THE COUNTRY-LIFE MOVEMENT IN THE UNITED STATES
The Rural Outlook Set
_THE OUTLOOK TO NATURE_ (_Revised_)
_THE NATURE-STUDY IDEA_
_THE STATE AND THE FARMER_
_THE COUNTRY-LIFE MOVEMENT_
The
Country-Life Movement
in the United States
BY
L. H. BAILEY
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1911
_All rights reserved_
COPYRIGHT, 1911,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped. Published March, 1911.
Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing Co.--Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
TO
Charles W. Garfield
--SEER OF VISIONS, PROPHET OF THE
BETTER COUNTRY LIFE--
I dedicate this budget
of opinions
CONTENTS
THE COUNTRY-LIFE MOVEMENT
PAGES 1-3
It is not a back-to-the-land movement, 1--This book, 2.
THE NATIONAL MOVEMENT
PAGES 4-13
A transition period, 6--The Commission on Country Life, 7--The three
fundamental recommendations of the Commission, 9--A national conference
of country life, 12--A voluntary movement, 12--The international phase,
13.
SOME INTERRELATIONS OF CITY AND COUNTRY
PAGES 14-30
Some contrasts of town folk and country folk, 14--Comparisons of town
and country affairs, 16--The two minds, 17--Will the American farmer
hold his own? 19--The first two remedies, 21--Movement from city to
country as remedy, 23--Sending the surplus population to the country,
25--Back-to-the-village, 26--Can a city man make a living on a farm?
27--What the city may do, 30.
THE DECLINE IN RURAL POPULATION.--ABANDONED FARMS
PAGES 31-43
Significance of the decline, 32--The abandoned farms, 37--The new
farming, 41.
RECLAMATION IN RELATION TO COUNTRY LIFE; AND THE RESERVE LANDS
PAGES 44-54
The interests of society in the work, 45--A broad reclamation movement,
50--Supplemental irrigation, 51--We need reserves, 53.
WHAT IS TO BE THE OUTCOME OF OUR INDUSTRIAL CIVILIZATION?
PAGES 55-60
(1) The making of a new society, 56--(2) The fighting edge, 57.
THE FUNDAMENTAL QUESTION IN AMERICAN COUNTRY LIFE
PAGES 61-84
Agriculture in the public schools, 62--The American contribution,
65--The dangers in the situation, 66--The present educational
institutions, 68--The need of plans to coördinate this educational work,
71--Outline of a state plan, 72--A state extension program, 75--Special
local schools for agriculture, 76--The lessons of experience, 79.
WOMAN'S CONTRIBUTION TO THE COUNTRY-LIFE MOVEMENT
PAGES 85-96
The affairs of the household, 88--The affairs of the community, 90--The
woman's outlook, 92--The means of education, 93.
HOW SHALL WE SECURE COMMUNITY LIFE IN THE OPEN COUNTRY?
PAGES 97-133
Hamlet life, 100--The category of agencies, 104 (increase of population,
105; dividing up of large farms, 106; assembling farms, 106; recreative
life, 107; local politics, 108; rural government, 108; community program
for health, 112; local factories and industries, 116; the country store,
118; the business men's organizations, 119; great corporations, 120;
local institutions, 122; local rural press, 123; many kinds of extension
teaching, 123; all kinds of communication, 124; economic or business
coöperation, 125; personal gumption and guidance, 132)--Community
interest is of the spirit, 133.
A POINT OF VIEW ON THE LABOR PROBLEM
PAGES 134-148
Reasons for the labor question, 135--The remedies, 137--Public or social
bearings, 139--Supervision in farm labor, 142--What is the farmer to do?
146.
THE MIDDLEMAN QUESTION
PAGES 149-164
Farmer does not get his share, 149--Relation of the question to
cost-of-living, 153--The farmer's part, 156--The middleman's part,
157--A system of economic waste, 158--Coöperation of farmers will not
solve it, 158--It is the business of government, 160--Must be a
continuing process of control, 161.
COUNTY AND LOCAL FAIRS
PAGES 165-177
Nature of the fair, 165--Features to be eliminated, 167--Constructive
program, 167--The financial support, 168--An educational basis, 169--Ask
every person to prove up, 171--Sports, contests, and pageants,
173--Premiums, 174--It is time to begin, 175--The fair ground, 176--My
plea, 177.
THE COUNTRY-LIFE PHASE OF CONSERVATION
PAGES 178-200
These subjects have a history, 180--They are not party-politics
subjects, 182--The soil is the greatest of all resources, 183--The soil
crust, 185--No man has a right to plunder the soil, 188--Ownership _vs._
conservation, 190--The philosophy of saving, 192--The conservation of
food, 194--The best husbandry is not in the new regions, 196--Another
philosophy of agriculture, 197--The obligation of the farmer, 198--The
obligation of the conservation movement, 200.
PERSONAL SUGGESTIONS
PAGES 201-220
The open country must solve its own problems, 201--Profitable farming is
not a sufficient object in life, 202--New country professions, 203--The
personal resources, 204--The meaning of the environment, 205--Historic
monuments, 208--Improvement societies, 209--Entertainment, 211 (Music
spirit, 212; drama, 213)--The business of farming, 217.
THE COUNTRY-LIFE MOVEMENT
The country-life movement is the working out of the desire to make rural
civilization as effective and satisfying as other civilization.
It is not an organized movement proceeding from one center or even
expressing one set of ideas. It is a world-motive to even up society as
between country and city; for it is generally understood that country
life has not reached as high development within its sphere as city life
has reached within its sphere.
We call it a new subject. As a "movement," or a recognized set of
problems needing attention, it may possibly be called new; but in
reality it is new only to those who have recently discovered it.
_It is not a back-to-the-land movement._
The country-life movement must be sharply distinguished from the present
popular back-to-the-land agitation. The latter is primarily a city or
town impulse, expressing the desire of townspeople to escape, or of
cities to find relief, or of real estate dealers to sell land; and in
part it is the result of the doubtful propaganda to decrease the cost of
living by sending more persons to the land, on the mostly mistaken
assumption that more products will thereby be secured for the world's
markets.
The back-to-the-land agitation is not necessarily to be discouraged, yet
we are not to expect more of it than it can accomplish; but whatever the
outward movement to the land may be, the effort to effectualize rural
society, for the people who now comprise this society, is one of the
fundamental problems now before the people.
The country-life and back-to-the-land movements are not only little
related, but in many ways they are distinctly antagonistic.
_This book._
The foregoing paragraphs indicate the subject of this book. I mean only
to express opinions on a few of the questions that are popularly under
discussion, or that are specially important at this time. I shall
present no studies, and I intend to follow no systematic course. Some of
these subjects I have already discussed with the public, but they may
now have new expression or relations.
The lack of adjustment between city and country must be remedied, but
the remedies lie in fundamental processes and not in the treatment of
symptoms. Undoubtedly very much can be done to even up the economic
situation and the distribution of population; and this needs careful and
continuous study by commissions or other agencies created for the
purpose. We are scarcely in sight of the good that such agencies could
accomplish. I hope that this book may suggest some of the things to be
considered. The past century belonged to the city; the present century
should belong also to agriculture and the open country.
THE NATIONAL MOVEMENT
The present revival of rural interest is immediately an effort to
improve farming; but at bottom it is a desire to stimulate new activity
in a more or less stationary phase of civilization. We may over-exploit
the movement, but it is sound at the center. For the next twenty-five
years we may expect it to have great influence on the course of events,
for it will require this length of time to balance up society.
Politicians will use it as a means of riding into power. Demagogues and
fakirs will take advantage of it for personal gain. Tradesmen will make
much of it. Writers are even now beginning to sensationalize it.
But there will also arise countrymen with statesmanship in them; if not
so, then we cannot make the progress that we need. The movement will
have its significant political aspect, and we may look for governors of
states and perhaps more than one President of the United States to come
out of it. In the end, the farmer controls the politics because he makes
the crops on which the wealth of the country depends. There is probably
a greater proportion of tax-payers among voting farmers than among city
people.
Considered in total results, educational and political as well as social
and economic, the country-life movement in North America is probably
farther advanced than in any other part of the world. It may not have
such striking manifestations in some special lines, and our people may
not need so much as other peoples that these particular lines be first
or most strongly attacked. The movement really has been under way for
many years, but it has only recently found separate expression. Most of
the progress has been fundamental, and will not need to be done over
again. The movement is well afoot among the country people themselves,
and they are doing some of the clearest thinking on the situation. Many
of our own people do not know how far we have already come.
_A transition period._
Such undercurrent movements are usually associated with transition
epochs. In parts of the Old World the nexus in the social structure has
been the landlord, and the change in land-tenure systems has made a
social reorganization necessary. There is no political land-tenure
problem in the United States, and therefore there is no need, on that
score, of the coöperation of small owners or would-be owners to form a
new social crystallization. But there is a land problem with us,
nevertheless, and this is at the bottom of our present movement: it is
the immanent problem of remaining more or less stationary on our present
lands, rather than moving on to untouched lands, when the ready-to-use
fertility is reduced. We have had a new-land society, with all the marks
of expansion and shift. We are now coming to a new era; but, unlike new
eras in some other countries, it is not complicated by hereditary social
stratification. Our real agricultural development will now begin.
In the discussion of these rural interests, old foundations and old
ideas in all probability will be torn up. We shall probably discard many
of the notions that now are new and that promise well. We may face
trying situations, but something better will come out of it. It is now a
time to be conservative and careful, and to let the movement mature.
_The commission on country life._
The first organized expression of the country-life movement in the
United States was the appointment of the Commission on Country Life by
President Roosevelt in August, 1908. It was a Commission of exploration
and suggestion. It could make no scientific studies of its own within
the time at its command, but it could put the situation before the
people. President Roosevelt saw the country-life problem and attacked
it.
The Commission made its Report to the President early in 1909. It found
the general level of country life in the United States to be good as
compared with that of any previous time, but yet "that agriculture is
not commercially as profitable as it is entitled to be for the labor and
energy that the farmer expends and the risks that he assumes, and that
the social conditions in the open country are far short of their
possibilities."
A dozen large reasons for this state of affairs, a state that directly
curtails the efficiency of the nation, are given in the Report; and it
suggests many remedies that can be set in motion by Congress, states,
communities, and individuals. The three "great movements of the utmost
consequence that should be set under way at the earliest possible time,
because they are fundamental to the whole problem of ultimate permanent
reconstruction" are: taking inventory of country life by means of "an
exhaustive study or survey of all the conditions that surround the
business of farming and the people who live in the country, in order to
take stock of our resources and to supply the farmer with local
knowledge"; the organizing of a nationalized extension work; the
inauguration of a general campaign of rural progress.
It is suggested that Congress provide "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 Report of the Commission on Country Life makes no discussion of the
city-to-country movement.
The Report recognizes the fundamental importance of the agricultural
experiment stations and of the great chain of land-grant colleges and of
government departments and of other agencies; and the work that it
proposes is intended to be supplementary to them.
_The three fundamental recommendations of the Commission._
The taking stock of the exact condition and materials of country life is
immensely important, for we cannot apply remedies before we make a
diagnosis, and an accurate diagnosis must rest on a multitude of facts
that we do not now possess. This is the scientific rather than the
doctrinaire, politics, and oracular method of approaching the subject.
It is of the first importance that we do not set out on this new work
with only general opinions and superficial and fragmentary knowledge.
Every rural community needs to have a program of its own carefully
worked out, and this program should rest on a physical valuation. It may
be some time yet before the importance and magnitude of this undertaking
will impress the minds of the people, but it is essential to the best
permanent progress.
Agricultural extension work of a well-organized kind is now beginning to
come out of the colleges of agriculture, and this must be extended and
systematized so that, with other agencies, it may reach every last man
on the land. A bill to set this work in motion is now before Congress.
The third recommendation of the Commission for immediate action is "the
holding of local, state, and even national conferences on rural
progress, designed to unite the interests of education, organization,
and religion into one forward movement for the re-building of country
life. Rural teachers, librarians, clergymen, editors, physicians, and
others may well unite with farmers in studying and discussing the rural
question in all its aspects. We must in some way unite all institutions,
all organizations, all individuals having any interest in country life
into one great campaign for rural progress."
Conferences are now being held in many parts of the Union by
universities, colleges, state departments of agriculture, chambers of
commerce, business organizations, and other bodies. This will make
public opinion. Such conventions, discussing the larger social,
political, and economic relations of country life, should now be held in
every state and geographical region.
It is now time that states undertake country-life programs. There is
still much attack of symptoms; but persons in political offices, for the
most, are not yet well-enough informed to make the most of the rural
situation as it exists, or to utilize to the best advantage the talent
and the institutions that the country now possesses. One has only to
read the recommendations to legislative bodies to recognize the relative
lack as yet of constructive plans for the improvement of rural
conditions.
_A national conference on country life._
If there should be state and local conferences for country life, so also
should there be a national conference, meeting yearly. Such a conference
should not be an agricultural convention in the ordinary sense, nor is
it necessary that it be held in commanding agricultural regions. It
should deal with the larger affairs and relations in their applications
to rural civilization.
_A voluntary movement._
The interest in country life is gradually assuming shape as a voluntary
movement outside of government, as it properly should do. It should be
in the best sense a popular movement; for if it is not a really popular
movement, it can have little vitality, and exert little effect on the
mass of the people. As it gets under motion, certain things will
crystallize out of it for government to do; and governments will do
them.
As a pure matter of propagation, such a voluntary organized movement
would have the greatest value; for, in these days, simple publicity
often accomplishes more than legislative action.
_The international phase._
If the interest in rural economics and sociology is world wide, then we
should have international institutions to represent it. Several
organizations now represent or include certain phases. We need such an
institution not so much for propaganda as for research. A Country Life
Institute has been proposed by Sir Horace Plunkett, who is so well known
and admired by all students of rural situations through his far-seeing
work in Ireland and his many fruitful suggestions for America. It would
seem that here is an unusual opportunity for a great and productive
foundation.
SOME INTER-RELATIONS OF CITY AND COUNTRY
Every one knows that city populations are increasing more rapidly than
country populations. By some persons, this of itself is considered to be
a cause for much alarm. But the relative size of the populations is not
so disturbing as the economic and social relations existing between
these two phases of civilization.
_Some contrasts of town folk and country folk._
We know that farming is the primitive and underlying business of
mankind. As human desires have arisen, other occupations have developed
to satisfy the increasing needs and aspirations, the products of the
earth have been assembled and changed by manufacture into a thousand
forms, and these departures have resulted in more refined products, a
more resourceful civilization, and a more sensitive people.
Complex developments have been taken out of and away from agriculture,
and have left it with the simple and undifferentiated products and the
elemental contact with nature. The farmer is largely a residuary force
in society; this explains his conservatism.
If we have very highly developed persons in the city, we have very
rugged persons in the country. If the sense of brotherhood is highly
evolved in the city, individualism is strongly expressed in the country.
If the world-movement appeals to men in the city, local attachments have
great power with men in the country. If commercial consolidation and
organization are characteristic of the city, the economic separateness
of the man or family is highly marked in the country. The more marked
progress of the city is due to its greater number of leaders and to its
consolidated interests; country people are personally as progressive as
city people of equal intellectual groups, but they have not been able to
attract as much attention or perhaps to make as much headway.
_Comparisons of town and country affairs._
Civilization oscillates between two poles. At the one extreme is the
so-called laboring class, and at the other are the syndicated and
corporate and monopolized interests. Both these elements or phases tend
to go to extremes. Many efforts are being made to weld them into some
sort of share-earning or commonness of interest, but without very great
results. Between these two poles is the great agricultural class, which
is the natural balance-force or the middle-wheel of society. These
people are steady, conservative, abiding by the law, and are to a
greater extent than we recognize a controlling element in our social
structure.
The man on the farm has the opportunity to found a dynasty. City
properties may come and go, rented houses may be removed, stocks and
bonds may rise and fall, but the land still remains; and a man can
remain on the land and subsist with it so long as he knows how to handle
it properly. It is largely, therefore, a question of education as to
how long any family can establish itself on a piece of land.
In the accelerating mobility of our civilization it is increasingly
important that we have many anchoring places; and these anchoring places
are the farms.
These two phases of society produce marked results in ways of doing
business. The great centers invite combinations, and, because society
has not kept pace with guiding and correcting measures, immense abuses
have arisen and the few have tended to fatten on the many. There are two
general modes of correcting, or at least of modifying, these abuses,--by
doing what we can to make men personally honest and responsible, and by
evening up society so that all men may have something like a natural
opportunity.
_The two minds._
There is a town mind and a country mind. I do not pretend to know what
may be the psychological processes, but it is clear that the mode of
approach to the problem of life is very different as between the real
urbanite and the real ruralite. This factor is not sufficiently taken
into account by city men who would remove to real farms and make a
living there. It is the cause of most of the failure of well-intentioned
social workers to accomplish much for country people.
All this is singularly reflected in our literature, and most of all,
perhaps, in guide-books. These books--made to meet the demand--illustrate
how completely the open country has been in eclipse. There is little
rural country discoverable in these books, unless it is mere "sights" or
"places,"--nothing of the people, of the lands, of the products, of the
markets, of the country dorfs, of the way of life; but there is surfeit
of cathedrals, of history of cities, of seats of famous personages, of
bridges and streets, of galleries and works of art. We begin to see
evidences of travel out into the farming regions, part of it, no doubt,
merely a desire for new experiences and diversion, and we shall now look
for guide-books that recognize the background on which the cities rest.
But all this will call for a new intention in travel.
_Will the American farmer hold his own?_
What future lies before the American farmer? Will he hold something like
a position of independence and individualism, or will he become
submerged in the social order, and form only an underlying stratum? What
ultimate hope is there for a farmer as a member of society?
It is strange that the producer of the raw material has thus far in the
history of the world taken a subordinate place to the trader in this
material and to the fabricator of it. The trader and fabricator live in
centers that we call cities. One type of mind assembles; the other type
remains more or less scattered. So there have arisen in human society
two divergent streams,--the collective and coöperative, and the isolated
and individualistic.
The fundamental weakness in our civilization is the fact that the city
and the country represent antagonistic forces. Sympathetically, they
have been and are opposed. The city lives on the country. It always
tends to destroy its province.
The city sits like a parasite, running out its roots into the open
country and draining it of its substance. The city takes everything to
itself--materials, money, men--and gives back only what it does not
want; it does not reconstruct or even maintain its contributory country.
Many country places are already sucked dry.
The future state of the farmer, or real countryman, will depend directly
on the kind of balance or relationship that exists between urban and
rural forces; and in the end, the state of the city will rest on the
same basis. Whatever the city does for the country, it does also for
itself.
Mankind has not yet worked out this organic relation of town and
country. City and country are gradually coming together fraternally, but
this is due more to acquaintanceship than to any underlying coöperation
between them as equal forces in society. Until such an organic
relationship exists, civilization cannot be perfected or sustained,
however high it may rise in its various parts.
_The first two remedies._
Of course there are no two or even a dozen means that can bring about
this fundamental adjustment, but the two most important means are at
hand and can be immediately put into better operation.
The first necessity is to place broadly trained persons in the open
country, for all progress depends on the ability and the outlook of men
and women.
The second necessity is that city folk and country folk work together on
all great public questions. Look over the directories of big
undertakings, the memberships of commissions and councils, the
committees that lay plans for great enterprises affecting all the
people, and note how few are the names that really represent the ideas
and affairs of the open country. Note also how many are the names that
represent financial interests, as if such interests should have the
right of way and should exert the largest influence in determining
public policies. In all enterprises and movements in which social
benefit is involved, the agricultural country should be as much
represented as the city. There are men and women enough out in the open
country who are qualified to serve on such commissions and directories;
but even if there were not, it would now be our duty to raise them up by
giving rural people a chance. Rural talent has not had adequate
opportunity to express itself or to make its contribution to the welfare
of the world.
I know it is said, in reply to these remarks, that many of the city
persons on such organizations are country-born, but this does not change
the point of my contention. Many country-born townsmen are widely out of
knowledge of present rural conditions, even though their sympathies are
still countryward. It is also said that many of them live in country
villages, small cities, and in suburbs; but even so, their real
relations may be with town rather than country, and they may have little
of the farm-country mind; and the suburban mind is really a town mind.
Every broad public movement should have country people on its board of
control. Both urban and rural forces must shape our civilization.
_Movement from city to country as a remedy._
Some persons seem to think that the movement of city men out to the
country offers a solution of country problems. It usually offers only a
solution of a city problem,--how a city man may find the most enjoyment
for his leisure hours and his vacations. Much of the rising interest in
country life on the part of certain people is only a demand for a new
form of entertainment. These people strike the high places in the
country, but they may contribute little or nothing to real country
welfare. This form of entertainment will lose its novelty, as the
sea-shore loses it for the mountains and the horse loses it for the
motor-car or aëroplane. The farming of some city men is demoralizing to
real country interests. I do not look for much permanent good to come to
rural society from the moving out of some of the types of city men or
from the farming in which they ordinarily engage.
I am glad of all movements to place persons on the land who ought to go
there, and to direct country-minded immigrants away from the cities; but
we must not expect too much from the process, and we must distinguish
between the benefit that may accrue to these persons themselves and the
need of reconstruction in the open country. It is one thing for a family
to move to the land in order to raise its own supplies and to secure the
benefits of country life; it is quite another thing to suppose that an
exodus from city to country will relieve the economic situation or make
any difference in the general cost of living, even assuming that the
town folk would make good farmers. And we must be very careful not to
confuse suburbanism and gardening with country life.
To have any continuing effect on the course of rural development, a
person or an agency must become a real part and parcel of the country
life.
_Sending the surplus population to the country._
It is also proposed to send to the country the poor-to-do and the
dissatisfied and the unemployed. This is very doubtful policy. In the
first place, the presumption is that a person who does not do well or is
much dissatisfied in the town would not do well in the country. In the
second place, the country does not need him. We may need more farm
labor, as we need more of all kinds of labor, but in the long run this
labor should be produced mostly in the country and kept there by a
profitable and attractive rural life. The city should not be expected
permanently to supply it. The labor that the city can supply with profit
to country districts is the very labor that is good enough for the city
to keep.
The relief of cities, if relief is to be secured, must lie in the
evolution of the entire situation, and not merely in sending the surplus
population into the country.
In my opinion, the present back-to-the-farm cry is for the most part
unscientific and unsound, as a corrective of social ills. It rests
largely on the assumption that one solution of city congestion is to
send people away from itself to the open country, and on another
assumption that "a little farm well tilled" will abundantly support a
family. There is bound to be a strong reaction against much of the
present agitation. We are to consider the welfare of the open country as
well as that of the city itself. The open country needs more good
farmers, whether they are country-bred or city-bred; but it cannot
utilize or assimilate to any great extent the typical urban-minded man;
and the farm is not a refuge.
_Back-to-the-village._
It seems to me that what is really needed is a back-to-the-village
movement. This should be more than a mere suburban movement. The
suburban development enlarges the boundaries of the city. It is
perfectly feasible, however, to establish manufacturing and other
concentrated enterprises in villages in many parts of the country.
Persons connected with these enterprises could own small pieces of
land, and by working these areas could add something to their means of
support, and also satisfy their desire for a nature-connection. In many
of the villages there are vacant houses and comparatively unoccupied
land in sufficient number and amount to house and establish many
enterprises; and there would be room for growth. If the rural village,
freed from urban influences, could then become a real integrating part
of the open country surrounding it, all parties ought to be better
served than now, and the social condition of both cities and country
ought to be improved. We have over-built our cities at the expense of
the hamlets and the towns. I look for a great development of the village
and small community in the next generation; but this involves a re-study
of freight rates.
_Can a city man make a living on a farm?_
Yes, if he is industrious and knows how. Many city persons have made
good on the land, but they are the exceptions, unless they began young.
There is the most curious confusion of ideas on this question. We say
that farming requires the highest kind of knowledge and at the same time
think that any man may go on a farm, no matter how unsuccessful he may
have been elsewhere. Even if he has been successful as a middleman or
manufacturer or merchant, it does not at all follow that he would be
successful as a farmer. Farming cannot be done at long range or by proxy
any more than banking, or storekeeping, or railroading, and especially
not by one who does not know how; and he cannot learn it out of books
and bulletins. If a man can run a large factory without first learning
the business, or a theater or a department store, then he might be able
also to run a farm, although the running of a farm of equal investment
would probably be the more difficult undertaking.
I am glad to see earnest city men go into farming when they are
qualified to do so, but I warn my friends that many good people who go
out from cities to farms with golden hopes will be sadly disappointed.
Farming is a good business and it is getting better, but it is a
business for farmers; and on the farmers as a group must rest the
immediate responsibility of improving rural conditions in general.
The younger the man when he begins to consider being a farmer, the
greater will be his chances of success; here the student has the great
advantage.
City people must be on their guard against attractive land schemes. Now
and then it is possible to pay for the land and make a living out of it
at the same time, but these cases are so few that the intending
purchaser would better not make his calculations on them. Farming is no
longer a poor man's business. It requires capital to equip and run a
farm as well as to buy it, the same as in other business. It is a common
fault of land schemes to magnify the income, and to minimize both the
risks and the amount of needed capital. Plans that read well may be
wholly unsound or even impossible when translated into plain business
practice. The exploiting of exceptional results in reporter's English
and with charming pictures is having a very dangerous effect on the
public mind; and even some of these results may not stand business
analysis.
_What the city may do._
It is not incumbent on cities, corporations, colleges, or other
institutions to demonstrate, by going into general practical farming,
that the farming business may be made to pay: thousands of farmers are
demonstrating this every day.
If the city ever saves the open country, it will be by working out a
real economic and social coördination between city and country, not by
the city going into farming.
We need to correct the abnormal urban domination in political power, in
control of the agencies of trade, in discriminatory practices, and in
artificial stimulation, and at the same time to protect the evolution of
a new rural welfare. The agrarian situation in the world is not to be
met alone by increasing the technical efficiency of farming.
THE DECLINE IN RURAL POPULATION--ABANDONED FARMS
The decline in rural population grows out of economic conditions. Men
move to the centers, where they can make the best living for themselves
and families. It is difficult, however, for the farmer to "pull up
stakes" and move. He is tied to his land. The result is that many men
who really could do better in the town than on their farms are still
remaining on the land. These persons will continue to remove to towns
and cities as they are gradually forced off their lands; or if they are
not forced off, their children will go, and the farm will eventually
change hands.
Social reasons also have their influence in the movement of rural
populations to towns. The social resources in the country in recent
years have been very meager, because the social attractions of the towns
have drawn away from the activities of the open country, and also more
or less because the population itself is decreasing and does not allow,
thereby, for so close social cohesion.
It is not to be expected that the counter-movement from the towns and
cities to the open country will yet balance in numbers the movement of
population from the country to the city.
It is important that conditions be so improved for the open country that
those who are born on the farms and who are farm-minded shall feel that
opportunities are at least as good for them there as in the city, and
thereby prevent the exodus to the city or to other business of persons
who really ought to remain in the rural regions.
_Significance of the decline._
It is commonly assumed that a decline in rural population in any region
is itself evidence of a real decline in agriculture. This conclusion,
however, does not at all follow. The shift in population as between town
and country is an expression of very many causes. In some cases it may
mean a lessening in economic efficiency in the region, and in some cases
an actual increase in such efficiency.
It must be remembered that we have been passing from the rural to the
urban phase of civilization. The census of 1900 showed approximately
one-third of our people on farms or closely connected with farms, as
against something like nine-tenths a hundred years previous. It is
doubtful whether we have yet struck bottom, although the rural exodus
may have gone too far in some regions; and we may not permanently strike
bottom for some time to come.
We think of Washington, Jefferson, Monroe, and other early patriots as
countrymen, and we are likely to deplore the fact that countrymen no
longer represent us in high places. The fact is that "the fathers"
represented all society, because society in their day was not clearly
differentiated between city and country. They were at the same time
countrymen and city men, but the city was the incidental or secondary
interest. To-day, the conditions are reversed. The city has come to be
the preponderating force, and the country is largely incidental and
secondary so far as the shaping of policies is concerned; but this does
not prove that a greater ratio of country population is needed. The
number of persons now living in the open country is probably sufficient,
if the persons were all properly effective. The real problem before the
American people is how to make the country population most effective,
not how to increase this population; the increase will be governed by
the operation of economic law.
The sorting of our people has not yet reached its limit of approximate
stability. Many persons who live on the land really are not farmers, but
are the remainders of the rural phase of society.
A decline in rural population in any region may be expressive of the
general adjustment as between country and city; it may mean the passing
out of active cultivation of large areas of land that ought to be in
forest or in extensive systems of agriculture; it may mean the moving
out of well-to-do farmers to cheaper lands, as an expression of the
land-hunger of the American; it may be due in some cases to the retiring
of well-to-do persons from the farms to the town; and other causes are
at work in particular localities. The rural population of Iowa is
decreasing, but the agricultural production and land valuation are
increasing.
The lessened production of live-stock, of which we have recently heard
so much, is probably not due to any great extent, if at all, to
decreasing rural population. It is in part due to the shift in farming
following the passing of the western ranges, and in part to the lack of
a free market, and in part to a changing adjustment in farming
practices. This situation will take care of itself if the markets are
not manipulated or controlled.
Many publicists are alarmed at the lessened production of farm products
in comparison with imports, and fear that the balance of trade will be
seriously turned against us, with a rise in the rate of exchange. It is
not to be expected that we shall maintain our former rate of export of
raw crops, nor is it desirable from the point of view of maintaining the
fertility of our lands that we should do so; but the maintenance of
production is now to depend on farming every acre better, in larger
farms as well as in smaller farms, rather than on taking up new acres.
The ultimate importance of agriculture to civilization, in other words,
lies not in the number of persons it supports, but in the fact that it
must continue to provide supplies for the populations of the earth when
mining and exploitation are done, when there are no new lands, and when
we shall have taken away all the first flush of the earth's bounty. The
character of the farm man, therefore, becomes of supreme importance, and
all the institutions of society must lend themselves to this personal
problem.
We shall never again be a rural people. We want the cities to grow; and
as they grow they should learn how to manage themselves. How they shall
meet their questions of population is not my problem; and I have no
suggestions to make on that subject.
_The abandoned farms._[1]
If persons move from any part of the country until there is a marked
absolute falling off in population, it must follow that certain lands
shall be left unused, or shall be combined with adjacent lands into
larger business units. It is no anomaly that there are "abandoned farms"
(they are seldom really abandoned, but more or less unused), and it is
natural that they should be in the remoter, hillier, and poorer regions.
So are shop buildings abandoned on back streets, and likewise factories
on lonely streams.
[1] Another discussion of this subject may be found in "The State
and the Farmer."
Some farms in the remote or difficult regions are still well utilized,
because a skillful man has met the situation; others may be very nearly
or quite disused; between the two extremes there is every shade of
condition. Some farms are falling into disuse for one reason and some
for another. In some cases, it is because the family is merely broken up
and is moving off. In other cases, it is because the farm can no longer
make a good living for a man and his family, giving him the things that
a man of the twentieth century wants. A farm in the hill region that was
large enough to support a man fifty or seventy-five years ago, may not
support him at the present time with all his increase in desires (page
106).
It is no solution of any question merely to put other families back on
disused farms. It is worse than no solution to place there a more
ignorant family than was on the place originally; and yet there is a
movement all over the country to place raw foreigners on such farms as
owners or renters. Because these farms are cheap, they appeal to city
people, and they become temptations to real estate dealers.
Bargain-counter farms are rarely good investments.
What is to be done with these farms is, at bottom, a plain economic
question. If they will not pay in ordinary farming, no one should be
forced to occupy them. They might be well utilized, in many cases, for
community or county forestry purposes. Every county in the East that
has many remote and difficult hill lands could probably profit by a
system of public forestry, organized on a comprehensive state plan.
I have said that farms are abandoned for all kinds of reasons. It does
not follow because a family has given up a certain farm that the place
has ever been really tested on its merits; the man may not have been a
farmer at all, but only a resident. Misfortune in the family, or the
lack of children, may be the reason for the desertion. So it happens
that some so-called abandoned farms are first-class properties to
purchase as ordinary farms.
The best lands will naturally be the first to be taken up by persons who
know. And the value of land for farming will depend very much on its
accessibility and nearness to market. Even though it is possible to
raise two hundred and fifty bushels of potatoes on a distant hilltop, it
does not follow that it is profitable to raise them there. Many persons
who are now living on difficult lands, would undoubtedly be much better
off if they were in cities or towns; but as a rule, a man cannot safely
enter a new business after forty years of age.
We must, of course, do the best we can to help the man who actually
lives on one of these difficult farms, to enable him to make the very
most of his opportunities. This is being done through many agencies. He
has been taught in methods of soil handling, fertilizing, grass-growing,
stock-raising, drainage, and many other particular features. But it is
also important that we do not encourage others to enter the same
condition.
So I have no fear of the abandoned farm, although I wish that we had a
fundamental treatment of the whole situation,--like state programs,--so
that lands in the process of returning to nature may be managed in a
large and systematic way, that they might contribute the best results to
the community and the country. We now know how to make these lands
productive, but there is a larger question than this. Such lands--once
farmed and now going fallow--may be found from California to Maine. In
many cases they are not being abandoned rapidly enough, and this
accounts for the human tragedy connected with some of the old
homesteads. But they will all be used in good time, and we shall need
them.
Little of the older country is worn out. Some of the best land values
now lie in the old East and South. Movement to these lands from the
Western lands is now beginning, and this is a sound tendency, as are
most spontaneous movements inside the farming business itself; the
railroads and real estate dealers may be expected to even up the
situation.
_The new farming._
Although the ratio of farmers to the whole population may still
decrease, the actual number of farmers will increase. The rural
districts will fill up. More young men and women will remain on farms
and more persons will go from towns to farms as rapidly as the business
becomes as lucrative as other businesses requiring equal investment,
risks, and intelligence. The open country will probably fill up mostly
with the natural increase of the country population, and there will be
some to spare for the cities. We shall face the question of congestion
of farm districts.
The general growth of population will make additional demands on the
farm, not only because there will be more persons to supply, but also
because desires increase with the increase of wealth. It may require no
more food to sustain a well-to-do person than a poor-to-do person, but
as one increases his income he greatly extends the range of his food and
improves its quality. Luxuries increase.
But beyond his actual food, one's desires increase directly with his
income; and, aside from the minerals and metals, most of the material
that is used in the arts and manufactures, in clothing, shelter, and
adornment, is raised from the land. The human-food products do not
comprise one-half the output of the land.
We have covered in a way the "easy" farming regions. But in the end, all
the country will be needed for productive uses; and the best
civilization will come only when we conquer the difficult places as well
as utilize the easy ones. We shall develop greater skill in farming than
we have yet dreamed of. The raw and ragged open country that we see
everywhere from trolley-lines and railway-trains is not at all a
necessary condition; it is only a phase of a transition period between
the original conquest of the country and the growing utilization of our
resources. The more completely we conquer and utilize it, the more
resourceful and hopeful our people should be. Country life will become
more differentiated and complex. Speaking broadly, we are now in the
rough and crude stage of our agricultural development; but the situation
will develop only as it pays and satisfies persons to live in the
country.
To meet the economic, social, educational, religious, and other needs of
these great open regions will require the very best efforts that our
people can put forth; and our institutions are not now sufficiently
developed to meet the situation adequately.
RECLAMATION IN RELATION TO COUNTRY LIFE; AND THE RESERVE LANDS
All forms of reclamation, by which lands are made available for
agricultural use, profoundly affect society and institutions; and any
person who is interested in rural civilization must necessarily,
therefore, be interested in these means and their results. Because
reclamation by irrigation has progressed farther than other means, and
has become a national policy, I shall confine my remarks to it chiefly.
The best rural civilization will develop out of native rural conditions
rather than be imposed from without. Irrigation makes a rural condition:
it provides the possibility for a community to develop; and it must,
therefore, color the entire life of the community.