of content.
_Rural Sincerity and Real Neighborliness_
Among the country privileges not often mentioned is the chance one has to
live with real folks. There is a genuineness about country people that is
not often found in crowded towns where conventionalities of life veneer
even the ways of friends, and where custom dictates and fashion rules and
the very breadth of social opportunity makes superficial people, flitting
from friend to friend, not pausing to find the depths in the eye or the
gold in the character.
With fine simplicity, sometimes with blunt speech to be sure, our rural
friends pierce through the artificial and find us where we are; honoring
only what is worthy, caring nothing for titles or baubles, slow to welcome
or woo or even to approve; but quick to befriend when real need appears,
and having once befriended, steady and true in friendship, awkward in
expression, maybe, but true as steel. To live with such country folks is
to know the joy of real neighbors. To work with them takes patience,
honest effort to overcome inborn conservatism, and a brother's sincere
spirit; but when cooperation is once promised, your goal is gained. They
will say what they mean. They will do as they say.
_The Challenge of the Difficult in Rural Life_
Since the invention of the sulky plow, the mowing machine and the riding
harrow, et cetera, an American humorist remarked that farming is rapidly
becoming a sedentary occupation! Drudgery has so largely been removed that
it is probably true that there is no more "hack-work" or dull routine in
agriculture than in other lines of business. But plenty of hard work
remains the farmer's task. There is enough of the difficult left to
challenge the strong and to frighten the weakling, and in this very fact
is a bit of rural optimism. It applies not merely to farming but to
country life in general.
Our pioneer days certainly developed a sturdy race of men. They lived a
strenuous life with plenty of hardship, toil and danger, but it put iron
into the blood of their children and made wonderful physiques, clear
intellects, strong characters. This heroic training nurtured a remarkable
race of continent conquerors fitted for colossal tasks and undaunted by
difficulties. The rise of great commonwealths, developing rapidly now into
rich agricultural empires, has rewarded the pioneers' faith and sacrifice.
All are thankful that the rigor of those heroic days is gone with the
conquest of the wilderness. But few discern in the luxurious comfort of
hyper-civilized life a peculiar peril. Our fathers, with a fine scorn for
the weather, braved the wintry storms with a courage which brought its own
rewards in toughened fiber and lungs full of ozone. To-day in our
super-heated houses we defy the winter to do us any good. We have reduced
comfort to a fine art. Even heaven has lost its attractiveness to our
generation. Luxury has become a national habit if not a national vice.
Our food is not coarse enough to maintain good digestion. Our desk-ridden
thousands are losing the vigor that comes only from out-of-door life.
Exercise for most men has become a lost art; they smoke instead! What with
electric cars for the poor man and motor cars for the near rich, walking
is losing out fast with the city multitudes. Our base ball we take by
proxy, sitting on the bleachers; our recreation is done for us by
professional entertainers in theater, club and opera. In a score of ways
the creature comforts of a luxury loving age are surely enervating those
who yield to them. Our modern flats equipped with every conceivable
convenience to lure a man and a woman into losing the work habit and
reducing to the minimum the expenditure of energy, are doing their share
to take _effort_ out of life and to make us merely effete products of
civilization!
Modern city life, for the comfortably situated, is too luxurious to be
good for the body, the mind or the morals. It dulls the "fighting edge";
it kills ambition with complacency; it often takes the best incentives out
of life; it makes subtle assault upon early ideals and insidiously
undermines the moral standards. We are fast losing the zest for the
climbing life. We need the challenge of the difficult to spur us on to
real conquests and to fit us for larger tasks.
It is the glory of country life that it is by no means enervated or
over-civilized. Enough of the rough still remains for all practical
purposes. Farm homes are comfortable usually but not luxurious. Rural life
is full of the physical zest that keeps men young and vigorous. As Dr. F.
E. Clark suggests, farming furnishes an ideal "_moral_ equivalent of war."
The annual conquest of farm difficulties makes splendid fighting. There
are plenty of natural enemies which must be fought to keep a man's
fighting edge keen and to keep him physically and mentally alert. What
with the weeds and the weather, the cut-worms, the gypsy, and the codling
moths, the lice, the maggots, the caterpillars, the San Jose scale and the
scurvy, the borers, the blight and the gorger, the peach yellows and the
deadly curculio, the man behind the bug gun and the sprayer finds plenty
of exercise for ingenuity and a royal chance to fight the good fight.
Effeminacy is not a rural trait. Country life is great for making men; men
of robust health and mental resources well tested by difficulty, men of
the open-air life and the skyward outlook. Country dwellers may well be
thankful for the challenge of the difficult. It tends to keep rural life
strong.
Our rural optimism however does not rest solely upon the attractiveness of
country life and the various assets which country life possesses. We find
new courage in the fact that these assets have at last been capitalized
and a great modern movement is promoting the enterprise.
III. The Country Life Movement.
_Its Real Significance_
The modern country life movement in America has little in common with the
"back to the soil" agitation in recent years. This latter is mainly the
cry of real estate speculators plus newspaper echoes. The recent years of
high prices and exorbitant cost of city living have popularized this
slogan, the assumption being that if there were only more farmers, then
food prices would be lower. This assumes that the art of farming is easily
acquired and that the untrained city man could go back to the soil and
succeed. What we really need is better farmers rather than more farmers;
and the untrained city man who buys a farm is rather apt to make a failure
of it,--furnishing free amusement meanwhile for the natives,--for the work
of farming is highly technical, and requires probably more technical
knowledge than any other profession except the practice of medicine.
There are few abandoned farms to-day within easy distance of the cities.
For several years it has been quite the fad for city men of means to buy a
farm, and when a competent farm manager is placed in charge the experiment
is usually a safe one. Often it proves a costly experiment and seldom does
the city-bred owner really become a valuable citizen among his rural
neighbors. He remains socially a visitor, rather than a real factor in
country life. Conspicuous exceptions could of course be cited, but
unfortunately this seems to be the rule.
The kindly purpose of well-meaning philanthropists to transplant among
the farmers the dwellers in the city slums is resented by both! It would
be a questionable kindness anyway, for the slum dweller would be an
unhappy misfit in the country and escape to his crowded alley on the
earliest opportunity, like a drunkard to his cups. Sometimes a
hard-working city clerk or tradesman hears the call to the country and
succeeds in wresting his living from the soil. The city man need not fail
as a farmer. It depends upon his capacity to learn and his power of
adaptation to a strange environment. The "back to the soil" movement is
not to be discouraged; but let us not expect great things from it. The
real "Country Life Movement" is something quite different.
[Illustration: Rural Redirection by the County Committee of the Lake
County, Ohio, Associations.
One hundred and forty farmers in "five day school," the Ohio Agricultural
College cooperating. A girls' exhibit in cut flower contest. A May pole
dance at a township school picnic. One of the boys participating in corn
growing contest. The winner of the strawberry growing contest.]
_Its Objective: A Campaign for Rural Progress_
The back-to-the-soil trend is a city movement. The real country life
movement is a campaign for rural progress conducted mainly by rural
people, not a paternalistic plan on the part of city folks for rural
redemption. It is defined by one of the great rural leaders as the working
out of the desire to make rural civilization as effective and satisfying
as other civilization; to make country life as satisfying as city life and
country forces as effective as city forces. Incidentally he remarks, "We
call it a new movement. In reality it is new only to those who have
recently discovered it."
_Its Early History: Various Plans for Rural Welfare_
The father of the country life movement seems to have been George
Washington. He and Benjamin Franklin were among the founders of the first
farmers' organization in America, the Philadelphia Society for Promoting
Agriculture, established in 1785. There were about a dozen such societies
by 1800, patterned after similar organizations in England. President
Washington had an extensive correspondence with prominent men in England
on this subject and made it the subject of his last message to Congress.
He called attention to the fundamental importance of agriculture,
advocated agricultural fairs, a national agricultural society and
government support for institutions making for rural progress.
Since these early days there have been many organized expressions of rural
ambition, most of them only temporary but contributing more or less to the
movement for the betterment of country life. There were over 900
agricultural societies in 1858 and these had increased to 1,350 by 1868 in
spite of the setback of the civil war. Most of these were county
organizations whose chief activity was an annual fair. Agricultural
conventions were occasionally held, sometimes national in scope, which
discussed frankly the great questions vital to farmers; and more permanent
organizations soon developed which had a great influence in bringing the
farmers of the country into cooperation with each other industrially and
politically. Foremost among these were the Grange (1867), the Farmers'
Alliance (1875), the Farmers' Union (1885), Farmers' Mutual Benefit
Organization (1883), and the Patrons of Industry (1887). The Farmers'
National Congress has met annually since 1880, and has exerted great
influence upon legislation during this period, in the interest of the
rural communities.
_Its Modern Sponsors: The Agricultural Colleges_
Important as these efforts at organized cooperation among farmers have
been, nothing has equalled the influence of the agricultural colleges,
which are now found in every state and are generously supported by the
states in addition to revenue from the "land-grant funds" which all the
colleges possess. These great institutions have done noble service in
providing the intelligent leadership not only in farm interests but also
in all the affairs of country life. At first planned to teach agriculture
almost exclusively, many of them are now giving most thorough courses in
liberal culture interpreted in terms of country life. The vast service of
these schools for rural welfare, in both intra-mural and extension work,
can hardly be overestimated.
_The Roosevelt Commission on Country Life_
It will be seen that the country life movement has been making progress
for years. But it really became a national issue for the first time when
President Roosevelt appointed his Country Life Commission. Though greeted
by some as an unnecessary effort and handicapped by an unfriendly Congress
which was playing politics, the Commission did a most significant work.
Thirty hearings were held in various parts of the country and a
painstaking investigation was conducted both orally and by mail, the
latter including detailed information and suggestion from over 120,000
people. The Commission's report, with the President's illuminating
message, presents in the best form available the real meaning of the
country life movement. It will serve our purpose well to quote from this
report a few significant paragraphs:
"The farmers have hitherto had less than their full share of public
attention along the lines of business and social life. There is too much
belief among all our people that the prizes of life lie away from the
farms. I am therefore anxious to bring before the people of the United
States the question of securing better business and better living on the
farm, whether by cooperation among the farmers for buying, selling and
borrowing; by promoting social advantages and opportunities in the
country, or by any other legitimate means that will help to make country
life more gainful, more attractive, and fuller of opportunities, pleasures
and rewards for the men, women and children of the farms."
"The farm grows the raw material for the food and clothing of all our
citizens; it supports directly almost half of them; and nearly half of the
children of the United States are born and brought up on the farms. How
can the life of the farm family be made less solitary, fuller of
opportunity, freer from drudgery, more comfortable, happier and more
attractive? Such a result is most earnestly to be desired. How can life on
the farm be kept on the highest level, and where it is not already on that
level, be so improved, dignified and brightened as to awaken and keep
alive the pride and loyalty of the farmer's boys and girls, of the
farmer's wife and of the farmer himself? How can a compelling desire to
live on the farm be aroused in the children that are born on the farm? All
these questions are of vital importance, not only to the farmer but to
the whole nation."--_Theodore Roosevelt._
_Its Call for Rural Leadership_
"We must picture to ourselves a new rural social structure, developed from
the strong resident forces of the open country; and then we must set at
work all the agencies that will tend to bring this about. The entire
people need to be aroused to this avenue of usefulness. Most of the new
leaders must be farmers who can find not only a satisfactory business
career on the farm, but who will throw themselves into the service of
upbuilding the community. A new race of teachers is also to appear in the
country. A new rural clergy is to be trained. These leaders will see the
great underlying problem of country life, and together they will work,
each in his own field, for the one goal of a new and permanent rural
civilization. Upon the development of this distinctively rural
civilization rests ultimately our ability, by methods of farming requiring
the highest intelligence, to continue to feed and clothe the hungry
nations; to supply the city and metropolis with fresh blood, clean bodies
and clear brains that can endure the strain of modern urban life; and to
preserve a race of men in the open country that, in the future as in the
past, will be the stay and strength of the nation in time of war and its
guiding and controlling spirit in time of peace."
"It is to be hoped that many young men and women, fresh from our schools
and institutions of learning, and quick with ambition and trained
intelligence, will feel a new and strong call to service."
_Its Constructive Program for Rural Betterment_
The Commission suggested a broad campaign of publicity on the whole
subject of rural life, until there is an awakened appreciation of the
necessity of giving this phase of our national development as much
attention as has been given to other interests. They urge upon all country
people a quickened sense of responsibility to the community and to the
state in the conserving of soil fertility, and the necessity for
diversifying farming in order to conserve this fertility. The need of a
better rural society is suggested; also the better safeguarding of the
strength and happiness of the farm women; a more widespread conviction of
the necessity for organization, not only for economic but for social
purposes, this organization to be more or less cooperative, so that all
the people may share equally in the benefits and have voice in the
essential affairs of the community. The farmer is reminded that he has a
distinct natural responsibility toward the farm laborer, in providing him
with good living facilities and in helping him to be a man among men; and
all the rural people are reminded of the obligation to protect and develop
the natural scenery and attractiveness of the open country.
The Country Life Commission made the following specific recommendations to
Congress:
The encouragement of a system of thoroughgoing surveys of all agricultural
regions in order to take stock and to collect local facts, with the idea
of providing a basis on which to develop a scientifically and
economically sound country life.
The encouragement of a system of extension work in rural communities
through all the land-grant colleges with the people at their homes and on
their farms.
A thoroughgoing investigation by experts of the middleman system of
handling farm products, coupled with a general inquiry into the farmer's
disadvantages in respect to taxation, transportation rates, cooperative
organizations and credit, and the general business system.
An inquiry into the control and use of the streams of the United States
with the object of protecting the people in their ownership and of saving
for agricultural uses such benefits as should be reserved for such
purposes.
The establishing of a highway engineering service, or equivalent
organization, to be at the call of the states in working out effective and
economical highway systems.
The establishing of a system of parcels post and postal savings banks.
The providing of some means or agency for the guidance of public opinion
toward the development of a real rural society that shall rest directly on
the land.
The enlargement of the United States Bureau of Education, to enable it to
stimulate and coordinate the educational work of the nation.
Careful attention to the farmers' interests in legislation on the tariff,
on regulation of railroads, control or regulation of corporations and of
speculation, legislation in respect to rivers, forests and the
utilization of swamp lands.
Increasing the powers of the Federal government in respect to the
supervision and control of the public health.
Providing such regulations as will enable the states that do not permit
the sale of liquors to protect themselves from traffic from adjoining
states.
IV. Institutions and Agencies at Work
_Organized Forces Making for a Better Rural Life_
When we consider the vast scope of the Country Life Movement in America
and the variety of agencies involved, it greatly increases our rural
optimism. The following list was compiled by Dr. L. H. Bailey and is the
most complete available.
1. Departments of Agriculture, national and state.
2. Colleges of agriculture, one for each state, territory, or
province.
3. Agricultural experiment stations, in nearly all cases connected
with the colleges of agriculture.
4. The public school system, into which agriculture is now being
incorporated. Normal schools, into many of which agriculture is being
introduced.
5. Special separate schools of agriculture and household subjects.
6. Special colleges, as veterinary and forestry institutions.
7. Departments or courses of agriculture in general or old-line
colleges, and universities.
8. Farmers' Institutes, usually conducted by colleges of agriculture
or by boards or departments of agriculture.
(The above institutions may engage in various forms of extension
work.)
9. The agricultural press.
10. The general rural newspapers.
11. Agricultural and horticultural societies of all kinds.
12. The Patrons of Husbandry, Farmers' Educational and Cooperative
Union, and other national organizations.
13. Business societies and agencies, many of them cooperative.
14. Business men's associations and chambers of commerce in cities
and towns.
15. Local political organizations (much in need of redirection).
16. Civic societies.
17. The church.
18. The Young Men's Christian Association, and other religious
organizations.
19. Women's clubs and organizations, of many kinds.
20. Fairs and expositions.
21. Rural libraries.
22. Village improvement societies.
23. Historical societies.
24. Public health regulation.
25. Fraternal societies.
26. Musical organizations.
27. Organizations aiming to develop recreation, and games and play.
28. Rural free delivery of mail (a general parcels post is a
necessity).
29. Postal savings banks.
30. Rural banks (often in need of redirection in their relations to
the development of the open country).
31. Labor distributing bureaus.
32. Good thoroughfares.
33. Railroads, and trolley extensions (the latter needed to pierce
the remoter districts rather than merely to parallel railroads and to
connect large towns).
34. Telephones.
35. Auto-vehicles.
36. Country stores and trading places (in some cases).
37. Insurance organizations.
38. Many government agencies to safeguard the people, as public
service commissions.
39. Books on agriculture and country life.
40. Good farmers, living on the land.
It is through the activity and growing cooperation of these various
agencies that the new rural civilization is now rapidly developing. It
will be the purpose of our next chapter to describe the process. Rural
progress in recent decades has been surprising and encouraging in many
quarters. Men of faith cannot fail to see that the providence of God is
now using these modern forces in making a new world of the country. It may
fairly be called a new world compared with the primitive past. Thus our
rural optimism is justified, and we have increasing faith in the future of
country life in America.
TEST QUESTIONS ON CHAPTER II
1.--What tribute to country life is inscribed on the Washington Union
Station? It is a just tribute?
2.--Can you accept the "Country Boy's Creed"?
3.--Why are so many city boys studying in agricultural colleges? How is it
in your own state?
4.--Discuss some of the disadvantages and drawbacks of modern city life.
5.--Why is country life attractive to you?
6.--What do you reckon among the privileges of living in the country?
7.--Discuss the real optimism you find in the "challenge of the difficult"
in country life.
8.--How do you explain the "back-to-the-soil movement" from the cities to
suburban and rural villages?
9.--Show how the real "Country Life Movement" differs from this.
10.--Mention some of the early plans for rural welfare in America.
11.--What part have the agricultural colleges had in the Country Life
Movement?
12.--When did rural betterment first become a national issue in the United
States?
13.--What definite rural needs did President Roosevelt mention in his
message to the Country Life Commission?
14.--What special call for rural leadership did this Commission voice?
15.--What do you think about the program for rural progress which the
Commission proposed to Congress?
16.--What do you think about the proposal to establish a parcels post?
17.--In what special ways do the farmers' interests need safeguarding?
18.--Make a list of improvements which you consider necessary in the
country sections you know the best.
19.--Name as many agencies as you can which are making a better rural
life.
20.--On what do you base your faith in the new rural civilization?
CHAPTER III
THE NEW RURAL CIVILIZATION
CHAPTER III
THE NEW RURAL CIVILIZATION
_Introductory: Rural Self-Respect and Progress_
I. _The Triumph Over Isolation_
Conquering the great enemy of rural contentment.
The social value of the telephone.
Good roads, the index of civilization.
Railroads, steam and electric.
The rural postal service.
The automobile, a western farm necessity.
II. _The Emancipation from Drudgery_
The social revolution wrought by machinery.
The evolution of farm machinery.
Power machinery on the modern farm.
The social effects of lessened drudgery.
III. _Increased Popular Intelligence_
New agencies for popular education among the farms.
IV. _The New Social Consciousness_
Group loyalty and a true social spirit.
V. _The Effect of the New Order on Rural Institutions_
New efficiency in the modern school, church and farm.
Rural progress and the providence of God.
CHAPTER III
THE NEW RURAL CIVILIZATION
FACTORS THAT ARE MAKING A NEW WORLD IN THE COUNTRY
_Introductory: Rural Self-Respect and Progress_
The faith of the country life movement is justified by the remarkable
rural progress of the past generation. City life has been revolutionized
by inventive skill, modern machinery, new forms of wealth and higher
standards of efficiency and comfort; but meanwhile this marvelous progress
has not been confined to cities. To be sure depleted rural districts,
drained of their best blood, have not kept pace. But suburban sections in
close partnership with cities have shared the speed and the privileges of
urban progress, and meanwhile healthy, self-sustaining rural counties,
scorning any dependence upon cities except for market, have developed
great prosperity of their own and a remarkably efficient and satisfying
life, even though population may have somewhat declined.
This is so radically different from the life of the past, we may justly
call it a new rural civilization. It is distinctly a rural civilization,
not merely because of its characteristics, but because it is a triumph of
rural leadership and the product of rural evolution, by fortunate
selection and survival in the country of efficient manhood and womanhood
best adapted to cope with their environment.
Thousands who failed in the country have gone to the cities, where it is
often easier for incompetence to eke out an existence by living on casual
jobs. Thousands of others have found better success in the city because
they were better adapted to urban life. Often the net result of the
migration has been profit for the country community which has held its
best, that is, the country born and bred best adapted to be happy and
successful in the rural environment.
Where you find the new rural civilization well developed, you find a
self-respecting people, prosperous and happy, keeping abreast of the times
in all important human interests, keenly alert to all new developments in
agriculture and often proud of their country heritage. Because of this new
prosperity and self-respect, ridicule of the "countryman" has ceased to be
popular among intelligent people. The title "farmer" has taken on an
utterly new meaning and is becoming a term of respect.
All this marks a return to the former days, before the age of supercilious
cities, when most of the wealth and culture and family pride was in the
open country and the village. To be sure in some sections of America this
frank pride in rural life has never ceased. The real aristocracy of the
South has always been mainly rural. Many of the "first families of
Virginia" still live on the old plantations and maintain a highly
self-respecting life, free from the corrosive envy of city conditions,
often pitying the man whose business requires him to live in the crowded
town, and rejoicing in the freedom and the wholesome joys of country life.
The hospitable country mansions of the South still remind us of the fame
of Westover, Mount Vernon and Monticello as centers of social grace and
leadership; and the most select social groups in Richmond welcome the
country gentlemen and women of refinement from these country homes, not
merely because of the honored family names they bear, but because they
themselves are worthy scions of a continuously worthy rural civilization.
They have never pitied themselves for living in the country. They do not
want to live in the city. They are justly proud of their rural heritage
and their country homes.
I. The Triumph over Isolation.
_Conquering the Great Enemy of Rural Contentment_
The depressing effect of isolation has always been the most serious enemy
of country life in America. Nowhere else in the world have farm homes been
so scattered. Instead of living in hamlets, like the rest of the rural
world, with outlying farms in the open country, American pioneers with
characteristic independence have lived on their farms regardless of
distance to neighbors. But social hungers, especially of the young people,
could not safely be so disregarded, and in various ways the social
instincts have had their revenge. Isolation has proved to be the curse of
the country, as its opposite, congestion, has in the city. The wonder is
that the rural population of the country as a whole has steadily gained,
nearly doubling in a generation, in spite of this handicap. Obviously the
social handicap of isolation must be in a measure overcome, if country
life becomes permanently satisfying. We are not surprised, therefore, to
find that the new rural civilization has developed many means of
intercommunication, bringing the remotest country districts into vital
touch with the world.
Among the factors that have revolutionized the life of country people and
hastened the new rural civilization are the telephone, the daily mail
service by rural free delivery, the rapid extension of good roads, the
introduction of newspapers and magazines and farm journals, and traveling
libraries as well, the extension of the trolley systems throughout the
older states, and the rapid introduction of automobiles, especially
through the West.
In these various ways the fruits of modern inventive skill and enterprise
have enriched country life and have banished forever the extreme isolation
which used to vex the farm household of the past. The farm now is
conveniently near the market. The town churches and stores and schools are
near enough to the farms. The world's daily messages are brought to the
farmer's fireside. And the voice of the nearest neighbor may be heard in
the room, though she may live a mile away.
_The Social Value of the Telephone_
Among these modern blessings in the country home, one of the most
significant is the telephone. A business necessity in the city, it is a
great social asset in the rural home, like an additional member of the
family circle. It used to be said, though often questioned, that farmers'
wives on western farms furnished the largest quota of insane asylum
inmates, because of the monotony and loneliness of their life. The
tendency was especially noticeable in the case of Scandinavian immigrant
women, accustomed in the old home to the farm hamlet with its community
life.
To-day the farmer's wife suffers no such isolation. To be sure the wizards
of invention have not yet given us the _teleblepone_, by which the faces
of distant friends can be made visible; but the telephone brings to us
that wonderfully personal element, the human voice, the best possible
substitute for the personal presence. Socially, the telephone is a
priceless boon to the country home, especially for the women, who have
been most affected by isolation in the past. They can now lighten the
lonely hours by a chat with neighbors over household matters, or even have
a neighborhood council, with five on the line, to settle some question of
village scandal! All sorts of community doings are speedily passed from
ear to ear. Details of social plans for church or grange are conveniently
arranged by wire. Symptoms are described by an anxious mother to a
resourceful grandmother and a remedy prescribed which will cure the baby
before the horse could even be harnessed. Or at any hour of the day or
night the doctor in the village can be quickly summoned and a critical
hour saved, which means the saving of precious life.
On some country lines a general ring at six o'clock calls all who care to
hear the daily market quotations; and at noon the weather report for the
day is issued. If the weather is not right, the gang of men coming from
the village can be intercepted by phone. Or if the quotations are not
satisfactory, a distant city can be called on the wire and the day's
shipment sent to the highest bidder--saving money, time, and miles of
travel.
All things considered the telephone is fully as valuable in the country as
in the city and its development has been just as remarkable, especially in
the middle West where thousands of independent rural lines have been
extended in recent years, at very low expense. In 1902 there were 21,577
rural lines in the United States, with a total length of 259,306 miles of
wires, and 266,969 rural phones.
_Good Roads, the Index of Civilization_
When John Frederick Oberlin began his remarkable work of community
building in the stagnant villages of the Vosges Mountains, his very first
move was to build a road. The status of any civilization is fairly clearly
indicated by the condition of the highways. The first sign of rural decay
in a discouraged community has often been the neglect of the
thoroughfares. One of the widespread signs of rural progress is the recent
attention given to good roads. In 1892 the Good Roads Association was
formed. In the previous year the first state aid for good road building
was granted, and since then state after state has appropriated millions of
dollars for this purpose. The proposal that a great macadam road be built
by Congress from Washington to Gettysburg, as a memorial to President
Lincoln, whether a wise proposition or not, shows how prominent this
subject has finally become, in the eyes of the nation.
Progressive farmers have discovered that a bad road is a tax upon every
ton of produce hauled to market; that in effect it lengthens the three
mile distance to ten; that the trip requires three hours instead of one;
and that a good macadam road, or some form of paving, varying with the
nearness of materials, pays for itself again and again, in the saving of
time and money, and wear and tear on rolling stock and teams. The social
effects of good roads are almost as clear as the industrial benefits.
There is more social cooperation. People go oftener to town, they gather
more easily at church and social functions, and the intermingling means
better acquaintance and more helpful friendships. Better business, better
social life, better neighborhoods, follow the trail of better roads--and a
far better chance for the country church.
_Railroads, Steam and Electric_
It is hard for us to imagine a world without railroads! Yet before 1830
all long distance travel was by stage coach or by water. The world-view of
most men was very tiny and their mental outlook correspondingly narrow.
Farm life was seriously restricted by the fact that a distant market for
most goods was impossible. It cost $10 per ton per hundred miles to haul
merchandise to market, a tax which only high-grade goods could stand.
The triumph of the railroads in conquering the continent has been one of
the national marvels. Suffice it to say, though the railroad has helped to
concentrate population in the cities, it has also served in a wonderful
way to develop the country communities, to open up whole sections for
settlement, furnishing a market and a base of supplies, making extensive
agriculture possible and distant commerce profitable; meanwhile serving as
main arteries of communication, with a constant influx of fresh world
thought and life.
The interurban trolleys are doing much that the steam roads cannot do,
connecting vast rural sections which hitherto have been aside from the
beaten paths of life. The relative cheapness of building these electric
lines, and the less expense for power, equipment and maintenance make
their further extension probable as well as necessary for years to come.
Their frequent trips, the near approach to thousands of farm homes, their
short stops and low rates make them particularly serviceable for country
people. "No king one hundred years ago," says Dr. Roads, "could have had a
coach, warmed in winter, lighted up to read at night, running smoothly
with scarcely a jolt, and more swiftly than his fastest horses. Through
the loving providence of the heavenly Father, his poorest children have
them now."[15] It is too early yet to estimate rightly the contribution
the trolley has made to the new rural civilization. It has doubtless
lessened in some respects the prestige of the village and especially of
the village stores; and has brought in some evils, but it has interwoven,
with its rapid shuttles, the city and the country, vastly enriching
country life with broadened opportunity and making thousands more
contented to live in country homes, because of lessened isolation as well
as developing the suburban village, the most rapidly growing of all
communities in America to-day.
_The Rural Postal Service_