THE INNER LIFE OF THE AMERICAN FARMER
I recently asked a German economist if he could tell me the best books
to read upon the problem of rural life in Germany. His reply was: "There
are no books, because there is no problem." It is generally true, no
doubt, that the Rural Life problem, in so far as it consists in the
subordination of the country to the town, is peculiar to the
English-speaking countries, where it seems to be mainly attributable to
three causes. The chief of these was no doubt the Industrial Revolution
in England, of which enough has already been said. Secondly, in the
United States and in some portions of the British Empire, the opening up
of vast tracts of virgin soil led not unnaturally to the postponement of
social development until the pioneer farmers had settled down to the
new life. The third cause was immunity from the danger of foreign
invasion, which eliminated the military reasons for maintaining a
numerous, virile, and progressive rural population.
There are many in England who regret that it should have been forgotten
how the English owed their commercial supremacy to the fighting
qualities of the old yeoman class. In the United States it should be
remembered that nowadays peace strength is quite as important as war
strength, and it may be questioned whether there can be any sustained
industrial efficiency where the great body of workers who conduct the
chief--the only absolutely necessary--industry are wasting the resources
at their command by bad husbandry. We may, however, concede that the
neglect of rural life is much easier to explain and excuse in the United
States than in the older English-speaking countries. Quite apart from
the abundance of agricultural resources which the American farmers
enjoy, it might well be thought that the rural communities are keeping
pace with the progress of urban civilisation. The citizens who now
occupy the farm lands of the United States have been largely drawn from
the pick of the European peasantries. In the days of their coming, it
took courage and enterprise to face the now almost forgotten terrors of
the Atlantic Ocean. These immigrants, and the migrants from the Eastern
States, have profited enormously by their change of residence. Their
material well-being has already been admitted, and, with rare
exceptions, they have displayed no overt symptoms of agrarian
discontent.
It must not, however, be imagined that the apparent apathy of American
farmers is due to contentment. Like others of their calling, they keep a
full stock of grievances in their mental stores. They have very definite
opinions as to what is wrong, but to these opinions no formal expression
is given. They vaguely feel that they would like to remould "the sorry
scheme of things entire," but they lack the public spirit which is
required before concerted action can be taken successfully. The Country
Life Commission held a series of conferences throughout the United
States, which brought them into the closest touch with every type of
American farm life. They received written replies from some 125,000
rural folk to whom they had sent a circular with a dozen questions
covering the essential heads of inquiry. The Commissioners say in their
report: "We have found by the testimony, not only of the farmers
themselves, but of all persons in touch with farm life, more or less
serious unrest in every part of the United States, even in the most
prosperous regions."
The truth is that, while judged by the standard of living of European
peasantries, the farmers of the United States are prosperous, in
comparison with the other citizens of the most progressive country in
the world they are not well-off. Their accumulation of material wealth
is unnaturally and unnecessarily restricted; their social life is
barren; their political influence is relatively small. American farmers
have been used by politicians, but have still to learn how to use them.
This may be due to the fact that my countrymen elected to devote their
genius for organisation to the problems of city government. And in the
sphere of private action they are, as will be seen when I discuss the
need for a reorganisation of their business, even less effective than in
public affairs.
It will be conceded that any hopeful plan to put things right will have
to rely upon the organised efforts of those immediately concerned. Both
in the sphere of governmental action, and in the vastly more important
field of voluntary effort, the moving force will have to be public
opinion. But the thought of the farming communities has long ago joined
the rural exodus; and before the country life idea can find expression
in an effective country life movement, those who are thinking out the
problem will have to commend their arguments to the thought of the
towns. Therefore I address these pages, not to farmers only, but to the
general reader--who, I may observe, does not generally read if he
happens to live in the open country.
In the course of my own studies of American rural life I have found it
convenient to divide the United States into four sections, each of them
more or less homogeneous. As this method of treatment may help my
readers, I will give them a look at my map of American rural life. The
four sections may be called the North Eastern, the Middle Western, the
Southern, and the Far Western. The division has no pretensions to be
scientific; the boundaries can be adjusted to fit in with the experience
of each reader.
In my North Eastern section I include the New England States, New York,
New Jersey, and most of Pennsylvania. This is a section where
manufacturing communities have long been established, where migration
from country to town has been most marked, and where the competition of
the newly settled Western farm lands has been followed by effects upon
agricultural society very similar to those produced by the same causes
in many a rural community on the Continent of Europe. Second comes the
Middle Western section, consisting mainly of the Mississippi Valley,
with its vast area of high average fertility, the greatest
food-producing tract on the continent. Third, I place the Southern
section, where the governing factors in rural economy are the climate,
the numerical strength of the colored population, the two staple
industrial crops--cotton and tobacco--the comparatively recent abolition
of slavery, and the long-drawn-out effects of the Civil War. My fourth
division, the Far Western section, includes the ranching lands of the
arid belt with their irrigation oases, and the fruit-growing and farming
lands of the Pacific Coast.
As we are discussing the problem chiefly in its human aspect, which
affects alike communities wealthy and impoverished, large and small,
old-settled and newly established, it will not matter essentially where
we first direct our attention for the purpose of illustration. But if,
as I hold, nothing less than a reconstruction of rural civilisation is
called for, our inquiries will be more profitably directed to those
sections where agricultural society is permanently established, or where
the rural population might abandon the migratory habit if the conditions
were more favorable to an advanced civilisation. At the present stage I
feel that the whole subject can be most profitably discussed in its
application to the Middle Western and the Southern sections. Here the
intimate relationship of the Conservation and the Country Life ideas is
best illustrated. Here, too, we get into touch with the problem at its
two extremes of prosperity and poverty, each in its own way retarding
the progress of rural civilisation. In both sections the conditions are
typical, and distinctively American.
Let us then consider first the general course of rural civilisation in
the great food-producing tract of the Middle West. I have in my mind the
portion I know best, the last-settled part of the corn belt. Thirty
years ago I saw something of the newcomers who settled in this section,
where there was still much raw land. These settlers, knowing that the
land must rise rapidly in value, almost invariably purchased much larger
farms than they could handle. They often sank their available working
capital in making the first payments for their land, and went heavily
into debt for the balance. They became "land poor," and, in order to
meet the instalments of purchase and the high interest on their
mortgages, they invented a system of farming unprecedented in its
wastefulness. The farm was treated as a mine, or, to use Mr. James J.
Hill's metaphor, as a bank where the depositors are always taking out
more than they put in. A corn crop, year after year, without rotation or
fertilisers, satisfied the new conception of husbandry--the easiest and
least costly extraction of the wealth in the soil. Land, labour,
capital, and ability I had been taught to regard as the essentials of
production; but here capital was reduced to the minimum, and ability
left to nature. Many of the young men who took Horace Greeley's advice
and went West knew nothing about farming. I remember writing home that I
was in a country where the rolling stone gathered most moss. Possibly
the method adopted was the quickest way to get rich; living on capital
is all right provided somebody will replace the squandered resources.
While there were ample unoccupied lands, Uncle Sam looked kindly upon
these enterprising pioneers. It was only in the second Roosevelt
Administration that it dawned upon the national conscience that the
nation had some claim to be considered as well as the individual. Of
course all this is changed now; although I am not sure that western
Canada is not being educated in soil exhaustion by some of these
extemporised husbandmen whose habits and temperament lead them to seek
"fresh fields and pastures new." "We are not out here for our health,"
was the reply I got when I showed that my old-fashioned economic sense
was shocked by this substitution of land speculation for farming.
I am aware that this very uneconomic procedure is capable of some
plausible explanations. The opening up of the vast new territory by the
provision of local traffic for transcontinental lines was an object of
national urgency and importance. Nevertheless, I think it must now be
regretted that a little more thought was not given to the general
problem of rural economy, of which transit is but one factor. This may
be that irritating kind of wisdom which comes after the event, but I
cannot help regarding the policy of rewarding railroad enterprises with
unconditional grants of vast areas of agricultural land as one of the
many evidences of the urban domination over rural affairs.
Of the earlier settled portions of this section I cannot speak from
personal knowledge. But a recent magazine article,[3] "The Agrarian
Revolution in the Middle West," follows closely the line of my own
thoughts. In this article Mr. Joseph B. Ross, of Lafayette, Indiana, who
is making a special study of the evolution of American rural life,
considers it in three periods: from 1800 to 1835, from 1835 to 1890, and
from 1890 to the present time. In the middle period he shows how the
most progressive families raised their standard of living steadily with
the growing prosperity of the country. They built themselves stately
homes with substantial barns. The farmer was developing into a citizen
with the solid virtues, the virile independence, the strong political
opinions, religious interest, and social instincts which characterised
the English yeoman of the preceding century. The social life which these
communities built up, as soon as their economic position was assured,
was a reflection of the best English traditions--it centred round the
churches and the Sunday-school. There was a growing distribution of
literature as well as organisation for intellectual, educational and
social purposes. Mr. Ross notes the winter excursions to Florida and
California, the adornment of the homes, and many other evidences of a
social progress developing a character of its own. During this period
there was a migration from the country homes to the cities; but it was
only the natural outflow of the surplus members of the rural families
into the professional and business life of the growing centres of
commerce and industry.
In the period through which we are now passing a transformation is
taking place. The rural exodus is no longer that of individuals, but of
whole families. The farms thus vacated are let to tenants, generally on
a three years' lease, at a competition rent. The Country Life Commission
says that this tendency to move to the cities "is not peculiar to any
region. In difficult farming regions, and where the competition with
other farming sections is most severe, the young people may go to town
to better their condition. In the best regions the older people retire
to town because it is socially more attractive, and they see a prospect
of living in comparative ease and comfort on the rental of their lands.
Nearly everywhere there is a townward movement for the purpose of
securing school advantages for the children. All this tends to sterilize
the open country and to lower its social status." The Commission points
out that the new addition of what is likely to be a stationary element,
whose economic interests lie elsewhere, to the citizenship of the town,
may create there a new social problem, while the tenant in the country
will not have that interest in building up rural society which might be
expected in the owners of land. Mr. Ross's studies lead him very
definitely to the same conclusion. Churches and educational
institutions, he tells us, are being starved, and rural society is fast
reverting to the type which was prevalent from thirty to fifty years
ago. But there is one great difference between then and now. Then, rural
civilisation was passing through a stage of marked social advancement
which was common throughout the country; now, there are distinct
indications of social degeneration, which Mr. Ross regards as the
inevitable consequence of the new landlord and tenant system. Many
members of these communities must have left the Old World to escape from
the selfsame conditions which they are reproducing in the New.
Rural society in the Middle West, as it presents itself to the observer
whose authority I have cited, is obviously in a transitional stage. The
lack of farm labourers, which is the common subject of complaint by
farmers in all parts of the United States, cannot fail to be aggravated
by the change in the conditions of tenancy just noted. The man whose
chief concern is to get the most out of the land, at the least expense,
in two or three years, will not treat his labourers so well--nor the
land so well--as will the man who means to spend his life on the farm;
and therefore the labourers will not stay. This scarcity of labour may
be met to some extent by an increased use of machinery; but it is more
likely to lead to poorer cultivation, which means the depopulation of
agricultural districts. England and Ireland furnish too many examples of
the rural decay immortalised in Goldsmith's "Deserted Village." It would
be strange and sad if the experience were to be repeated on the richest
soil of America.
In the Southern section we find a wastefulness similar to that in the
corn belt, but due to wholly different causes. The communities are
old-settled, but in many instances they are still abnormally depressed
by the terrible effects of the great war, followed by a period of social
and economic stagnation. Here there was little but agriculture for the
people to rely upon, and their methods have, until recent years, been
very backward. The growing of the same crops year after year upon the
same fields, the neglect of precaution against the washing away of the
soil surface, and the failure to use fertilisers, have made the profits
of tillage disappointingly small. Billions of dollars have been lost by
these communities through persistent soil exhaustion and erosion. In the
last few years the Federal Department of Agriculture has maintained a
most efficient staff of agricultural experts under the direction of Dr.
Knapp, one of the ablest organisers of farm improvement I have ever met.
The General Education Board, who administer large sums provided by Mr.
Rockefeller, recognising the educational value of Dr. Knapp's
operations, are contributing about one hundred thousand dollars a year
to his work. Dr. Knapp and his field agents have no difficulty at all in
demonstrating that the yield may be doubled, and the cost of production
greatly reduced, merely by the application of the most elementary
science to agriculture. I heard him tell of a farmer whom he had induced
to allow his boy--still attending school--to cultivate one acre under
his instructions. In the result the boy quadrupled the number of bushels
of corn to the acre that his father, following the traditional methods,
was able to raise. It would be easy to multiply such instances of
thriftlessness and neglected opportunity, of poverty within easy reach
of abundance, which have brought it about that the future of the nation
is actually endangered by the failure of the food supply to keep pace
with the increase of its still relatively sparse population.
The Southern section furnishes two illustrations of long-standing
neglect, both well worthy of consideration for their pregnant
suggestiveness. The Federal Department of Agriculture recently scored a
notable success in dealing with an insect pest which was threatening the
cotton-growing industry with economic ruin. The boll-weevil, like the
legal and medical professions, thrives upon the follies of humanity. It
attacks the cotton plants which have been weakened by bad husbandry. The
scientists did not succeed in finding in the commonwealth of bugs the
natural enemy of the pest they were after, but Dr. Knapp, with the
wisdom which prefers prevention to cure, seized the opportunity of
teaching cotton-growers to diversify their cultivation. The consequence
was that the cotton crop itself is gradually responding to the
treatment. Many other crops are adding their quota to the produce of the
Southern farms, and an all-round improvement, moral as well as material,
is accompanying the educational discipline through which this reformer
is putting the communities with whom and for whom he is working.
There is another pest in the South which does not attack the farm crops,
but goes straight for the farmer. If the Country Life Commission had
done nothing more, they would have justified their appointment by the
attention they called to the ravages of the hookworm, which have, no one
knows how long, scourged the poor white communities in the Southern
States. The effect of the disease set up by the hookworm, which infests
the intestines, is a complete sapping of all energy, mental and
physical. Mr. Rockefeller has provided a million dollars for the
necessary research work and for such subsequent organisation of sanitary
effort as may be required to extirpate this unquestionably preventable
evil. I wonder how long such a state of affairs would have been
permitted to interfere with the health and to paralyse the industry of
urban communities. Had the hookworm, instead of lurking in country
lanes, walked the streets, how would it have fared?
These two pests furnish a fine illustration of the length to which the
neglect of rural life has been allowed to go in the Southern States.
Neither the Eastern nor the Far Western section presents aspects of
special interest to the foreign student of the Rural problem in the
United States, but in both the constructive statesman and the social
worker will find a rich field for their efforts. In the New England
States--more especially in the manufacturing districts--the competition
between town and country for labour is as marked as in Industrial
England. In this section, however, the lure of the city has a rival in
the call of the West, which still makes its appeal to the farmer's boy.
Secretary Wilson has recently given it as his opinion that land-seekers
who pass by the farms now offered for sale in the western portions of
New York State often go further and fare worse. In these relatively
low-priced lands, it ought not to be difficult for agricultural
communities to establish permanently a rural society worthy of American
ideas of progress. But to do this is to solve the problem we are
discussing. We have some other aspects of that problem to consider
before we can agree upon the essentials of a philosophic and
comprehensive scheme for the rehabilitation of rural life--before we can
lay down the lines of a movement to give effect to our plan.
The Far Western section has hardly yet emerged from the frontier-pioneer
stage, and its rural problem is still below the horizon. I may, however,
note in passing a few evidences that the people of this section have
already shown a very real concern for rural progress. The fruit-growers
of the Pacific Coast have, in the coöperative marketing of their
produce, made an excellent beginning in a matter of first importance in
any scheme of rural development. On irrigation farm lands there has
been developed, in connection with the upkeep and control of the water
systems, a community spirit which will surely lead to many forms of
organisation for mutual economic and social advantage. In the city of
Spokane, Washington, the Chamber of Commerce has aroused a public
interest in the work of the Country Life Commission which, so far as my
information goes, has not been equalled elsewhere in the United States.
The Chamber is republishing the Report of the Commission, for which no
Federal appropriation appears to have been made. It would seem to be a
not wild speculation that the statesmen and social workers who will
first solve the rural problem of the English-speaking peoples may be
found in the Far West of the New World as well as of the Old.
I must now conclude the diagnosis of rural decadence by a consideration
of what in my judgment is the chief cause of the malady, and so get to
a point where we can determine the nature of the remedy. It will then
remain only to sketch the outlines of the movement which is to give
practical effect to the agreed principles in the life of rural
communities.
FOOTNOTE:
[3] _North American Review_, September, 1909.