utility, so must the community life tend to be solidified and tense.
Probably no other rural communities will be so unified and so intent on
local social problems. We shall look, therefore, for a very distinct and
definite welfare to arise in these communities; and they will make a
peculiar contribution to rural civilization.
The life of the irrigation community will be expressed not only in
institutions of its own, but in a literature of its own. Much of the
world's literature does not have significance to country-life
conditions, and very little of it has significance to an irrigation
civilization. I look for poetry to come directly out of the irrigation
ditch and to express the outlook of the people who depend for their
existence on the canal and the flood-gate.
_The interests of society in the work._
The people have made it possible for irrigation-reclamation to be
developed; for whether the work is performed by government directly or
by private enterprise, it nevertheless rests mostly on national
legislation; and this legislation expresses the consent and the interest
of society in the work. All the people have not only a right to an
interest in irrigation-reclamation, but they carry an obligation to be
interested in it, since it reclaims and utilizes the fundamental
heritage of all the people. I take it that society's interest in the
work is of two kinds: to see that the land is properly utilized and
protected; to see that persons desiring homes shall have an opportunity
to secure them. Society is not interested in speculation in land or in
mere exploitation.
I hope that the irrigation people realize their obligation to the
society that makes it possible for them to develop their irrigation
systems. Not every person in the nation agrees to the policy of national
reclamation, but society has given it a trial. The people in the West
are interested in developing their localities and their commonwealths,
and in securing settlers to them; and with this feeling we all must
sympathize. The people in the East have a remoter interest, but it is
none the less real. I have no fear that the irrigation-settlement of the
West will set up disastrous competition in products with the East, as
many Eastern people anticipate; the areas involved in the new irrigation
projects are too small and the development too slow for that. But there
is danger that the producing-power of the land may not be safeguarded,
and all the people, East as well as West, must have concern for use of
Western land. The very fact that irrigation-farming is intensive
increases the danger. From an agricultural point of view, the greatest
weakness in this farming is the fact that the animal, or live-stock,
does not occupy a large place in the system. Other systems of
maintaining fertility must be developed.
Society has a right to ask that we be careful of our irrigated valleys.
They are abounding in riches. It is easy to harvest this wealth, by the
simple magic of water. We will be tempted to waste these riches, and the
time will come quickly when we will be conscious of their decline. This
seems remote now, but the danger is real. Not even the fertility of the
irrigation waters will maintain the land in the face of poor
agricultural practice.
I am not contending that irrigation-farming is proceeding in a wasteful
way, or that systems are not developing that will protect society; I am
calling attention to the danger and to the interest of all the people in
this danger; and I hope that we may profit by the errors of all new
settlements thus far made in the history of the world.
It is the flat valleys of the great arid West that will be opened by
irrigation. These valleys are small areas compared with the uplands, the
hills, and the unirrigable regions. Society is interested also that we
be careful of the uplands and hills, for in the arid regions they give
small yield in forage and in timber; this forage and timber must be most
thoughtfully protected. When the producing-power of the irrigated lands
begins to decline, the West cannot fall back on its dry hills.
We are everywhere in need of better agriculture, not only that every
agriculturist may do a better business, but also that agriculture may
contribute its full share to the making of a better civilization. Here
and there, as we learn how to adapt ourselves to the order of nature, we
begin to see a really good agriculture in the process of making. A good
agriculture is one that is self-sustaining and self-perpetuating, not
only increasing its yields year after year from the same land, but
leaving the land better and richer at each generation. This must come to
pass from the land itself and from the animals and crops that one
naturally brings to the land, and not merely by the addition of mined
fertilizing materials brought from the ends of the earth. Thus far in
history, it is only when the virgin fatness begins to be used up,
speaking broadly, that we put our wits to work. Then the rebound comes.
The best agriculture thus far has developed only after we have struck
bottom, and we begin a constructive effort rather than an exploitative
effort; and this comes in a mature country. This is why so great part
of the European agriculture is so much better than our own, and why in
old New England such expert and hopeful farming is now beginning to
appear. The East is in the epoch of rebound. The East is in the process
of becoming more fertile; the West is in the process of becoming less
fertile.
In Western North America, the business systems have been developed to
great perfection, and the people are possessed of much activity, and are
so far escaped from tradition that they are able to do things in new
ways and to work together. I hope that this great region also will apply
at the outset all the resources of business and of science to develop an
agriculture that will propagate itself.
_A broad reclamation movement._
When all the lands are taken that can be developed or reclaimed by
private resources, there remain vast areas that require the larger
powers, and perhaps even the larger funds, of society (or the
government) to bring into utilization. One class of lands can be
utilized by means of irrigation. This form of land-reclamation is much
in the public mind, and great progress has been made in it.
There remain, however, other lands to be reclaimed by other means. There
is much more land to be reclaimed by the removal of water than by the
addition of water. There are many more acres to be adapted to productive
uses by forest planting and conservation than by irrigation. There are
vastly larger areas waiting reclamation by the so-called "dry-farming"
(that is, by moisture-saving farming completely adapted to dry regions).
And all the land in all the states must be reclaimed by better farming.
I am making these statements in no disparagement of irrigation, but in
order to indicate the relation of irrigation to what should be a
recognized national reclamation movement.
_Supplemental irrigation._
Let me say further that irrigation is properly not a practice of arid
countries alone. Irrigation is for two purposes: to reclaim land and
make it usable; to mitigate the drought in rainfall regions. As yet the
popular imagination runs only to reclamation-irrigation. This form of
irrigation is properly regulated by the federal government.
Now and then a forehanded farmer in the humid region, growing high-class
crops, installs an irrigation plant to carry him through the dry spells.
As our agriculture becomes more developed, we shall greatly extend this
practice. We shall find that even in humid countries we cannot afford to
lose the rainfall from hills and in floods, and we shall hold at least
some of it against the time of drought as well as for cities and for
power. We have not yet learned how to irrigate in humid regions, but we
certainly shall apply water as well as manures to supplement the usual
agricultural practices.
We must learn to reckon with drought as completely as we reckon with
winter or with lessening productiveness. We probably lose far more from
dry spells than from all the bugs and pests.
_We need reserves._
But even though we should recognize a national reclamation movement to
include all these phases and others, it may not be necessary or
advisable in the interest of all the people, that every last acre in the
national domain be opened for exploitation or settlement in this decade
or even in this century. The nation may well have untouched reserves. No
one knows what our necessities will be a hundred years hence. Land that
has never been despoiled will be immeasurably more valuable to society
then than now; and society holds the larger interest.
When the pressure of population comes, we shall fall back on our
reserves. The rain-belt states will fall back on their wet lands, their
uplands, and their hills. These hills are much more usable than those of
the arid and semi-arid West can ever be. The Eastern and old Southern
states have immense reserves, even though the titles may be largely in
private ownership. New York is still nearly half in woods and swamps
and waste, but practically all of it is usable. New York is an
undeveloped country, agriculturally. The same is true of New England and
Pennsylvania and great regions southwards. Forests and sward grow
profusely to the summits of the mountains and hills. Vast areas eastward
are undeveloped and unexploited. Even the regions of the so-called
"abandoned farms" are yet practically untouched of their potential
wealth.
I have no regret that these countries are still unsettled. There is no
need of haste. When the great arid West has brought every one of its
available acres into irrigation, and when population increases, the
Eastern quarter of the country will take up the slack. It is by no means
inconceivable that at that time the Eastern lands, newly awakened from
the sleep of a century, will be the fresh lands, and the older regions
will again become the new.
We should be careful not to repeat, even on a small scale, the
recklessness and haste with which we have disposed of our reserves
before their time.
WHAT IS TO BE THE OUTCOME OF OUR INDUSTRIAL CIVILIZATION?
We know that the whole basis of civilization is changing. Industry of
every kind is taking the place of the older order. Its most significant
note is that it brings the people of the world together in consultation
and in trade. We are escaping our localism, and we look on all problems
in their relation to all mankind. Brotherhood has become a real power in
the world.
But what does industry in itself, including all forms of land-culture,
offer as an ultimate goal to civilized man? What are to be the man's
ideals toward which he should lead his thoughts?
I am not one of those who consider a sordid and commercial end to be the
necessary result of industrialism. We must develop the ideals in an
industrial civilization, that they may lead us into the highest
personal endeavor; and everywhere it should be possible for a man to
make the most of himself. There must be something in every business
beyond the financial gain if it is to make any final contribution to
civilization. Finding this ultimate, industrial society will grow into
perfect flower.
So far as agriculture is concerned, I see two points of high endeavor
within the business, lying beyond the making of a good living, and
toward which the coming countryman may set his imagination.
(1) _The making of a new society._
A new social order must be evolved in the open country, and every farmer
of the new time must lend a strong hand to produce it. We have been
training our youth merely to be better farmers; this, of course, is the
first thing to do, but the man is only half trained when this is done.
What to do with the school, the church, the rural organizations, the
combinations of trade, the highways, the architecture, the library, the
beauty of the landscape, the country store, the rousing of a fine
community helpfulness to take the place of the old selfish
individualism, and a hundred other activities, is enough to fire the
imagination and to strengthen the arm of any young man or woman.
The farmer is to contribute his share to the evolution of an industrial
democracy.
(2) _The fighting edge._
Theodore Roosevelt, with his power to discern essentials, has given us a
good rallying phrase in "the fighting edge." When man ceases to be a
conqueror, he will lose his virility and begin to retrograde. As
localism gives way to brotherhood, militarism will pass out; but this
does not mean that mankind will cease to contend.
The best example I have seen of the development of determination and
fine social brotherhood is in the making of the Panama Canal. The making
of the Canal is in every sense a conquest. It is a new civilization that
the 40,000 or 50,000 folk are constructing down there, and every man,
whether he is employed in the commissariat, the sanitary department, in
an office, on a steam shovel, or with a construction gang, will tell you
that he is building the Canal. All these people are giving a good
account of themselves because they are doing the work under the flag and
because they are contending with vast difficulties.
We have scarcely begun even the physical conquest of the earth. It is
not yet all explored. The earth is an island, and it is only two years
ago that we got to one end of it. There are mountains to pierce,
sea-shores to reclaim, vast stretches of submerged land to drain,
millions of acres to irrigate and many more millions to utilize by
dry-farming, rivers to canalize, the whole open country to organize and
subdue by means of local engineering work, and a thousand other great
pieces of construction to accomplish, all calling for the finest spirit
of conquest and all contributing to the training of men and women. There
is no necessity that the race become flabby.
Now, my point is that the prime high endeavor laid before every farmer
is to conquer his farm, and this means contest with storm and flood and
frost, with blight and bug and pest, and with all the other barriers
that nature has put against the man that tills the land. We have made a
tremendous mistake, in my estimation, in trying to portray farming
merely as an easy business. The sulky-plow has been too much emphasized.
We are giving the young men more means and tools by which to wage the
contest, but the contest can never stop. In the nature of things,
farming cannot be an easy and simple business, and this is why it has
produced a virile lot of men and women, and why it will continue to do
so. It is a question whether, if our civilization is ever evened up, we
shall not look again to the open country for strong working classes, for
the course of much of our city industrialism is to make dependent men
and managed men, and we need to exercise every precaution that it does
not make clock-watchers and irresponsible gang-servers (page 139).
Farming will attract folk with the feeling of mastery in them, even more
in the future than in the past, because the hopelessness, blind
resignation, and fatalism will be taken out of it. Those who are not
masterful cannot conquer a farm. The man weighing one hundred and fifty
pounds who is afraid of a San José bug would better go to the city,
where he can find some one to help him fight his battles. The farmer
will learn how to adapt his scheme to nature, and how to conquer the
things that are conquerable; and this should make it worth his while to
be a farmer.
THE FUNDAMENTAL QUESTION IN AMERICAN COUNTRY LIFE
How to make country life what it is capable of becoming is the question
before us; and while we know that the means is not single or simple, we
ought to be able to pick out the first and most fundamental thing that
needs now to be done.
It is perfectly apparent that the fundamental need is to place
effectively educated men and women into the open country. All else
depends on this. No formal means can be of any permanent avail until men
and women of vision and with trained minds are at hand to work out the
plans in an orderly way.
And yet it is frequently said that the first necessity is to provide
more income for the farmer; but this is the result of a process, not the
beginning of it. And again it is said that organization is the first
necessity, even to make it possible to use the education. If
organization is necessary to make the best use of education, then it
assumes education as its basis. Educated men will make organization
possible and effective, but economic organization will not insure
education except remotely, as it becomes a means of consolidating an
unorganic society.
But there is no longer any need to emphasize the value of education. It
would now be difficult to find an American farmer who requires
convincing on this point. Yet I have desired to say that there is no
other agency, using education in its broad sense, that can by any
possibility be placed ahead of it.
_Agriculture in the public schools._
Agriculture is now a school subject. It is recognized to be such by
state syllabi, in the minds of the people, and in the minds of most
school men. It is finding its way into high-schools and other schools
here and there.
There is no longer much need to propagate the idea that agriculture is a
school subject. It is now our part to define the subject, organize it,
and actually to place it in the schools.
We must understand that the introduction of agriculture into the schools
is not a concession to farming or to farmers. It is a school subject by
right.
It is the obligation of a school to do more than merely to train the
minds of its students. The school cannot escape its social
responsibilities; it carries these obligations from the very fact that
it is a school supported by public money.
The schools, if they are to be really effective, must represent the
civilization of their time and place. This does not mean that every
school is to introduce all the subjects that engage men's attention, or
that are capable of being put into educational form; it means that it
must express the main activities, progress, and outlook of its people.
Agriculture is not a technical profession or merely an industry, but a
civilization. It is concerned not only with the production of materials,
but with the distribution and selling of them, and with the making of
homes directly on the land that produces the material. There cannot be
effective homes without the development of a social structure.
Agriculture therefore becomes naturally a part of a public-school system
when the system meets its obligation. It is introduced into the schools
for the good of the schools themselves. It needs no apology and no
justification; but it may need explanation in order that the people may
understand the situation.
If agriculture represents a civilization, then the home-making phase of
country life is as important as the field farming phase (page 93). As is
the home, so is the farm; and as is the farm, so is the home. Some of
the subjects that are usually included under the current name of home
economics, therefore, are by right as much a part of school work as any
other subjects; they will be a part of city schools as much as of
country schools if the city schools meet their obligations. They are not
to be introduced merely as concessions to women or only as a means of
satisfying popular demand; they are not to be tolerated: they are
essential to a public-school program.
_The American contribution._
The American college-of-agriculture phase of education is now well
established. It is the most highly developed agricultural education in
the world. It is founded on the democratic principle that the man who
actually tills the soil must be reached,--an idea that may not obtain in
other countries.
We are now attempting to extend this democratic education by means of
agriculture to all ages of our people, and there is promise that we
shall go farther in this process than any people has yet gone; and this
fact, together with the absence of a peasantry, with the right of
personal land-holding, and with a voice in the affairs of government,
should give to the people of the United States the best country life
that has yet been produced.
America's contribution to the country-life situation is a new purpose
and method in education, which is larger and freer than anything that
has yet been developed elsewhere, and which it is difficult for the Old
World fully to comprehend.
The founding of the great line of public-maintained colleges and
experiment stations means the application of science to the
reconstruction of a society; and it is probably destined to be the most
extensive and important application of the scientific method to social
problems that is now anywhere under way.
_The dangers in the situation._
It is not to extol our education experiment that I am making this
discussion, but to measure the situation; and I think that there are
perils ahead of us, which we should now recognize.
There are two grave dangers in the organization of the present
situation: (1) the danger that we shall not develop a harmonious plan,
and thereby shall introduce competition rather than coöperation between
agencies; (2) the danger that the newer agencies will not profit fully
by our long experience in agriculture-teaching.
An internal danger is the giving of instruction in colleges of
agriculture that is not founded on good preparation of the student or is
not organized on a sound educational basis. Winter-course and special
students may be admitted, and extension work must be done; but the first
responsibility of a college of agriculture is to give a good educational
course: it deals with education rather than with agriculture, and its
success in the end will depend on the reputation it makes with school
men.
There is also danger that new institutions will begin their extension
work in advance of their academic educational work; whereas, extension
and propaganda can really succeed only when there is a good background
of real accomplishment at home.
There is necessity that we now reorganize much of our peripatetic
teaching. It is no longer sufficient to call persons together and exhort
them and talk to them. We have come about to the end of agricultural
propaganda. All field and itinerant effort should have a follow-up
system with the purpose to set every man to work on his own place with
problems that will test him. We have been testing soils and crops and
fertilizers and live-stock and machines: it is now time to test the man.
There is also danger that we consolidate too many rural schools in
towns. If it is true that the best country life is developed when
persons live actually on their farms, then we should be cautious of all
movements that tend to centralize their interests too far from home, and
particularly to centralize them in a town or in a village. The good
things should come to the farm rather than that the farm should be
obliged to go to the good things.
_The present educational institutions._
We must first understand what our institutions of education are. The
extension of agriculture-education in institutions in the United States
(beyond the regular colleges of agriculture) is in four lines: as a part
of the regular public-school work; in unattached schools of agriculture
publicly maintained; in departments attached to other colleges or
universities; in private schools. The last category (the private
schools) may be eliminated from the present discussion.
The separate or special-school method is well worked out in Wisconsin
(county plan), in Alabama and Georgia (congressional-district plan),
Minnesota (regional plan), with other adaptations in Louisiana,
Oklahoma, Michigan, Maryland, and elsewhere.