agriculture, to the end that we may produce our land supplies. Already
this education is assuming broad aspects, and we begin to see that it
has very important bearing on public policies. It is a new form of
exercise in natural science,--the old education in this great realm
having become so specialized and departmentalized as to lose much of
its value as a means of popular training.
It is a happy augury that in North America so many public men and
administrators have taken the large view of education by means of
agriculture, desiring, while training farmers or those who would
be farmers, to make it a means of bringing the understanding of the
people back to the land. The Americans are making a very remarkable
contribution here, in a spirit of real statesmanship. In the long run,
this procedure will produce a spirit in the people that will have
far-reaching importance in the development of national character, and in
a relation to the backgrounds of which very few of us yet have vision.
It will be fortunate if we can escape the formalizing and
professionalizing of this education, that has cast such a blight on most
of the older means of training the young, and if we can keep it
democratic and free in spirit.
We shall need to do the same in all the subjects that lie at the
foundations,--in all the other crafts; all these crafts are of the
earth. They support the physical man and the social fabric, and make the
conditions out of which all the highest achievements may come.
Every person in a democracy has a right to be educated by these means;
and a people living in a democracy must of necessity understand the
significance of such education. This education should result or function
politically. It is not sufficient to train technically in the trades and
crafts and arts to the end of securing greater economic
efficiency,--this may be accomplished in a despotism and result in no
self-action on the part of the people. Every democracy must reach far
beyond what is commonly known as economic efficiency, and do everything
it can to enable those in the backgrounds to maintain their standing and
their pride and to partake in the making of political affairs.
_The neighbor's access to the earth_
When one really feels the response to the native earth, one feels also
the obligation and the impulse to share it with the neighbor.
The earth is not selfish. It is open and free to all. It invites
everywhere. The naturist is not selfish,--he shares all his joys and
discoveries, even to the extent of publishing them. The farmer is not
selfish with his occupation,--he freely aids every one or any one to
engage in his occupation, even if that one becomes his competitor. But
occupations that are some degrees removed from the earth may display
selfishness; trade and, to a large extent, manufacture are selfish, and
they lock themselves in. Even the exploiting of the resources of the
earth may be selfish, in the taking of the timber and the coal, the
water-powers and the minerals, for all this is likely to develop to a
species of plunder. The naturist desires to protect the plants and the
animals and the situations for those less fortunate and for those who
come after. There are lumbermen and miners with the finest sense of
obligation. There are other men who would take the last nugget and
destroy the last bole.
We are to recognize the essential integrity of the farming occupation,
when developed constructively, as contrasted with the vast system of
improbity and dishonor that arises from depredation and from the taking
of booty.
The best kind of community interest attaches to the proper use and
partitioning of the earth, a communism that is dissociated from
propaganda and programs. The freedom of the earth is not the freedom of
license: there is always the thought of the others that are dependent on
it. It is the freedom of utilization for needs and natural desires,
without regard to one's place among one's fellows, or even to one's
condition of degradation or state of sinfulness. All men are the same
when they come back to the meadows, to the hills, and to the deep woods:
He maketh his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on
the just and the unjust.
The lesson of the growing abounding earth is of liberality for all, and
never exploitation or very exclusive opportunities for the few. Even if
the weaker anywhere perish in the contest for food, they are
nevertheless given the opportunity to contest on terms equal to their
abilities; and at all events, we come, in the human sphere, to the
domination of sweet reason rather than to competition in sheer force.
When, by means of reasonable education, this simple relation is
understood by mankind and begins to express itself spontaneously, we
shall find our voluminous complex of laws to regulate selfishness
gradually disappearing and passing into the limbo.
It is now easy to understand the sinfulness of vast private estates that
shut up expanses of the surface of the earth from the reach and
enjoyment of others that are born similarly to the privileges of the
planet. There is no warrant in nature for guarantee deeds to such
estates. It is true, of course, that land-estates should not be equal,
for capacities for use are not equal, and abilities and deserts are not
equal. It is legitimate to reward those who otherwise render great
service, and this reward may lie in unusual privileges. The present
emoluments in the way of incomes bear little relation to service or even
to merit.
We have not yet escaped the idea that vested rights--and particularly
personal realty--are inviolable. Certainly these rights must be
protected by law, otherwise there can be no stability and regularity in
affairs; but there is no inalienable right in the ownership of the
surface of the earth. Readjustments must come, and even now they are
coming slowly, and here and there in the interest of the neighbor; and
in the end there will be no private monopoly of public or natural
resources.
The cure for these ills does not lie, however, in the ownership of all
the land by "the government," at least not in our time and perhaps
never. It is well for a person to have his own plot for his lifetime,
with the right to use it as he will so long as he does not offend, or
does not despoil it for those who follow: it steadies him, and it
identifies him with a definite program in life.
We usually speak as if all good results in the distribution of the
natural bounty will ensue if "the government" or "the state" owns the
resources; but government ownership of resources and direction of
industries may not mean freedom or escape for the people. It depends
entirely on the kind of government,--not on its name or description, but
on the extent to which the people have been trained to partake on their
own initiative. The government may be an autocracy or only another form
of monopoly.
The aristocracy of land has much to its credit. Great gains in human
accomplishment have come out of it; but this does not justify it for the
future. The aristocracy of land is a very dangerous power in human
affairs. It is all the more dangerous when associated with aristocracy
of birth and of factitious social position, which usually accompany it.
A people may be ever so free in its advantages and in its theoretical
political organization, and yet suffer overwhelming bondage if its land
is tied up in an aristocratic system, and particularly if that system is
connected into a social aristocracy. And whenever rigid aristocracy in
land connects itself with the close control of politics, the subjection
becomes final and complete.
What lies within a nation or a people may lie in enlarged form between
the nations or the peoples. Neighborliness is international. Contest for
land and sea is at the basis of wars. Recognizing the right of any
people to its own life, we must equally recognize its right to a
sufficient part of the surface of the earth. We must learn how to
subdivide it on the basis of neighborliness, friendship, and conference;
if we cannot learn this, then we cannot be neighbors but only enemies.
The proposal now before Congress to cede to Canada the Alaskan
Panhandle, or a part of it, is an evidence of this growth of
international morals, extended to the very basis on which nations have
been the least ready to co-operate.
If we may fraternalize territory, so shall we fraternalize commerce. No
people may rightly be denied the privilege to trade with all other
peoples. All kinds of useful interchange are civilizers and peacemakers;
and if we carry ourselves to others when we carry our produce and our
wares, so do any of us need that others shall bring their produce and
their wares to us. It would be a sorry people that purchased no supplies
from without. Every people, small or large, has right of access to the
sea, for the sea belongs to mankind. It follows that no people has a
right to deprive any other people of the shore, if that people desires
the contact.
We now begin to understand the awful sin of partitioning the earth by
force.
_The subdividing of the land_
The question then arises whether lands and other natural resources shall
now be divided and redistributed in order that the share-and-share of
the earth's patrimony shall be morally just. Undoubtedly the logic of
the situation makes for many personal points of very close contact with
the mother earth, and contact is usually most definite and best when it
results from what we understand as ownership. This, in practice,
suggests many small parcels of land--for those who would have their
contact by means of land, which is the directest means--under personal
fee. But due provision must always be made, as I have already indicated,
for the man who makes unusual contribution to the welfare of his
fellows, that he may be allowed to extend his service and attain his own
full development; and moreover, an established order may not be
overturned suddenly and completely without much damage, not only to
personal interests but to society. Every person should have the right
and the privilege to a personal use of some part of the earth; and
naturally the extent of his privilege must be determined by his use of
it.
It is urged that lands can be most economically administered in very
large units and under corporate management; but the economic results are
not the most important results to be secured, although at present they
are the most stressed. The ultimate good in the use of land is the
development of the people; it may be better that more persons have
contact with it than that it shall be executively more effectively
administered. The morals of land management is more important than the
economics of land management; and of course my reader is aware that by
morals I mean the results that arise from a right use of the earth
rather than the formal attitudes toward standardized or conventional
codes of conduct.
If the moral and the economic ends can be secured simultaneously, as
eventually they will be secured, the perfect results will come to pass;
but any line of development founded on accountant economics alone will
fail.
Here I must pause for an explanation in self-defense, for my reader may
think I advise the "little farm well tilled" that has so much captured
the public mind. So far from giving such advice, I am not thinking
exclusively of farming when I speak of the partitioning of the land. One
may have land merely to live on. Another may have a wood to wander in.
One may have a spot on which to make a garden. Another may have a
shore, and another a retreat in the mountains or in some far space. Much
of the earth can never be farmed or mined or used for timber, and yet
these supposed waste places may be very real assets to the race: we
shall learn this in time. I am glad to see these outlying places set
aside as public reserves; and yet we must not so organize and tie up the
far spaces as to prevent persons of little means from securing small
parcels. These persons should have land that they can handle and
manipulate, in which they may dig, on which they may plant trees and
build cabins, and which they may feel is theirs to keep and to master,
and which they are not obliged to "improve." In the parks and reserves
the land may be available only to look at, or as a retreat in which one
may secure permission to camp. The regulations are necessary for these
places, but these places are not sufficient.
If it were possible for every person to own a tree and to care for it,
the good results would be beyond estimation.
Now, farming is a means of support; and in this case, the economic
possibilities of a particular piece of land are of primary consequence.
Of course, the most complete permanent contact with the earth is by
means of farming, when one makes a living from the land; this should
produce better results than hunting or sport; but one must learn how to
make this connection. It is possible to hoe potatoes and to hear the
birds sing at the same time, although our teaching has not much
developed this completeness in the minds of the people.
I hope, therefore, that the farmer's piece of land will be economically
good (that it may make him a living and produce a surplus for some of
the rest of us), and that the farmer may be responsive to his situation.
The size of the farm that is to support a family, and the kinds of crops
that shall be grown and even the yields that shall be secured to the
acre, are technical problems of agriculture. In this New World, with
expensive labor and still with cheap land, we cannot yet afford to
produce the high yields of some of the Old World places,--it may be
better to till more land with less yield to the acre. But all this is
aside from my present purpose; and this purpose is to suggest the very
real importance of making it possible for an increasing proportion of
the people to have close touch with the earth in their own rights and in
their own names.
We recognize different grades or kinds of land occupancy, some of it
being proprietorship and some of it tenancy and some of it mere
shareholding. Thus far have we spoken of the partitioning of the land
mostly in its large social and political relations; but to society also
belongs the fertility of the land, and all efforts to conserve this
fertility are public questions in the best sense. In America we think of
tenant occupancy of land as dangerous because it does not safeguard
fertility; in fact, it may waste fertility. This is because the practice
in tenancy does not recognize the public interest in fertility, and the
contract or agreement is made merely between the landowner and the
tenant, and is largely an arrangement for skinning the land. It is only
when the land itself is a party in the contract (when posterity is
considered) that tenancy is safe. Then the tenant is obliged to
fertilize the land, to practise certain rotations, and otherwise to
conserve fertility, returning to the land the manurial value of products
that are sold. When such contracts are made and enforced, tenancy
farming does not deplete the land more than other farming, as the
experience in some countries demonstrates. It is hardly to be expected,
however, that tenant occupancy will give the man as close moral contact
with the earth and its materials as will ownership; yet a well-developed
tenancy is better than absentee farming by persons who live in town and
run the farm by temporary hired help. The tenancy in the United States
is partly a preliminary stage to ownership: if we can fulfil the moral
obligation to society in the conserving of fertility and other natural
resources, tenancy may be considered as a means to an end. Persons who
work the land should have the privilege of owning it.
It may be urged by those who contend that land should be held by
society, that this regulation of tenancy provides a means of
administering all farm lands by government in the interest of
maintenance of fertility. Leaving aside the primary desirability, as I
see it, of reserving individual initiative, it is to be said that this
kind of regulation of the tenant is possible only with a live-stock
husbandry; nor do we yet have sufficient knowledge to enable us to
project a legal system for all kinds of agriculture; nor again is it
applicable to widely differing conditions and regions. A keener sense of
responsibility will enable owner and tenant to work out better methods
in all cases, but it is now impossible to incorporate complete control
methods into successful legislative regulations. The increasing
competition will make it ever more difficult for the careless man to
make a good living by farming, and he will be driven from the business;
or if he is not driven out, society will take away his privilege.
Yet we are not to think of society as founded wholly on small separate
tracts, or "family farms," occupied by persons who live merely in
contentment; this would mean that all landsmen would be essentially
laborers. We need to hold on the land many persons who possess large
powers of organization, who are managers, who can handle affairs in a
bold way: it would be fatal to the best social and spiritual results if
such persons could find no adequate opportunities on the land and were
forced into other occupations. Undoubtedly we shall find ourselves with
very unlike land units, encouraged and determined by the differing
conditions and opportunities in different regions; and thereby shall we
also avoid the great danger of making our fundamental occupation to
produce a uniform and narrow class spirit.
We need the great example of persons who live separately on their lands,
who desire to abide, who are serious in the business, and who have
sufficient proprietary rights to enable them to handle the natural
resources responsibly. There is a type of well-intentioned writers that
would have the farmers live in centres in order that they may have what
are called "social" advantages, betaking themselves every morning to the
fields when the dew is on the grass and the birds sing, hastening back
every evening (probably when the clock points to five) to engage in the
delightful delirium of card-parties and moving-picture shows (of course
gathering the golden harvest in the meantime). Other writers are to have
the farms so small that the residences will be as close as on a village
street, and a trolley-car will run through, and I suppose the band will
play!
_A new map_
If, then, we are to give the people access to the holy earth, it means
not only a new assent on the part of society but a new way of
partitioning the surface. This is true whether we consider the subject
wholly from the view-point of making natural resources utilizable or
from the added desire to let the people out to those resources.
The organization of any affair or enterprise determines to a great
extent the character of the result; and the organization rests directly
on the subdivision into parts. The dividing of a business into separate
responsibilities of different departments and sub-departments makes for
easy access and for what we now know as efficiency; the dividing of a
nation into states or provinces and counties and many lesser units makes
political life possible; the setting off of a man's farm into fields,
with lanes and roads connecting, makes a working enterprise. The more
accurately these subdivisions follow natural and living necessities, the
greater will be the values and the satisfactions that result from the
undertaking.
Here is the open country, behind the great cities and the highly
specialized industries. There are hills in it, great and small. There
are forests here, none there; sands that nobody wants; fertile lands
that everybody wants; shores inviting trade; mineral wealth; healing
waters; power in streams; fish in ponds and lakes; building stone;
swamps abounding in life; wild corners that stimulate desire; sceneries
that take the soul into the far places. These are the fundamental
reserves and the backgrounds. The first responsibility of any society is
to protect them, husband them, bring them into use, and at the same time
to teach the people what they mean.
To bring them into use, and, at the same time, to protect them from
rapacious citizens who have small social conscience, it is necessary to
have good access. It is necessary to have roads. These roads should be
laid where the resources exist, direct, purposeful. In a flat and
uniform country, road systems may well be rectangular, following
section-lines and intermediate lines; but the rectangularity is not the
essential merit,--it is only a serviceable way of subdividing the
resources. To find one's direction, north or south, is convenient, but
it may clearly be subordinated to the utilization and protection of the
supplies. The section-line division may accomplish this or it may not,
and it is likely to place roads in wrong locations and to render the
country monotonous and uninteresting.
But in the broken country, in the country of tumbled hills and crooked
falling streams, of slopes that would better be left in the wild, and of
lands that are good and fruitful for the plow, the roads may go the easy
grades; but they ought also to go in such a plan as to open up the
country to the best development, to divide its resources in the surest
way for the greatest number of persons, and to reduce profitless human
toil to the minimum,--and this is just what they may not do. They may go
up over bare and barren hills merely to pass a few homesteads where no
homesteads ought to be, roads that are always expensive and never good,
that accomplish practically nothing for society. They leave good little
valleys at one side, or enter them over almost impossible slopes. There
are resources of physical wealth and of wonderful scenery that they do
not touch, that would be of much value if they were accessible. The
farming country is often not divided in such a way as to render it
either most readily accessible or to make it the most useful as an asset
for the people.
To connect villages and cities by stone roads is good. But what are we
to do with all the back country, to make it contribute its needful part
to feed the people in the days that are to come, and to open it to the
persons who ought to go? We cannot accomplish this to the greatest
purpose by the present road systems, even if the roads themselves are
all made good.
When the traveler goes to a strange country, he is interested in the
public buildings, the cities, and some of the visible externals; but if
he wants to understand the country, he must have a detailed map of its
roads. The automobile maps are of no value for this purpose, for they
show how one may pass over the country, not how the country is
developed. As the last nerve-fibre and the last capillary are essential
to the end of the finger and to the entire body, so the ultimate roads
are essential to the myriad farms and to the national life. It is
difficult in any country to get these maps, accurately and in detail;
but they are the essential guidebooks.
We undertake great conquests of engineering, over mountains and across
rivers and through the morasses; but at the last we shall call on the
engineer for the greatest conquest of all,--how to divide the surface of
the earth so that it shall yield us its best and mean to us the most, on
the easiest grades, in the most practicable way, that we may utilize
every piece of land to fullest advantage.