THE WAY TO BETTER FARMING AND BETTER LIVING
In no way is the contrast between rural and urban civilisation more
marked than in the application of the teachings of modern science to
their respective industries. Even the most important mechanical
inventions were rather forced upon the farmer by the efficient selling
organisation of the city manufacturers than demanded by him as a result
of good instruction in farming. On the mammoth wheat farms, where, as
the fable ran, the plough that started out one morning returned on the
adjoining furrow the following day, mechanical science was indeed called
in, but only to perpetrate the greatest soil robbery in agricultural
history. Application of science to legitimate agriculture is
comparatively new. In my ranching and farming days I well remember how
general was the disbelief in its practical value throughout the Middle
and Far West. In cowboy terminology, all scientists were classified as
"bug-hunters," and farmers generally had no use for the theorist. The
non-agricultural community had naturally no higher appreciation of the
farmer's calling than he himself displayed. When some Universities first
developed agricultural courses, the students who entered for them were
nicknamed "aggies," and were not regarded as adding much to the dignity
of a seat of higher learning. The Department of Agriculture was looked
upon as a source of jobs, graft being the nearest approach to any known
agricultural operation.
All this is changing fast. The Federal Department of Agriculture is now
perhaps the most popular and respected of the world's great
administrative institutions. In the Middle West, a newly awakened
public opinion has set up an honourable rivalry between such States as
Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Nebraska and Minnesota, in developing the
agricultural sides of their Universities and Colleges. None the less,
Mr. James J. Hill has recently given it as his opinion that not more
than one per cent of the farmers of these regions are working in direct
touch with any educational institution. It is probable that this
estimate leaves out of account the indirect influence of the vast amount
of extension work and itinerant instruction which is embraced in the
activities of the Universities and Colleges. I fear it cannot be denied
that in the application of the natural sciences to the practical, and of
economic science to the business of farming, the country folk are
decades behind their urban fellow-citizens. And again I say the
disparity is to be attributed to the difference in their respective
degrees of organisation for business purposes.
The relation between business organisation and economic progress ought,
I submit, to be very seriously considered by the social workers who
perceive that progress is mainly a question of education. Speaking from
administrative experience at home, and from a good deal of interested
observation in America, I am firmly convinced that the new rural
education is badly handicapped by the lack of organised bodies of
farmers to act as channels for the new knowledge now made available. In
some instances, I am aware, great good has been done by the formation of
farmers' institutes which have been established in order to interest
rural communities in educational work and to make the local arrangements
for instruction by lectures, demonstrations and otherwise. But all
European experience proves the superiority for this purpose of the
business association to the organisation _ad hoc_, and has a much better
chance of permanence.
Again, the influence upon rural life of the agricultural teaching of the
Colleges and Universities, as exercised by their pupils, may be too
easily accepted as being of greater potential utility than any work
which these institutions can do amongst adults. This is a mistake. The
thousands of young men who are now being trained for advanced farming
too often have to restrict the practical application of their theoretic
knowledge to the home circle, which is not always responsive, for a man
is not usually a prophet in his own family. It is here that the
educational value of coöperative societies comes in; they act as
agencies through which scientific teaching may become actual practice,
not in the uncertain future, but in the living present. A coöperative
association has a quality which should commend it to the social
reformer--the power of evoking character; it brings to the front a new
type of local leader, not the best talker, but the man whose knowledge
enables him to make some solid contribution to the welfare of the
community.
I come now to the last part of the threefold scheme--that which aims at
a better life upon the farm. The coöperative association, in virtue of
its non-capitalistic basis of constitution and procedure (which, as I
have explained, distinguishes it from the Joint Stock Company), demands
as a condition of its business success the exercise of certain social
qualities of inestimable value to the community life. It is for this
reason, no doubt, that where men and women have learned to work together
under this system in the business of their lives, they are easily
induced to use their organisation for social and intellectual purposes
also.
The new organisation of the rural community for social as well as
economic purposes, which should follow from the acceptance of the
opinion I have advanced, would bring with it the first effective
counter-attraction to the towns. Their material advantages the country
cannot hope to rival; nor can any conceivable evolution of rural life
furnish a real counterpart to the cheap and garish entertainments of
the modern city. Take, for example, the extravagant use of electric
light for purposes of advertisement, which affords a nightly display of
fireworks in any active business street of an American city far superior
to the occasional exhibition at the Crystal Palace in London, which was
the rare treat of my childhood days. These delights--if such they
be--cannot be extended into remote villages in Kansas or Nebraska; but
their enchantment must be reckoned with by those who would remould the
life of the open country and make it morally and mentally satisfying to
those who are born to it, or who, but for its social stagnation, would
prefer a rural to an urban existence.
In one of his many public references to country life, President
Roosevelt attributed the rural exodus to the desire of "the more active
and restless young men and women" to escape from "loneliness and lack of
mental companionship."[8] He is hopeful that the rural free delivery,
the telephone, the bicycle and the trolley will do much towards
"lessening the isolation of farm life and making it brighter and more
attractive." Many to whom I have spoken on this subject fear that the
linking of the country with the town by these applications of modern
science may, to some extent, operate in a direction the opposite of that
which Mr. Roosevelt anticipates and desires. According to this view, the
more intimate knowledge of the modern city may increase the desire to be
in personal touch with it; the telephone may fail to give through the
ear the satisfaction which is demanded by the eye; among the "more
active and restless young men and women" the rural free delivery may
circulate the dime novel and the trolley make accessible the dime
museum. In the total result the occasional visit may become more and
more frequent, until the duties of country life are first neglected and
then abandoned.
I do not feel competent to decide between these two views, but I offer
one consideration with which I think many rural reformers will agree.
The attempt to bring the advantages of the city within the reach of the
dwellers in the country cannot, of itself, counteract the townward
tendency in so far as it is due to the causes summarised above. However
rapidly, in this respect, the country may be improved, the city is sure
to advance more rapidly and the gap between them to be widened. The new
rural civilisation should aim at trying to develop in the country the
things of the country, the very existence of which seems to have been
forgotten. But, after all, it is the world within us rather than the
world without us that matters in the making of society, and I must give
to the social influence of the coöperative idea what I believe to be its
real importance.
In Ireland, from which so much of my experience is drawn, we have found
a tendency growing among farmers whose combinations are successful, to
gather into one strong local association all those varied objects and
activities which I have described as advocated by the Irish Agricultural
Organisation Society. These local associations are ceasing to have one
special purpose or one object only. They absorb more and more of the
business of the district. One large, well-organised institution is being
substituted for the numerous petty transactions of farmers with
middlemen and small country traders. Gradually the Society becomes the
most important institution in the district, the most important in a
social as well as in an economic sense. The members feel a pride in its
material expansion. They accumulate large profits, which in time become
a kind of communal fund. In some cases this is used for the erection of
village halls where social entertainments, concerts and dances are held,
lectures delivered and libraries stored. Finally, the association
assumes the character of a rural commune, where, instead of the old
basis of the commune, the joint ownership of land, a new basis for union
is found in the voluntary communism of effort.
A true social organism is thus being created with common human and
economic interests, and the clan feeling, which was so powerful an
influence in early and mediæval civilisations, with all its power of
generating passionate loyalties, is born anew in the modern world. Our
ancient Irish records show little clans with a common ownership of land
hardly larger than a parish, but with all the patriotic feeling of large
nations held with an intensity rare in our modern states. The history of
these clans and of very small nations like the ancient Greek states
shows that the social feeling assumes its most binding and powerful
character where the community is large enough to allow free play to the
various interests of human life, but is not so large that it becomes an
abstraction to the imagination. Most of us feel no greater thrill in
being one of a State with fifty million inhabitants than we do in
recognising we are citizens of the solar system. The rural commune and
the very small States exhibit the feeling of human solidarity in its
most intense manifestations, working on itself, regenerating itself and
seeking its own perfection. Combinations of agriculturists, when the
rural organisation is complete, re-create in a new way the conditions
where these social instincts germinate best, and it is only by this
complete organisation of rural life that we can hope to build up a rural
civilisation, and create those counter-attractions to urban life which
will stay the exodus from the land.
I do not wish to exaggerate the interest which the rural life of my own
little island may have for those who are concerned for the vast and
wealthy expanses of the American farm lands. But, even here there is a
genuine desire for the really simple life, which in its commonest
manifestation is a thing that rather simple people talk about. In a
properly organised rural neighbourhood could be developed that higher
kind of attraction which is suggested by the very word _neighbourhood_.
Once get the farmers and their families all working together at
something that concerns them all, and we have the beginning of a more
stable and a more social community than is likely to exist amid the
constant change and bustle of the large towns, where indeed some
thinkers tell us that not only the family, but also the social life, is
badly breaking down. When people are really interested in each
other--and this interest comes of habitually working together--the
smallest personal traits or events affecting one are of interest to all.
The simplest piece of amateur acting or singing, done in the village
hall by one of the villagers, will arouse more criticism and more
enthusiasm among his friends and neighbours than can be excited by the
most consummate performance of a professional in a great city theatre,
where no one in the audience knows or cares for the performer.
But if this attraction--the attraction of common work and social
intercourse with a circle of friends--is to prevail in the long run over
the lure which the city offers to eye and ear and pocket, there must be
a change in rural education. At present country children are educated as
if for the purpose of driving them into the towns. To the pleasure which
the cultured city man feels in the country--because he has been taught
to feel it--the country child is insensible. The country offers
continual interest to the mind which has been trained to be thoughtful
and observant; the town offers continual distraction to the vacant eye
and brain. Yet, the education given to country children has been
invented for them in the town, and it not only bears no relation to the
life they are to lead, but actually attracts them towards a town career.
I am aware that I am here on ground where angels--even if specialised in
pedagogy--may well fear to tread. Upon the principles of a sound
agricultural education pedagogues are in a normally violent state of
disagreement with each other. But whatever compromise between general
education and technical instruction be adopted, the resulting reform
that is needed has two sides. We want two changes in the rural
mind--beginning with the rural teacher's mind. First, the interest which
the physical environment of the farmer provides to followers of almost
every branch of science must be communicated to the agricultural classes
according to their capacities. Second, that intimacy with and affection
for nature, to which Wordsworth has given the highest expression, must
in some way be engendered in the rural mind. In this way alone will the
countryman come to realize the beauty of the life around him, as through
the teaching of science he will learn to realise its truth.
Upon this reformed education, as a basis, the rural economy must be
built. It must, if my view be accepted, ensure, first and foremost, the
combination of farmers for business purposes in such a manner as will
enable them to control their own marketing and make use of the many
advantages which a command of capital gives. In all European
countries--with the exception of the British Isles--statesmen have
recognised the national necessity for the good business organisation of
the farmer. In some cases, for example France, even Government officials
expound the coöperative principle. In Denmark, the most predominantly
rural country in Europe, the education both in the common and in the
high school has long been so admirably related to the working lives of
the agricultural classes that the people adopt spontaneously the methods
of organisation which the commercial instinct they have acquired through
education tells them to be suitable to the conditions. The rural
reformer knows that this is the better way; but our problem is not
merely the education of a rising, but the development of a grown-up
generation. We cannot wait for the slow process of education to produce
its effect upon the mind of the rural youth, even if there were any way
of ensuring their proper training for a progressive rural life without
first giving to their parents such education as they can assimilate.
Direct action is called for; we have to work with adult farmers and
induce them to reorganise their business upon the lines which I have
attempted to define. Moreover, this is essential to the future success
of the work done in the schools, in order that the trained mind of youth
may not afterwards find itself baulked by the ignorant apathy or lazy
conservatism of its elders.
I hold, then, that the new economy will mean a more scientific mastery
of the technical side of farming, for farmers will make a much larger
use of the advice, instruction and help which the Nation and the States
offer them through the Department of Agriculture and the Colleges. It is
equally certain that there will arise a more human social life in the
rural districts, based upon the greater share of the products of the
farmer's industry, which the new business organisation will enable him
to retain; stimulated by the closer business relations with his fellows
which that organisation will bring about, and fostered by the closer
neighbourhood which is implied in a more intensive cultivation.
The development of a more intensive cultivation must carry with it a
much more careful consideration of the labour problem. The difficulty of
getting and keeping labour on the farm is a commonplace. I think farmers
have not faced the fact that this difficulty is due in the main to their
own way of doing their business. Competent men will not stay at farm
labour unless it offers them continuous employment as part of a
well-ordered business concern; and this is not possible unless with a
greatly improved husbandry.
To-day agriculture has to compete in the labour market against other,
and to many men more attractive, industries, and a marked elevation in
the whole standard of life in the rural world is the best insurance of a
better supply of good farm labour. Only an intensive system of farming
can afford any large amount of permanent employment at decent wages to
the rural labourer, and only a good supply of competent labour can
render intensive farming on any large scale practicable. But the
intensive system of farming not only gives regular employment and good
wages; it also fits the labourer of to-day--in a country where a man can
strike out for himself--to be the successful farmer of to-morrow. Nor,
in these days of impersonal industrial relations, should the fact be
overlooked that under an intensive system of agriculture, we find still
preserved the kindly personal relation between employer and employed
which contributes both to the pleasantness of life and to economic
progress and security.
Moreover, in a country where advanced farming is the rule, there is a
remarkable, and, from the standpoint of national stability, most
valuable, steadiness in employment. Good farming, by fixing the labourer
on the soil, improves the general condition of rural life, by ridding
the countryside of the worst of its present pests. Those wandering
dervishes of the industrial world, the hobo, the tramp--the entire
family of Weary Willies and Tired Timothys--will no longer have even an
imaginary excuse for their troubled and troublesome existence. But the
farmer who was the prey of these pests must, if he would be permanently
rid of them, learn to respect his hired farm hand. He must provide him
with a comfortable cottage and a modest garden plot upon which his young
family may employ themselves; otherwise, whatever the farmer may do to
attract labour, he will never retain it. In short, the labourer, too,
must get his full and fair share of the prosperity of the coming good
time in the country.
There is one particular aspect of this improved social life which is so
important that it ought properly to form the subject of a separate
essay; I mean the position of women in rural life. In no country in the
world is the general position of woman better, or her influence greater,
than in the United States. But while woman has played a great part there
in the social life and economic development of the town, I hold that the
part she is destined to play in the future making of the country will be
even greater.
In the more intelligent scheme of the new country life, the economic
position of woman is likely to be one of high importance. She enters
largely into all three parts of our programme,--better farming, better
business, better living. In the development of higher farming, for
instance, she is better fitted than the more muscular but less patient
animal, man, to carry on with care that work of milk records, egg
records, etc., which underlies the selection on scientific lines of the
more productive strains of cattle and poultry. And this kind of work is
wanted in the study not only of animal, but also of plant life.
Again, in the sphere of better business, the housekeeping faculty of
woman is an important asset, since a good system of farm accounts is one
of the most valuable aids to successful farming. But it is, of course,
in the third part of the programme,--better living,--that woman's
greatest opportunity lies. The woman makes the home life of the Nation.
But she desires also social life, and where she has the chance she
develops it. Here it is that the establishment of the coöperative
society, or union, gives an opening and a range of conditions in which
the social usefulness of woman makes itself quickly felt. I do not think
that I am laying too much stress on this matter, because the pleasures,
the interests and the duties of society, properly so called,--that is,
the state of living on friendly terms with our neighbours,--are always
more central and important in the life of a woman than of a man. The
man needs them, too, for without them he becomes a mere machine for
making money; but the woman, deprived of them, tends to become a mere
drudge. The new rural social economy (which implies a denser population
occupying smaller holdings) must therefore include a generous provision
for all those forms of social intercourse which specially appeal to
women. The Women's Sections of the Granges have done a great deal of
useful work in this direction; we need a more general and complete
application of the principles on which they act.
I have now stated the broad principles which must govern any effective
scheme for correcting the present harmful subordination of rural life to
a civilisation too exclusively urban. Before I bring forward my definite
proposal for a remedy calculated to meet the needs of the situation, I
must anticipate a line of criticism which may occur to the mind of any
social worker who does not happen to be very familiar with the
conditions of country life.
I can well imagine readers who have patiently followed my arguments
wishing to interrogate me in some such terms as these: "Assuming," they
may say, "that we accept all you tell us about the neglect of the rural
population, and agree as to the grave consequences which must follow if
it be continued, what on earth can we do? Of course the welfare of the
rural population is a matter of paramount importance to the city and to
the nation at large; but may we remind you that you said the evil and
the consequences can be removed and averted only by those immediately
concerned--the actual farmers--and that the remedy for the rural
backwardness was to be sought for in the rural mind? 'Canst thou
minister to a mind diseased?' Must not the patient 'minister' to
himself?"
Fair questions these, and altogether to the point. I answer at once that
the patient ought to minister to himself, but he won't. He has acquired
the habit of sending for the physician of the town, whose physic but
aggravates the disease. Dropping metaphor, the farmer does not think for
himself. In rural communities, there is as great a lack of collective
thought as of coöperative action. All progress is conditional on public
opinion, and this, even in the country, is a very much town-made thing.
So I am, then, in this difficulty. My subject is rural, my audience
urban. I have to commend to the statesmen and the philanthropists of the
town the somewhat incongruous proposal that they should take the
initiative in rural reform. Neither the thought nor the influence which
can set in motion what in agricultural communities is no less than an
economic revolution are to be found in the open country. To the townsmen
I now address my appeal and submit a plan.
FOOTNOTE:
[8] Message to the Fifty-eighth Congress (1903).