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THE
HOLY EARTH
BY
L. H. BAILEY
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1916
Copyright, 1915, by
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
Published September, 1915
Contents
Page
First, The Statement: Pages 1-16
In the beginning 5
The earth is good 7
It is kindly 10
The earth is holy 14
Second, The Consequences: Pages 17-171
The habit of destruction 18
The new hold 22
The brotherhood relation 30
The farmer's relation 32
The underlying training of a people 39
The neighbor's access to the earth 42
The subdividing of the land 48
A new map 55
The public program 61
The honest day's work 66
The group reaction 70
The spiritual contact with nature 75
The struggle for existence: war 80
The daily fare 90
The admiration of good materials 103
The keeping of the beautiful earth 115
The tones of industry 120
The threatened literature 124
The separate soul 130
The element of separateness in society 136
The democratic basis in agriculture 139
The background spaces.--The forest 150
A forest background for a reformatory 156
The background spaces.--The open fields 164
The background spaces.--The ancestral sea 167
THE HOLY EARTH
THE HOLY EARTH
First, the Statement
So bountiful hath been the earth and so securely have we drawn from it
our substance, that we have taken it all for granted as if it were only
a gift, and with little care or conscious thought of the consequences of
our use of it; nor have we very much considered the essential relation
that we bear to it as living parts in the vast creation.
It is good to think of ourselves--of this teeming, tense, and aspiring
human race--as a helpful and contributing part in the plan of a cosmos,
and as participators in some far-reaching destiny. The idea of
responsibility is much asserted of late, but we relate it mostly to the
attitude of persons in the realm of conventional conduct, which we have
come to regard as very exclusively the realm of morals; and we have
established certain formalities that satisfy the conscience. But there
is some deeper relation than all this, which we must recognize and the
consequences of which we must practise. There is a directer and more
personal obligation than that which expends itself in loyalty to the
manifold organizations and social requirements of the present day. There
is a more fundamental co-operation in the scheme of things than that
which deals with the proprieties or which centres about the selfishness
too often expressed in the salvation of one's soul.
We can be only onlookers on that part of the cosmos that we call the far
heavens, but it is possible to co-operate in the processes on the
surface of the sphere. This co-operation may be conscious and definite,
and also useful to the earth; that is, it may be real. What means this
contact with our natural situation, this relationship to the earth to
which we are born, and what signify this new exploration and conquest of
the planet and these accumulating prophecies of science? Does the
mothership of the earth have any real meaning to us?
All this does not imply a relation only with material and physical
things, nor any effort to substitute a nature religion. Our relation
with the planet must be raised into the realm of spirit; we cannot be
fully useful otherwise. We must find a way to maintain the emotions in
the abounding commercial civilization. There are two kinds of
materials,--those of the native earth and the idols of one's hands. The
latter are much in evidence in modern life, with the conquests of
engineering, mechanics, architecture, and all the rest. We visualize
them everywhere, and particularly in the great centres of population.
The tendency is to be removed farther and farther from the everlasting
backgrounds. Our religion is detached.
We come out of the earth and we have a right to the use of the
materials; and there is no danger of crass materialism if we recognize
the original materials as divine and if we understand our proper
relation to the creation, for then will gross selfishness in the use of
them be removed. This will necessarily mean a better conception of
property and of one's obligation in the use of it. We shall conceive of
the earth, which is the common habitation, as inviolable. One does not
act rightly toward one's fellows if one does not know how to act rightly
toward the earth.
Nor does this close regard for the mother earth imply any loss of
mysticism or of exaltation: quite the contrary. Science but increases
the mystery of the unknown and enlarges the boundaries of the spiritual
vision. To feel that one is a useful and co-operating part in nature is
to give one kinship, and to open the mind to the great resources and the
high enthusiasms. Here arise the fundamental common relations. Here
arise also the great emotions and conceptions of sublimity and grandeur,
of majesty and awe, the uplift of vast desires,--when one contemplates
the earth and the universe and desires to take them into the soul and to
express oneself in their terms; and here also the responsible practices
of life take root.
So much are we now involved in problems of human groups, so persistent
are the portrayals of our social afflictions, and so well do we magnify
our woes by insisting on them, so much in sheer weariness do we provide
antidotes to soothe our feelings and to cause us to forget by means of
many empty diversions, that we may neglect to express ourselves in
simple free personal joy and to separate the obligation of the
individual from the irresponsibilities of the mass.
_In the beginning_
It suits my purpose to quote the first sentence in the Hebrew Scripture:
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
This is a statement of tremendous reach, introducing the cosmos; for it
sets forth in the fewest words the elemental fact that the formation of
the created earth lies above and before man, and that therefore it is
not man's but God's. Man finds himself upon it, with many other
creatures, all parts in some system which, since it is beyond man and
superior to him, is divine.
Yet the planet was not at once complete when life had appeared upon it.
The whirling earth goes through many vicissitudes; the conditions on its
fruitful surface are ever-changing; and the forms of life must meet the
new conditions: so does the creation continue, and every day sees the
genesis in process. All life contends, sometimes ferociously but more
often bloodlessly and benignly, and the contention results in momentary
equilibrium, one set of contestants balancing another; but every change
in the outward conditions destroys the equation and a new status
results. Of all the disturbing living factors, man is the greatest. He
sets mighty changes going, destroying forests, upturning the sleeping
prairies, flooding the deserts, deflecting the courses of the rivers,
building great cities. He operates consciously and increasingly with
plan aforethought; and therefore he carries heavy responsibility.
This responsibility is recognized in the Hebrew Scripture, from which I
have quoted; and I quote it again because I know of no other Scripture
that states it so well. Man is given the image of the creator, even when
formed from the dust of the earth, so complete is his power and so real
his dominion: And God blessed them: and God said unto them, Be fruitful,
and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion
over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every
living thing that moveth upon the earth.
One cannot receive all these privileges without bearing the obligation
to react and to partake, to keep, to cherish, and to co-operate. We have
assumed that there is no obligation to an inanimate thing, as we
consider the earth to be: but man should respect the conditions in which
he is placed; the earth yields the living creature; man is a living
creature; science constantly narrows the gulf between the animate and
the inanimate, between the organized and the inorganized; evolution
derives the creatures from the earth; the creation is one creation. I
must accept all or reject all.
_The earth is good_
It is good to live. We talk of death and of lifelessness, but we know
only of life. Even our prophecies of death are prophecies of more life.
We know no better world: whatever else there may be is of things hoped
for, not of things seen. The objects are here, not hidden nor far to
seek: And God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very
good.
These good things are the present things and the living things. The
account is silent on the things that were not created, the chaos, the
darkness, the abyss. Plato, in the "Republic," reasoned that the works
of the creator must be good because the creator is good. This goodness
is in the essence of things; and we sadly need to make it a part in our
philosophy of life. The earth is the scene of our life, and probably the
very source of it. The heaven, so far as human beings know, is the
source only of death; in fact, we have peopled it with the dead. We have
built our philosophy on the dead.
We seem to have overlooked the goodness of the earth in the establishing
of our affairs, and even in our philosophies. It is reserved as a theme
for preachers and for poets. And yet, the goodness of the planet is the
basic fact in our existence.
I am not speaking of good in an abstract way, in the sense in which some
of us suppose the creator to have expressed himself as pleased or
satisfied with his work. The earth is good in itself, and its products
are good in themselves. The earth sustains all things. It satisfies. It
matters not whether this satisfaction is the result of adaptation in the
process of evolution; the fact remains that the creation is good.
To the common man the earth propounds no system of philosophy or of
theology. The man makes his own personal contact, deals with the facts
as they are or as he conceives them to be, and is not swept into any
system. He has no right to assume a bad or evil earth, although it is
difficult to cast off the hindrance of centuries of teaching. When he is
properly educated he will get a new resource from his relationships.
It may be difficult to demonstrate this goodness. In the nature of
things we must assume it, although we know that we could not subsist on
a sphere of the opposite qualities. The important consideration is that
we appreciate it, and this not in any sentimental and impersonal way. To
every bird the air is good; and a man knows it is good if he is worth
being a man. To every fish the water is good. To every beast its food
is good, and its time of sleep is good. The creatures experience that
life is good. Every man in his heart knows that there is goodness and
wholeness in the rain, in the wind, the soil, the sea, the glory of
sunrise, in the trees, and in the sustenance that we derive from the
planet. When we grasp the significance of this situation, we shall
forever supplant the religion of fear with a religion of consent.
We are so accustomed to these essentials--to the rain, the wind, the
soil, the sea, the sunrise, the trees, the sustenance--that we may not
include them in the categories of the good things, and we endeavor to
satisfy ourselves with many small and trivial and exotic gratifications;
and when these gratifications fail or pall, we find ourselves helpless
and resourceless. The joy of sound sleep, the relish of a sufficient
meal of plain and wholesome food, the desire to do a good day's work and
the recompense when at night we are tired from the doing of it, the
exhilaration of fresh air, the exercise of the natural powers, the
mastery of a situation or a problem,--these and many others like them
are fundamental satisfactions, beyond all pampering and all toys, and
they are of the essence of goodness. I think we should teach all
children how good are the common necessities, and how very good are the
things that are made in the beginning.
_It is kindly_
We hear much about man being at the mercy of nature, and the literalist
will contend that there can be no holy relation under such conditions.
But so is man at the mercy of God.
It is a blasphemous practice that speaks of the hostility of the earth,
as if the earth were full of menaces and cataclysms. The old fear of
nature, that peopled the earth and sky with imps and demons, and that
gave a future state to Satan, yet possesses the minds of men, only that
we may have ceased to personify and to demonize our fears, although we
still persistently contrast what we call the evil and the good. Still do
we attempt to propitiate and appease the adversaries. Still do we carry
the ban of the early philosophy that assumed materials and "the flesh"
to be evil, and that found a way of escape only in renunciation and
asceticism.
Nature cannot be antagonistic to man, seeing that man is a product of
nature. We should find vast joy in the fellowship, something like the
joy of Pan. We should feel the relief when we no longer apologize for
the creator because of the things that are made.
It is true that there are devastations of flood and fire and frost,
scourge of disease, and appalling convulsions of earthquake and
eruption. But man prospers; and we know that the catastrophes are
greatly fewer than the accepted bounties. We have no choice but to
abide. No growth comes from hostility. It would undoubtedly be a poor
human race if all the pathway had been plain and easy.
The contest with nature is wholesome, particularly when pursued in
sympathy and for mastery. It is worthy a being created in God's image.
The earth is perhaps a stern earth, but it is a kindly earth.
Most of our difficulty with the earth lies in the effort to do what
perhaps ought not to be done. Not even all the land is fit to be farmed.
A good part of agriculture is to learn how to adapt one's work to
nature, to fit the crop-scheme to the climate and to the soil and the
facilities. To live in right relation with his natural conditions is one
of the first lessons that a wise farmer or any other wise man learns. We
are at pains to stress the importance of conduct; very well: conduct
toward the earth is an essential part of it.
Nor need we be afraid of any fact that makes one fact more or less in
the sum of contacts between the earth and the earth-born children. All
"higher criticism" adds to the faith rather than subtracts from it, and
strengthens the bond between. The earth and its products are very real.
Our outlook has been drawn very largely from the abstract. Not being yet
prepared to understand the conditions of nature, man considered the
earth to be inhospitable, and he looked to the supernatural for relief;
and relief was heaven. Our pictures of heaven are of the opposites of
daily experience,--of release, of peace, of joy uninterrupted. The
hunting-grounds are happy and the satisfaction has no end. The habit of
thought has been set by this conception, and it colors our dealings with
the human questions and to much extent it controls our practice.
But we begin to understand that the best dealing with problems on earth
is to found it on the facts of earth. This is the contribution of
natural science, however abstract, to human welfare. Heaven is to be a
real consequence of life on earth; and we do not lessen the hope of
heaven by increasing our affection for the earth, but rather do we
strengthen it. Men now forget the old images of heaven, that they are
mere sojourners and wanderers lingering for deliverance, pilgrims in a
strange land. Waiting for this rescue, with posture and formula and
phrase, we have overlooked the essential goodness and quickness of the
earth and the immanence of God.
This feeling that we are pilgrims in a vale of tears has been enhanced
by the wide-spread belief in the sudden ending of the world, by
collision or some other impending disaster, and in the common
apprehension of doom; and lately by speculations as to the aridation and
death of the planet, to which all of us have given more or less
credence. But most of these notions are now considered to be fantastic,
and we are increasingly confident that the earth is not growing old in a
human sense, that its atmosphere and its water are held by the
attraction of its mass, and that the sphere is at all events so
permanent as to make little difference in our philosophy and no
difference in our good behavior.
I am again impressed with the first record in Genesis in which some
mighty prophet-poet began his account with the creation of the physical
universe.
So do we forget the old-time importance given to mere personal
salvation, which was permission to live in heaven, and we think more of
our present situation, which is the situation of obligation and of
service; and he who loses his life shall save it.
We begin to foresee the vast religion of a better social order.
_The earth is holy_
Verily, then, the earth is divine, because man did not make it. We are
here, part in the creation. We cannot escape. We are under obligation to
take part and to do our best, living with each other and with all the
creatures. We may not know the full plan, but that does not alter the
relation. When once we set ourselves to the pleasure of our dominion,
reverently and hopefully, and assume all its responsibilities, we shall
have a new hold on life.
We shall put our dominion into the realm of morals. It is now in the
realm of trade. This will be very personal morals, but it will also be
national and racial morals. More iniquity follows the improper and
greedy division of the resources and privileges of the earth than any
other form of sinfulness.
If God created the earth, so is the earth hallowed; and if it is
hallowed, so must we deal with it devotedly and with care that we do not
despoil it, and mindful of our relations to all beings that live on it.
We are to consider it religiously: Put off thy shoes from off thy feet,
for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground.
The sacredness to us of the earth is intrinsic and inherent. It lies in
our necessary relationship and in the duty imposed upon us to have
dominion, and to exercise ourselves even against our own interests. We
may not waste that which is not ours. To live in sincere relations with
the company of created things and with conscious regard for the support
of all men now and yet to come, must be of the essence of righteousness.
This is a larger and more original relation than the modern attitude of
appreciation and admiration of nature. In the days of the patriarchs and
prophets, nature and man shared in the condemnation and likewise in the
redemption. The ground was cursed for Adam's sin. Paul wrote that the
whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain, and that it waiteth for
the revealing. Isaiah proclaimed the redemption of the wilderness and
the solitary place with the redemption of man, when they shall rejoice
and blossom as the rose, and when the glowing sand shall become a pool
and the thirsty ground springs of water.
The usual objects have their moral significance. An oak-tree is to us a
moral object because it lives its life regularly and fulfils its
destiny. In the wind and in the stars, in forest and by the shore, there
is spiritual refreshment: And the spirit of God moved upon the face of
the waters.
I do not mean all this, for our modern world, in any vague or abstract
way. If the earth is holy, then the things that grow out of the earth
are also holy. They do not belong to man to do with them as he will.
Dominion does not carry personal ownership. There are many generations
of folk yet to come after us, who will have equal right with us to the
products of the globe. It would seem that a divine obligation rests on
every soul. Are we to make righteous use of the vast accumulation of
knowledge of the planet? If so, we must have a new formulation. The
partition of the earth among the millions who live on it is necessarily
a question of morals; and a society that is founded on an unmoral
partition and use cannot itself be righteous and whole.
Second, the Consequences
I have now stated my purpose; and the remainder of the little book will
make some simple applications of it and draw some inferences therefrom.
There is nothing here that need alarm the timid, albeit we enter a
disputed field, a field of opinion rather than of demonstration; and if
the reader goes with me, I trust that we may have a pleasant journey.
It is to be a journey of recognition, not of protest. It is needful that
we do not forget.
We are not to enter into a course of reasoning with those whom we meet
on the way, or to pause to debate the definitions and analyses made in
books, or to deny any of the satisfactions of tradition. We shall be
ready for impressions; and possibly we shall be able to find some of the
old truths in unfrequented places.
_The habit of destruction_
The first observation that must be apparent to all men is that our
dominion has been mostly destructive.
We have been greatly engaged in digging up the stored resources, and in
destroying vast products of the earth for some small kernel that we can
apply to our necessities or add to our enjoyments. We excavate the best
of the coal and cast away the remainder; blast the minerals and metals
from underneath the crust, and leave the earth raw and sore; we box the
pines for turpentine and abandon the growths of limitless years to fire
and devastation; sweep the forests with the besom of destruction; pull
the fish from the rivers and ponds without making any adequate provision
for renewal; exterminate whole races of animals; choke the streams with
refuse and dross; rob the land of its available stores, denuding the
surface, exposing great areas to erosion.
Nor do we exercise the care and thrift of good housekeepers. We do not
clean up our work or leave the earth in order. The remnants and
accumulation of mining-camps are left to ruin and decay; the deserted
phosphate excavations are ragged, barren, and unfilled; vast areas of
forested lands are left in brush and waste, unthoughtful of the future,
unmindful of the years that must be consumed to reduce the refuse to
mould and to cover the surface respectably, uncharitable to those who
must clear away the wastes and put the place in order; and so
thoughtless are we with these natural resources that even the
establishments that manufacture them--the mills, the factories of many
kinds--are likely to be offensive objects in the landscape, unclean,
unkempt, displaying the unconcern of the owners to the obligation that
the use of the materials imposes and to the sensibilities of the
community for the way in which they handle them. The burden of proof
seems always to have been rested on those who partake little in the
benefits, although we know that these non-partakers have been real
owners of the resources; and yet so undeveloped has been the public
conscience in these matters that the blame--if blame there be--cannot be
laid on one group more than on the other. Strange it is, however, that
we should not have insisted at least that those who appropriate the
accumulations of the earth should complete their work, cleaning up the
remainders, leaving the areas wholesome, inoffensive, and safe. How many
and many are the years required to grow a forest and to fill the pockets
of the rocks, and how satisfying are the landscapes, and yet how
desperately soon may men reduce it all to ruin and to emptiness, and
how slatternly may they violate the scenery!
All this habit of destructiveness is uneconomic in the best sense,
unsocial, unmoral.
Society now begins to demand a constructive process. With care and with
regard for other men, we must produce the food and the other supplies in
regularity and sufficiency; and we must clean up after our work, that
the earth may not be depleted, scarred, or repulsive.
Yet there is even a more defenseless devastation than all this. It is
the organized destructiveness of those who would make military
domination the major premise in the constitution of society,
accompanying desolation with viciousness and violence, ravaging the holy
earth, disrespecting the works of the creator, looking toward
extirpation, confessing thereby that they do not know how to live in
co-operation with their fellows; in such situations, every new implement
of destruction adds to the guilt.
In times past we were moved by religious fanaticism, even to the point
of waging wars. To-day we are moved by impulses of trade, and we find
ourselves plunged into a war of commercial frenzy; and as it has behind
it vaster resources and more command of natural forces, so is it the
most ferocious and wasteful that the race has experienced, exceeding in
its havoc the cataclysms of earthquake and volcano. Certainly we have
not yet learned how to withstand the prosperity and the privileges that
we have gained by the discoveries of science; and certainly the morals
of commerce has not given us freedom or mastery. Rivalry that leads to
arms is a natural fruit of unrestrained rivalry in trade.
Man has dominion, but he has no commission to devastate: And the Lord
God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to
keep it.
Verily, so bountiful hath been the earth and so securely have we drawn
from it our substance, that we have taken it all for granted as if it
were only a gift, and with little care or conscious thought of the
consequences of our use of it.
_The new hold_
We may distinguish three stages in our relation to the planet, the
collecting stage, the mining stage, and the producing stage. These
overlap and perhaps are nowhere distinct, and yet it serves a purpose to
contrast them.
At first man sweeps the earth to see what he may gather,--game, wood,
fruits, fish, fur, feathers, shells on the shore. A certain social and
moral life arises out of this relation, seen well in the woodsmen and
the fishers--in whom it best persists to the present day--strong,
dogmatic, superstitious folk. Then man begins to go beneath the surface
to see what he can find,--iron and precious stones, the gold of Ophir,
coal, and many curious treasures. This develops the exploiting
faculties, and leads men into the uttermost parts. In both these stages
the elements of waste and disregard have been heavy.
Finally, we begin to enter the productive stage, whereby we secure
supplies by controlling the conditions under which they grow, wasting
little, harming not. Farming has been very much a mining process, the
utilizing of fertility easily at hand and the moving-on to lands
unspoiled of quick potash and nitrogen. Now it begins to be really
productive and constructive, with a range of responsible and permanent
morals. We rear the domestic animals with precision. We raise crops,
when we will, almost to a nicety. We plant fish in lakes and streams to
some extent but chiefly to provide more game rather than more human
food, for in this range we are yet mostly in the collecting or hunter
stage. If the older stages were strongly expressed in the character of
the people, so will this new stage be expressed; and so is it that we
are escaping the primitive and should be coming into a new character. We
shall find our rootage in the soil.
This new character, this clearer sense of relationship with the earth,
should express itself in all the people and not exclusively in farming
people and their like. It should be a popular character--or a national
character if we would limit the discussion to one people--and not a
class character. Now, here lies a difficulty and here is a reason for
writing this book: the population of the earth is increasing, the
relative population of farmers is decreasing, people are herding in
cities, we have a city mind, and relatively fewer people are brought
into touch with the earth in any real way. So is it incumbent on us to
take special pains--now that we see the new time--that all the people,
or as many of them as possible, shall have contact with the earth and
that the earth righteousness shall be abundantly taught.
I hasten to say that I am not thinking of any back-to-the-farm movement
to bring about the results we seek. Necessarily, the proportion of
farmers will decrease. Not so many are needed, relatively, to produce
the requisite supplies from the earth. Agriculture makes a great
contribution to human progress by releasing men for the manufactures and
the trades. In proportion as the ratio of farmers decreases is it
important that we provide them the best of opportunities and
encouragement: they must be better and better men. And if we are to
secure our moral connection with the planet to a large extent through
them, we can see that they bear a relation to society in general that we
have overlooked.
Even the farming itself is changing radically in character. It ceases to
be an occupation to gain sustenance and becomes a business. We apply to
it the general attitudes of commerce. We must be alert to see that it
does not lose its capacity for spiritual contact.
How we may achieve a more wide-spread contact with the earth on the part
of all the people without making them farmers, I shall endeavor to
suggest as I proceed; in fact, this is my theme. Dominion means mastery;
we may make the surface of the earth much what we will; we can govern
the way in which we shall contemplate it. We are probably near something
like a stable occupancy. It is not to be expected that there will be
vast shifting of cities as the contest for the mastery of the earth
proceeds,--probably nothing like the loss of Tyre and Carthage, and of
the commercial glory of Venice. In fact, we shall have a progressive
occupancy. The greater the population, the greater will be the demands
on the planet; and, moreover, every new man will make more demands than
his father made, for he will want more to satisfy him. We are to take
from the earth much more than we have ever taken before, but it will be
taken in a new way and with better intentions. It will be seen,
therefore, that we are not here dealing narrowly with an occupation but
with something very fundamental to our life on the planet.
We are not to look for our permanent civilization to rest on any species
of robber-economy. No flurry of coal-mining, or gold-fever, or
rubber-collecting in the tropics, or excitement of prospecting for new
finds or even locating new lands, no ravishing of the earth or
monopolistic control of its bounties, will build a stable society. So is
much of our economic and social fabric transitory. It is not by accident
that a very distinct form of society is developing in the great farming
regions of the Mississippi Valley and in other comparable places; the
exploiting and promoting occupancy of those lands is passing and a
stable progressive development appears. We have been obsessed of the
passion to cover everything at once, to skin the earth, to pass on, even
when there was no necessity for so doing. It is a vast pity that this
should ever have been the policy of government in giving away great
tracts of land by lottery, as if our fingers would burn if we held the
lands inviolate until needed by the natural process of settlement. The
people should be kept on their lands long enough to learn how to use
them. But very well: we have run with the wind, we have staked the
lands; now we shall be real farmers and real conquerors. Not all lands
are equally good for farming, and some lands will never be good for
farming; but whether in Iowa, or New England, or old Asia, farming land
may develop character in the people.
My reader must not infer that we have arrived at a permanent
agriculture, although we begin now to see the importance of a permanent
land occupancy. Probably we have not yet evolved a satisfying husbandry
that will maintain itself century by century, without loss and without
the ransacking of the ends of the earth for fertilizer materials to make
good our deficiencies. All the more is it important that the problem be
elevated into the realm of statesmanship and of morals. Neither must he
infer that the resources of the earth are to be locked up beyond contact
and use (for the contact and use will be morally regulated). But no
system of brilliant exploitation, and no accidental scratching of the
surface of the earth, and no easy appropriation of stored materials can
suffice us in the good days to come. City, country, this class and that
class, all fall and merge before the common necessity.
It is often said that the farmer is our financial mainstay; so in the
good process of time will he be a moral mainstay, for ultimately finance
and social morals must coincide.
The gifts are to be used for service and for satisfaction, and not for
wealth. Very great wealth introduces too many intermediaries, too great
indirectness, too much that is extrinsic, too frequent hindrances and
superficialities. It builds a wall about the man, and too often does he
receive his impressions of the needs of the world from satellites and
sycophants. It is significant that great wealth, if it contributes much
to social service, usually accomplishes the result by endowing others to
work. The gift of the products of the earth was "for meat": nothing was
said about riches.
Yet the very appropriation or use of natural resources may be the means
of directing the mind of the people back to the native situations. We
have the opportunity to make the forthcoming development of
water-power, for example, such an agency for wholesome training.
Whenever we can appropriate without despoliation or loss, or without a
damaging monopoly, we tie the people to the backgrounds.
In the background is the countryman; and how is the countryman to make
use of the rain and the abounding soil, and the varied wonder of plant
and animal amidst which he lives, that he may arrive at kinship? We are
teaching him how to bring some of these things under the dominion of his
hands, how to measure and to weigh and to judge. This will give him the
essential physical mastery. But beyond this, how shall he take them into
himself, how shall he make them to be of his spirit, how shall he
complete his dominion? How shall he become the man that his natural
position requires of him? This will come slowly, ah, yes!--slowly. The
people--the great striving self-absorbed throng of the people--they do
not know what we mean when we talk like this, they hear only so many
fine words. The naturist knows that the time will come slowly,--not yet
are we ready for fulfilment; he knows that we cannot regulate the
cosmos, or even the natural history of the people, by enactments.
Slowly: by removing handicaps here and there; by selection of the folk
in a natural process, to eliminate the unresponsive; by teaching, by
suggestion; by a public recognition of the problem, even though not one
of us sees the end of it.
I hope my reader now sees where I am leading him. He sees that I am not
thinking merely of instructing the young in the names and habits of
birds and flowers and other pleasant knowledge, although this works
strongly toward the desired end; nor of any movement merely to have
gardens, or to own farms, although this is desirable provided one is
qualified to own a farm; nor of rhapsodies on the beauties of nature.
Nor am I thinking of any new plan or any novel kind of institution or
any new agency; rather shall we do better to escape some of the
excessive institutionalism and organization. We are so accustomed to
think in terms of organized politics and education and religion and
philanthropies that when we detach ourselves we are said to lack
definiteness. It is the personal satisfaction in the earth to which we
are born, and the quickened responsibility, the whole relation, broadly
developed, of the man and of all men,--it is this attitude that we are
to discuss.
The years pass and they grow into centuries. We see more clearly. We are
to take a new hold.
_The brotherhood relation_
A constructive and careful handling of the resources of the earth is
impossible except on a basis of large co-operation and of association
for mutual welfare. The great inventions and discoveries of recent time
have extensive social significance.
Yet we have other relations than with the physical and static materials.
We are parts in a living sensitive creation. The theme of evolution has
overturned our attitude toward this creation. The living creation is not
exclusively man-centred: it is bio-centric. We perceive the essential
continuity in nature, arising from within rather than from without, the
forms of life proceeding upwardly and onwardly in something very like a
mighty plan of sequence, man being one part in the process. We have
genetic relation with all living things, and our aristocracy is the
aristocracy of nature. We can claim no gross superiority and no isolated
self-importance. The creation, and not man, is the norm. Even now do we
begin to guide our practises and our speech by our studies of what we
still call the lower creation. We gain a good perspective on ourselves.
If we are parts in the evolution, and if the universe, or even the
earth, is not made merely as a footstool, or as a theatre for man, so do
we lose our cosmic selfishness and we find our place in the plan of
things. We are emancipated from ignorance and superstition and small
philosophies. The present wide-spread growth of the feeling of
brotherhood would have been impossible in a self-centred creation: the
way has been prepared by the discussion of evolution, which is the major
biological contribution to human welfare and progress. This is the
philosophy of the oneness in nature and the unity in living things.
_The farmer's relation_
The surface of the earth is particularly within the care of the farmer.
He keeps it for his own sustenance and gain, but his gain is also the
gain of all the rest of us. At the best, he accumulates little to
himself. The successful farmer is the one who produces more than he
needs for his support; and the overplus he does not keep; and, moreover,
his own needs are easily satisfied. It is of the utmost consequence that
the man next the earth shall lead a fair and simple life; for in riotous
living he might halt many good supplies that now go to his fellows.
It is a public duty so to train the farmer that he shall appreciate his
guardianship. He is engaged in a quasi-public business. He really does
not even own his land. He does not take his land with him, but only the
personal development that he gains from it. He cannot annihilate his
land, as another might destroy all his belongings. He is the agent or
the representative of society to guard and to subdue the surface of the
earth; and he is the agent of the divinity that made it. He must
exercise his dominion with due regard to all these obligations. He is a
trustee. The productiveness of the earth must increase from generation
to generation: this also is his obligation. He must handle all his
materials, remembering man and remembering God. A man cannot be a good
farmer unless he is a religious man.
If the farmer is engaged in a quasi-public business, shall we undertake
to regulate him? This relationship carries a vast significance to the
social order, and it must color our attitude toward the man on the land.
We are now in that epoch of social development when we desire to
regulate by law everything that is regulatable and the other things
besides. It is recently proposed that the Congress shall pass a law
regulating the cropping scheme of the farmer for the protection of soil
fertility. This follows the precedent of the regulation, by enactment,
of trusts and public utilities. It is fortunate that such a law cannot
be passed, and could not be enforced if it were passed; but this and
related proposals are crude expressions of the growing feeling that the
farmer owes an obligation to society, and that this obligation must be
enforced and the tiller of the soil be held to account.
We shall produce a much better and safer man when we make him
self-controlling by developing his sense of responsibility than when we
regulate him by exterior enactments.
In the realm of control of the farming occupation we shall invoke other
than legal means, and perhaps these means will be suggestive for other
situations. These means may be somewhat indefinite in the law-book
sense, but they may attain to a better human result. We shall reach the
question by surer ways than the crudities of legislation. We shall reach
the man, in this field, rather than his business. We have begun it by
accepting it as one part of our duty to the race to provide liberally at
public expense for the special education of the man on the land. This is
the reason, even if we have not formulated it to ourselves, why society
is willing to go farther in the education of the farming people than in
the popular education of other ranges of the people. This, of course, is
the fundamental way; and if there are any governments that attempt to
safeguard this range directly by laws rather than by education, then
they have not arrived at a long view of the situation.
We invoke regulatory law for the control of the corporate activities;
but we must not forget the other kinds of activities contributing to the
making of society, nor attempt to apply to them the same methods of
correction.
Into this secular and more or less technical education we are now to
introduce the element of moral obligation, that the man may understand
his peculiar contribution and responsibility to society; but this
result cannot be attained until the farmer and every one of us recognize
the holiness of the earth.
The farmer and every one of us: every citizen should be put right toward
the planet, should be quicked to his relationship to his natural
background. The whole body of public sentiment should be sympathetic
with the man who works and administers the land for us; and this
requires understanding. We have heard much about the "marginal man," but
the first concern of society should be for the bottom man.
If this philosophy should really be translated into action, the farmer
would nowhere be a peasant, forming merely a caste, and that a low one,
among his fellows. He would be an independent co-operating citizen
partaking fully of the fruits of his labor, enjoying the social rewards
of his essential position, being sustained and protected by a body of
responsive public opinion. The farmer cannot keep the earth for us
without an enlightened and very active support from every other person,
and without adequate safeguards from exploitation and from unessential
commercial pressure.
This social support requires a ready response on the part of the farmer;
and he must also be developed into his position by a kind of training
that will make him quickly and naturally responsive to it. The social
fascination of the town will always be greater than that of the open
country. The movements are more rapid, more picturesque, have more color
and more vivacity. It is not to be expected that we can overcome this
fascination and safeguard the country boy and girl merely by introducing
more showy or active enterprises into the open country. We must develop
a new background for the country youth, establish new standards, and
arouse a new point of view. The farmer will not need all the things that
the city man thinks the farmer needs. We must stimulate his moral
response, his appreciation of the worthiness of the things in which he
lives, and increase his knowledge of all the objects and affairs amongst
which he moves. The backbone of the rural question is at the bottom a
moral problem.
We do not yet know whether the race can permanently endure urban life,
or whether it must be constantly renewed from the vitalities in the
rear. We know that the farms and the back spaces have been the mother of
the race. We know that the exigencies and frugalities of life in these
backgrounds beget men and women to be serious and steady and to know the
value of every hour and of every coin that they earn; and whenever they
are properly trained, these folk recognize the holiness of the earth.
For some years I have had the satisfaction to speak to rural folk in
many places on the holy earth and to make some of the necessary
applications. Everywhere I have met the heartiest assent from these
people. Specially do they respond to the suggestion that if the earth is
hallowed, so are the native products of the earth hallowed; and they
like to have the mystery--which is the essential sentiment--of these
things brought home to them with frequency. I will here let my reader
have a letter that one of these persons wrote me, and I print it without
change. On inquiry, the writer of it told me that he is a farmer, has
never followed any other occupation, was brought up "in the woods," and
has had practically no education. I did not ask him, but I judge from
the narrative style that he has been a reader or a hearer of the Old
Testament; and here is the letter:
As you say, too many people confound farming, with that sordid,
selfish, money-getting game, called "business," whereas, the
farmer's position is administrative, being in a way a dispenser of
the "Mysteries of God," for they are mysteries. Every apple is a
mystery, and every potato is a mystery, and every ear of corn is a
mystery, and every pound of butter is a mystery, and when a "farmer"
is not able to understand these things he is out of place.
The farmer uses the soil and the rains and the snows and the frosts
and the winds and the sun; these are also the implements of the
Almighty, the only tools He uses, and while you were talking that
day, it brought to mind the recollection of an account I once read
of an occurrence which took place in the vicinity of Carlsruhe, in
Germany, about thirty years ago, and I want to tell you about it. An
old man and his two sons, who were laborers on a large farm there,
went out one morning to mow peas, with scythes, as was the method in
use at that time, and soon after they began work, they noticed a
large active man coming along a pathway which bordered the field on
one side, and when he came to where they were, he spoke to them,
very pleasantly, and asked them some questions about their work and
taking the scythe from the hands of the older man he mowed some with
it and finally returned it and went his way. After a time when the
owner of the farm came out to oversee the work they told him of the
occurrence, and asked him if he could tell who the stranger might
be, and he told them that he was Prince Bismarck, the Chancellor of
the empire, who was staying at his country home at Carlsruhe, and
was out for his morning walk, and they were astonished, and the old
man was filled with a great pride, and he felt himself elevated
above all his fellows, and he wouldn't have sold his scythe for half
the money in Germany, and his descendants to this day boast of the
fact that their father and Bismarck mowed with the same scythe. Now
if it was sufficient to stimulate the pride of this old laborer, if
it was sufficient to create for him a private aristocracy, if it was
sufficient to convert that old rusty scythe into a priceless
heirloom to be treasured up and transmitted from father to son, if
it was sufficient for all these things that he had once held a
momentarily unimportant association with the man of "blood and
iron," how much more inconceivably and immeasurably high and exalted
is the station of the farmer who is, in a measure, a fellow
craftsman of the God of Nature, of the great First Cause of all
things, and people don't know it. No wonder the boys leave the farm!
_The underlying training of a people_
This, then, is the landsman's obligation, and his joyful privilege. But
it must not be supposed that he alone bears the responsibility to
maintain the holiness of the divine earth. It is the obligation also of
all of us, since every one is born to the earth and lives upon it, and
since every one must react to it to the extent of his place and
capabilities. This being so, then it is a primary need that we shall
place at the use of the people a kind of education that shall quicken
these attachments.
Certainly all means of education are useful, and every means should be
developed to its best; and it is not to be expected that all the people
shall pursue a single means: but to the nation and to the race a
fundamental training must be provided.