THE ORIGIN AND CONSEQUENCES OF RURAL NEGLECT
The most radical economic change which history records set in during the
last half of the eighteenth century in England, as the result of that
remarkable achievement of modern civilisation, the Industrial
Revolution. Mechanical inventions changed all industry, setting up the
factories of the town instead of the scattered home production of the
country and its villages. In the wake of the new inventions economic
science stepped in, and, scrupulously obeying its own law of demand and
supply, told the then predominant middle classes just what they wished
to be told. Adam Smith had made the wonderful discovery that money and
wealth were not the same thing. Then Ricardo, and after him the
Manchester School of economists, made division of labour the cardinal
virtue in the new gospel of wealth. In order to give full play to this
economic principle all workers in mechanical industries were huddled
together in the towns. There they were to be transformed from
capricious, undisciplined humans into mechanical attachments, and
restricted to such functions as steam-driven automata had not yet
learned to perform. That was the first stage of the Industrial
Revolution, with its chief consequences, the rural exodus and urban
overcrowding. It is a hideous nightmare to look back upon from these
more enlightened days. Well might the angels weep over the flight of all
that was best from the God-made country to the man-made town.
Before the middle of the last century the clouds began to lift. For a
while the good Lord Shaftesbury seemed to be crying in the wilderness of
middle-class plutocracy, but it was not long before the crying of the
children in their factories stirred the national conscience. The health
of nations was allowed to be considered as well as their wealth. Social
and political science rose up in protest against both the economists and
the manufacturers. There followed a period of beneficent social changes,
no less radical than those which the new mechanical inventions had
produced in the economics of industry. The factory town of to-day
presents a strange contrast to that which sacrificed humanity to
material aggrandisement. What with its shortened hours of labour,
superior artisan dwellings, improved sanitation, parks, open spaces and
playgrounds, free instruction and cheap entertainment for old and young,
hospitals and charities, rapid transportation, a popular Press, and full
political freedom, the modern hive of industry stands as a monument of
what, under liberal laws, can be done by education and organisation to
realise the higher aspirations of a people.
During this second period, another economic development produced upon
the attitude of the urban mind towards the rural population an effect to
which, I think, has not been given the consideration it deserves. Better
and cheaper transportation, with the consequent establishment of what
the economists call the world-market, completely changed the
relationship between the townsman and the farmer. A sketch of their
former mutual relations will make my meaning clear. Within the last
century every town relied largely for its food supply on the produce of
the fields around its walls. The countrymen coming into the weekly
market were the chief customers for the wares of the town craftsmen. In
this primitive state of trade, townsmen could not but realise the
importance to themselves of a prosperous country population around them.
But this simple exchange, as we all know, has developed into the complex
commercial operations of modern times. To-day most large towns derive
their household stuff from the food-growing tracts of the whole world,
and I doubt whether any are dependent on the neighbouring farmers, or
feel themselves specially concerned for their welfare. I do not think
the general truth of this picture will be questioned, and I hope some
consideration may be given to the conclusions I now draw.
In the transition we are considering, the reciprocity between the
producers of food and the raw material of clothes on the one hand, and
manufacturers and general traders of the towns on the other, has not
ceased; it has actually increased since the days of steam and
electricity. But it has become national, and even international, rather
than local. Town consumers are still dependent upon agricultural
producers, who, in turn, are much larger consumers than formerly of all
kinds of commodities made in towns. Forty-two per cent of materials used
in manufacture in the United States are from the farm, which also
contributes seventy per cent of the country's exports. But in the
complexity of these trade developments townsmen have been cut off more
and more from personal contact with the country, and in this way have
lost their sense of its importance. My point is that the shifting of the
trade relationship of town and country from its former local to its
present national and international basis in reality increases their
interdependence. And I hold most strongly that until in this matter the
obligations of a common citizenship are realised by the town, we cannot
hope for any lasting National progress.
Whatever be the causes which have begotten the neglect of rural life, no
one will gainsay the wisdom of estimating the consequences. These are
economic, social, and political; and I will discuss them briefly under
these heads. There are three main economic reasons which suggest a
closer study of rural conditions. First, there is the interdependence of
town and country, less obvious than it was in the days of the local
market, but no less real. Any fall in the number, or decline in the
efficiency, of the farming community, will be accompanied by a
corresponding fall in the country sale of town products. This is
especially true of America, where the foreign commerce is unimportant in
comparison with internal trade. To nourish country life is the best way
to help home trade. And quite as important as these considerations is
the effect which good or bad farming must have upon the cost of living
to the whole population. Excessive middle profits between producer and
consumer may largely account for the very serious rise in the price of
staple articles of food. This is a fact of the utmost significance, but,
as I shall show later, the remedy for too high a cost of production and
distribution lies with the farmer, the improvement of whose business
methods will be seen to be the chief factor in the reform which the
Rural Life movement must attempt to introduce.
The essential dependence of nations on agriculture is the second
economic consideration. The author of "The Return to the Land," Senator
Jules Méline (successively Minister of Agriculture, Minister of Commerce
and Premier of France), tells us that this remarkable book is "merely an
expansion of a profound thought uttered long ago by a Chinese
philosopher: 'The well-being of a people is like a tree; agriculture is
its root, manufacture and commerce are its branches and its life; if the
root is injured the leaves fall, the branches break away and the tree
dies.'"
This truth is not hard to apply to the conditions of to-day. The income
of every country depends on its natural resources, and on the skill and
energy of its inhabitants; and the quickest way to increase the income
is to concentrate on the production of those articles for which there is
the greatest demand throughout the commercial world. The relentless
application of this principle has been characteristic of the nineteenth
century. But the augmentation of income has in one special way been
purchased by a diminution of capital. The industrial movement has been
based on an immense expenditure of coal and iron; and in America and
Great Britain the coal and iron which can be cheaply obtained are within
measurable distance of exhaustion. As these supplies diminish, the
industrial leadership of America and Great Britain must disappear,
unless they can employ their activities in other forms of industry.
Those, therefore, who desire that the English-speaking countries should
maintain for many ages that high position which they now occupy, should
do all in their power to encourage a proper system of agriculture--the
one industry in which the fullest use can be made of natural resources
without diminishing the inheritance of future generations--the industry
"about which," Mr. James J. Hill emphatically declares, "all others
revolve, and by which future America shall stand or fall."
The third economic reason will hardly be disputed. Agricultural
prosperity is an important factor in financial stability. The
fluctuations of commerce depend largely on the good and bad harvests of
the world, but, as they do not coincide with them in time, their
violence is, on the whole, likely to be less in a nation where
agricultural and manufacturing interests balance each other, than in one
depending mainly or entirely on either. The small savings of numerous
farmers, amounting in the aggregate to very large sums, are a powerful
means of steadying the money market; they are not liable to the
vicissitudes nor attracted by the temptations which affect the larger
investors. They remain a permanent national resource, which, as the
experience of France proves, may be confidently drawn upon in time of
need. I have often thought that, were it not for the thrift and industry
of the French peasantry, financial crises would be as frequent in France
as political upheavals.
As regards the social aspect of rural neglect, I suggest that the city
may be more seriously concerned than is generally imagined for the
well-being of the country. One cannot but admire the civic pride with
which Americans contemplate their great centres of industry and
commerce, where, owing to the many and varied improvements, the townsman
of the future is expected to unite the physical health and longevity of
the Boeotian with the mental superiority of the Athenian. But we may
ask whether this somewhat optimistic forecast does not ignore one
important question. 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. In
America the drain may continue a while longer without the inevitable
consequences becoming plainly visible. But 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. It is
enough for my present purpose if it be admitted that the people of every
state are largely bred in rural districts, and that the physical and
moral well-being of these districts must eventually influence the
quality of the whole people.
I come now to the political considerations which, I think, have not been
sufficiently taken into account. In most countries political life
depends largely for its steadiness and sanity upon a strong infusion of
rural opinion into the counsels of the nation. It is a truism that
democracy requires for success a higher level of intelligence and
character in the mass of the people than other forms of government. But
intelligence alone is not enough for the citizen of a democracy; he must
have experience as well, and the experience of a townsman is essentially
imperfect. He has generally a wider theoretical knowledge than the
rustic of the main processes by which the community lives; but the
rustic's practical knowledge of the more fundamental of them is wider
than the townsman's. He knows actually and in detail how corn is grown
and how beasts are bred, whereas the town artisan hardly knows how the
whole of any one article of commerce is made. The townsman sees and
takes part in the wonderful achievements of industrial science without
any full understanding of its methods or of the relative importance and
the interaction of the forces engaged. To this one-sided experience may
be attributed in some measure that disregard of inconvenient facts, and
that impatience of the limits of practicability, which many observers
note as a characteristic defect of popular government.
However that may be, there is one symptom in modern politics of which
the gravity is generally acknowledged, while its special connection with
the towns is an easily ascertainable fact; I mean the growth of the
cruder forms of Socialism. The town artisan or labourer, who sees
displayed before him vast masses of property in which he has no share,
and contrasts the smallness of his remuneration with the immense results
of his labour, is easily attracted to remedies worse than the disease. A
fuller and more exact understanding of the means by which the wealth of
the community is created is, for the townsman, the best antidote to
mischievous agitation so far as it is not merely the result of poverty.
But the countryman, especially the proprietor of a piece of land,
however small, is protected from this infection. The atmosphere in which
Socialism of the predatory kind can grow up does not exist among a
prosperous farming community--perhaps because in the country the
question of the divorce of the worker from his raw material by
capitalism does not arise. The farm furnishes the raw material of the
farmer; yet he cannot be said to spend his life creating the alleged
"surplus value" of Marxian doctrine. For these reasons I suggest that
the orderly and safe progress of democracy demands a strong agricultural
population. It is as true now as when Aristotle said it that "where
husbandmen and men of small fortune predominate government will be
guided by law."
I have now shown that for every reason the interests of the rural
population ought no longer to be subordinated to those of the city. That
such has been the tendency in English-speaking countries will hardly be
questioned. In Great Britain the rural exodus has gone on with a
vengeance. The last census (1901) showed that seventy-seven per cent of
the population was urban, and only twenty-three per cent rural. A few
years ago there were derelict farms within easy walk of the outskirts
of London. In Ireland the rural exodus took the form of emigration,
mainly to American cities, and this has been the chief factor in the
reduction of the population in sixty years from more than eight millions
to a trifle above four. But it may be thought that in the United States
no similar tendency is in operation. Certainly those who admit the
townward drift of country life may fairly say that it does not present
so urgent a problem in the New World as in parts of the Old. Even
granting that this is so, the fact remains that the town population of
America is seriously outgrowing the rural population; for, while the
towns are growing hugely, the country stands still. Moreover, we must
not forget that, Australia apart, America is even still the most
underpopulated part of the globe. We are accustomed to think Ireland
underpopulated, owing to emigration, yet even to-day the scale of
population is almost six times greater than that of the United States.
If the Union were peopled as thickly as Ireland even still is, the
population would be nearly five hundred millions. There is still a vast
deal of filling-up to be done in America, mostly in the rural parts.
But the main consideration I wish to emphasise throughout is that the
problem under review is moral and social far more than economic, human
rather than material. This is the natural view of an Irish worker, who
knows that the solution of _his_ problem depends upon the possibility of
endowing country life with such social improvements as will provide an
effective compensation for a necessarily modest standard of comfort. But
the citizens of the United States may be pardoned for being physiocrats.
The statistical proof, annually furnished, of the growing agricultural
wealth, is apt to obscure other essentials of progress. The astronomical
proportions of the figures stagger the imagination, and engender the
kind of pride a man feels when he is first told the number of red
corpuscles luxuriating in his blood. How can there be agricultural
depression in a country whose farm lands Secretary Wilson, in his
notable Annual Report for 1905, declared to have increased in value over
a period of five years at the astounding rate of $3,400,000 per day? Yet
to the deeper insight, the same moral influence through which we in
Ireland are seeking to combat the evils of material poverty may in the
United States be needed as a moral corrective to a too rapidly growing
material prosperity. The patriotic American, who thinks of the life of
the Nation rather than of the individual, will, if he looks beneath the
surface, discern in this God-prospered country symptoms of rural
decadence fraught with danger to National efficiency.
The reckless sacrifice of agricultural interests by the legislators of
the towns is condemned by the verdict of history. We need not now fear
that invading hordes of hardy barbarians will mar the destiny of the
great Western Republic, as they ended the career of the Roman Empire.
There are, however, other clouds upon the horizon. Only a few years ago,
the American people could well treat with contempt the bogy of the
Yellow Peril. With a transformation unprecedented in history, the
situation has been changed. Japan is already devoting to the arts of
peace qualities but yesterday displayed in war, to the amazement of the
Western world. In another Eastern empire there are vast
resources--especially coal and iron in juxtaposition--awaiting only
industrial leadership to utilise a practically limitless labour supply
for their development. These are facts worthy of consideration for their
potential bearing upon the industrial and commercial standing of the
United States.
To the onlooker, it does seem a happy circumstance that there has just
been, for seven critical years, at the head of American affairs the
strenuous advocate of the strenuous life. I read through his Messages
the warning that in the struggle for preëminence the ultimate victory
will lie with those nations who found their prosperity on the high
physical and ethical condition of the people. That is the oldest, as it
is the latest, wisdom of the East. It is in this spirit that the
neglected problem of Rural Life should now be given some share of the
attention hitherto devoted to the life of the towns.