self-acting individuals among the workingmen as a class. They are
rapidly partaking in an opposite development. They are controlled by
associative interests. Even under a profit-sharing system they are parts
in a close concert.
How to strike the balance between the needful individualism and social
crystallization is probably the most difficult question before society.
Of the great underlying classes of occupations, farming is the only one
that presents the individualistic side very strongly. If individualism
is to be preserved anywhere, it must be preserved here. The tendency of
our present-day discussion is to organize the farmers as other groups or
masses are organized. We are in danger here. Assuredly, the farmer needs
better resources in association, but it is a nice question how far we
should go and how completely we should try to redirect him. Fortunately,
the holding of title to land and the separateness of farm habitations
prevent solidification. If, on this individualism and without destroying
it, we can develop a co-acting and co-operating activity, we shall
undoubtedly be on the line of safety as well as on the line of promise.
It would be a pity to organize the farming people merely to secure them
their "rights." We ought soon to pass this epoch in civilization. There
are no "rights" exclusive to any class. "Rights" are not possessions.
I do not know where the element of separateness in society is to be
derived unless it comes out of the earth.
Given sufficient organization to enable the farmer to express himself
fully in his occupation and to secure protection, then we may well let
the matter rest until his place in society develops by the operation of
natural forces. We cannot allow the fundamental supplies from the common
earth to be controlled by arbitrary class regulation. It would be a
misfortune if the farmer were to isolate himself by making "demands" on
society. I hope that the farmer's obligation may be so sensitively
developed in him as to produce a better kind of mass-cohesion than we
have yet known.
_The democratic basis in agriculture_
All these positions are capable of direct application in the
incorporation of agriculture into a scheme of democracy. A brief
treatment of this subject I had developed for the present book; and this
treatment, with applications to particular situations now confronting
us, I used recently in the vice-presidential address before the new
Section M of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
(published in _Science_, February 26, 1915, where the remainder of it
may be found). Some of the general points of view, modified from that
address, may be brought together here. The desirability of keeping a
free and unattached attitude in the people on the land may be expounded
in many directions, but for my purpose I will confine the illustrations
to organization in the field of education.
The agricultural situation is now much in the public mind. It is widely
discussed in the press, which shows that it has news value. Much of this
value is merely of superficial and temporary interest. Much of it
represents a desire to try new remedies for old ills. Many of these
remedies will not work. We must be prepared for some loss of public
interest in them as time goes on. We are now in a publicity stage of our
rural development. It would seem that the news-gathering and some other
agencies discover these movements after the work of many constructive
spirits has set them going and has laid real foundations; and not these
foundations, but only detached items of passing interest, may be known
of any large part of the public. I hope that we shall not be disturbed
by this circumstance nor let it interfere with good work or with
fundamental considerations, however much we may deplore the false
expectations that may result.
We are at the parting of the ways. For years without number--for years
that run into the centuries when men have slaughtered each other on many
fields, thinking that they were on the fields of honor, when many awful
despotisms have ground men into the dust, the despotisms thinking
themselves divine--for all these years there have been men on the land
wishing to see the light, trying to make mankind hear, hoping but never
realizing. They have been the pawns on the great battlefields, men taken
out of the peasantries to be hurled against other men they did not know
and for no rewards except further enslavement. They may even have been
developed to a high degree of manual or technical skill that they might
the better support governments to make conquests. They have been on the
bottom, upholding the whole superstructure and pressed into the earth by
the weight of it. When the final history is written, the lot of the man
on the land will be the saddest chapter.
But in the nineteenth century, the man at the bottom began really to be
recognized politically. This recognition is of two kinds,--the use that
a government can make in its own interest of a highly efficient
husbandry, and the desire to give the husbandman full opportunity and
full justice. I hope that in these times the latter motive always
prevails. It is the only course of safety.
Great public-service institutions have now been founded in the rural
movement. The United States Department of Agriculture has grown to be
one of the notable governmental establishments of the world, extending
itself to a multitude of interests and operating with remarkable
effectiveness. The chain of colleges of agriculture and experiment
stations, generously co-operative between nation and State, is unlike
any other development anywhere, meaning more, I think, for the future
welfare and peace of the people than any one of us yet foresees. There
is the finest fraternalism, and yet without clannishness, between these
great agencies, setting a good example in public service. And to these
agencies we are to add the State departments of agriculture, the work of
private endowments although yet in its infancy, the growing and very
desirable contact with the rural field of many institutions of learning.
All these agencies comprise a distinctly modern phase of public
activity.
A new agency has been created in the agricultural extension act which
was signed by President Wilson on the 8th of May in 1914. The farmer is
to find help at his own door. A new instrumentality in the world has now
received the sanction of a whole people and we are just beginning to
organize it. The organization must be extensive, and it ought also to be
liberal. No such national plan on such a scale has ever been attempted;
and it almost staggers one when one even partly comprehends the
tremendous consequences that in all likelihood will come of it. The
significance of it is not yet grasped by the great body of the people.
Now, the problem is to relate all this public work to the development of
a democracy. I am not thinking so much of the development of a form of
government as of a real democratic expression on the part of the people.
Agriculture is our basic industry. As we organize its affairs, so to a
great degree shall we secure the results in society in general. It is
very important in our great experiment in democracy that we do not lose
sight of the first principle in democracy, which is to let the control
of policies and affairs rest directly back on the people.
We have developed the institutions on public funds to train the farmer
and to give him voice. These institutions are of vast importance in the
founding of a people. The folk are to be developed in themselves rather
than by class legislation, or by favor of government, or by any attitude
of benevolence from without.
Whether there is any danger in the organization of our new nationalized
extension work, and the other public rural agencies, I suppose not one
of us knows. But for myself, I have apprehension of the tendency to make
some of the agricultural work into "projects" at Washington and
elsewhere. If we are not careful, we shall not only too much centralize
the work, but we shall tie it up in perplexing red-tape, official
obstacles, and bookkeeping. The merit of the projects themselves and the
intentions of the officers concerned in them are not involved in what I
say; I speak only of the tendency of all government to formality and to
crystallization, to machine work and to armchair regulations; and even
at the risk of a somewhat lower so-called "efficiency," I should prefer
for such work as investigating and teaching in agriculture, a dispersion
of the initiative and responsibility, letting the co-ordination and
standardizing arise very much from conference and very little from
arbitrary regulation.
The best project anywhere is a good man or woman working in a program,
but unhampered.
If it is important that the administration of agricultural work be not
overmuch centralized at Washington, it is equally true that it should
not be too much centralized in the States. I hear that persons who
object strongly to federal concentration may nevertheless decline to
give the counties and the communities in their own States the benefit of
any useful starting-power and autonomy. In fact, I am inclined to think
that here at present lies one of our greatest dangers.
A strong centralization within the State may be the most hurtful kind of
concentration, for it may more vitally affect the people at home. Here
the question, remember, is not the most efficient formal administration,
but the best results for the people. The farm-bureau work, for example,
can never produce the background results of which it is capable if it is
a strongly intrenched movement pushed out from one centre, as from the
college of agriculture or other institution. The college may be the
guiding force, but it should not remove responsibility from the people
of the localities, or offer them a kind of co-operation that is only the
privilege of partaking in the college enterprises. I fear that some of
our so-called co-operation in public work of many kinds is little more
than to allow the co-operator to approve what the official
administration has done.
In the course of our experience in democracy, we have developed many
checks against too great centralization. I hope that we may develop the
checks effectively in this new welfare work in agriculture, a desire
that I am aware is also strong with many of those who are concerned in
the planning of it.
Some enterprises may be much centralized, whether in a democracy or
elsewhere; an example is the postal service: this is on the business
side of government. Some enterprises should be decentralized; an example
is a good part of the agricultural service: this is on the educational
side of government. It is the tendency to reduce all public work to
uniformity; yet there is no virtue in uniformity. Its only value is as a
means to an end.
Thus far, the rural movement has been wholesomely democratic. It has
been my privilege for one-third of a century to have known rather
closely many of the men and women who have been instrumental in bringing
the rural problem to its present stage of advancement. They have been
public-minded, able, far-seeing men and women, and they have rendered an
unmeasurable service. The rural movement has been brought to its present
state without any demand for special privilege, without bolstering by
factitious legislation, and to a remarkable degree without self-seeking.
It is based on a real regard for the welfare of all the people, rather
than for rural people exclusively.
Thrice or more in this book I have spoken as if not convinced that the
present insistence on "efficiency" in government is altogether sound.
That is exactly the impression I desire to convey. As the term is now
commonly applied, it is not a measure of good government.
Certain phrases and certain sets of ideas gain dominance at certain
times. Just now the idea of administrative efficiency is uppermost. It
seems necessarily to be the controlling factor in the progress of any
business or any people. Certainly, a people should be efficient; but an
efficient government may not mean an efficient people,--it may mean
quite otherwise or even the reverse. The primary purpose of government
in these days, and particularly in this country, is to educate and to
develop all the people and to lead them to express themselves freely and
to the full, and to partake politically. And this is what governments
may not do, and this is where they may fail even when their efficiency
in administration is exact. A monarchic form may be executively more
efficient than a democratic form; a despotic form may be more efficient
than either. The justification of a democratic form of government lies
in the fact that it is a means of education.
The final test of government is not executive efficiency. Every
movement, every circumstance that takes starting-power and incentive
away from the people, even though it makes for exacter administration,
is to be challenged. It is specially to be deplored if this loss of
starting-power affects the persons who deal first-hand with the surface
of the planet and with the products that come directly out of it.
There is a broad political significance to all this. Sooner or later the
people rebel against intrenched or bureaucratic groups. Many of you know
how they resist even strongly centralized departments of public
instruction, and how the effectiveness of such departments may be
jeopardized and much lessened by the very perfectness of their
organization; and if they were to engage in a custom of extraneous forms
of news-giving in the public press, the resentment would be the greater.
In our rural work we are in danger of developing a piece of machinery
founded on our fundamental industry; and if this ever comes about, we
shall find the people organizing to resist it.
The reader will understand that in this discussion I assume the
agricultural work to be systematically organized, both in nation and
State; this is essential to good effort and to the accomplishing of
results: but we must take care that the formal organization does not
get in the way of the good workers, hindering and repressing them and
wasting their time.
We want governments to be economical and efficient with funds and in the
control of affairs; this also is assumed: but we must not overlook the
larger issues. In all this new rural effort, we should maintain the
spirit of team-work and of co-action, and not make the mistake of
depending too much on the routine of centralized control.
In this country we are much criticised for the cost of government and
for the supposed control of affairs by monopoly. The cost is undoubtedly
too great, but it is the price we pay for the satisfaction of using
democratic forms. As to the other disability, let us consider that
society lies between two dangers,--the danger of monopoly and the danger
of bureaucracy. On the one side is the control of the necessities of
life by commercial organization. On the other side is the control of the
necessities of life, and even of life itself, by intrenched groups that
ostensibly represent the people and which it may be impossible to
dislodge. Here are the Scylla and the Charybdis between which human
society must pick its devious way.
Both are evil. Of the two, monopoly may be the lesser: it may be more
easily brought under control; it tends to be more progressive; it
extends less far; it may be the less hateful. They are only two
expressions of one thing, one possibly worse than the other. Probably
there are peoples who pride themselves on more or less complete escape
from monopoly who are nevertheless suffering from the most deadening
bureaucracy.
Agriculture is in the foundation of the political, economic, and social
structure. If we cannot develop starting-power in the background people,
we cannot maintain it elsewhere. The greatness of all this rural work is
to lie in the results and not in the methods that absorb so much of our
energy. If agriculture cannot be democratic, then there is no
democracy.
_The background spaces.--The forest_
"This is the forest primeval." These are the significant words of the
poet in Evangeline. Perhaps more than any single utterance they have set
the American youth against the background of the forest.
The backgrounds are important. The life of every one of us is relative.
We miss our destiny when we miss or forget our backgrounds. We lose
ourselves. Men go off in vague heresies when they forget the conditions
against which they live. Judgments become too refined and men tend to
become merely disputatious and subtle.
The backgrounds are the great unoccupied spaces. They are the large
environments in which we live but which we do not make. The backgrounds
are the sky with its limitless reaches; the silences of the sea; the
tundra in pallid arctic nights; the deserts with their prismatic colors;
the shores that gird the planet; the vast mountains that are beyond
reach; the winds, which are the universal voice in nature; the
sacredness of the night; the elemental simplicity of the open fields;
and the solitude of the forest. These are the facts and situations that
stand at our backs, to which we adjust our civilization, and by which we
measure ourselves.
The great conquest of mankind is the conquest of his natural conditions.
We admire the man who overcomes: the sailor or navigator in hostile and
unknown seas; the engineer who projects himself hard against the
obstacles; the miner and the explorer; the builder; the farmer who
ameliorates the earth to man's use.
But even though we conquer or modify the physical conditions against
which we are set, nevertheless the backgrounds will remain. I hope that
we may always say "The forest primeval." I hope that some reaches of the
sea may never be sailed, that some swamps may never be drained, that
some mountain peaks may never be scaled, that some forests may never be
harvested. I hope that some knowledge may never be revealed.
Look at your map of the globe. Note how few are the areas of great
congestion of population and of much human activity as compared with the
vast and apparently empty spaces. How small are the spots that represent
the cities and what a little part of the earth are the political
divisions that are most in the minds of men! We are likely to think that
all these outlying and thinly peopled places are the wastes. I suspect
that they contribute more to the race than we think. I am glad that
there are still some places of mystery, some reaches of hope, some
things far beyond us, some spaces to conjure up dreams. I am glad that
the earth is not all Iowa or Belgium or the Channel Islands. I am glad
that some of it is the hard hills of New England, some the heathered
heights of Scotland, some the cold distances of Quebec, some of it the
islands far off in little-traversed seas, and some of it also the
unexplored domains that lie within eyesight of our own homes. It is well
to know that these spaces exist, that there are places of escape. They
add much to the ambition of the race; they make for strength, for
courage, and for renewal.
In the cities I am always interested in the variety of the contents of
the store windows. Variously fabricated and disguised, these materials
come from the ends of the earth. They come from the shores of the seas,
from the mines, from the land, from the forests, from the arctic, and
from the tropic. They are from the backgrounds. The cities are great,
but how much greater are the forests and the sea!
No people should be forbidden the influence of the forest. No child
should grow up without a knowledge of the forest; and I mean a real
forest and not a grove or village trees or a park. There are no forests
in cities, however many trees there may be. As a city is much more than
a collection of houses, so is a forest much more than a collection of
trees. The forest has its own round of life, its characteristic
attributes, its climate, and its inhabitants. When you enter a real
forest you enter the solitudes, you are in the unexpressed distances.
You walk on the mould of years and perhaps of ages. There is no other
wind like the wind of the forest; there is no odor like the odor of the
forest; there is no solitude more complete; there is no song of a brook
like the song of a forest brook; there is no call of a bird like that of
a forest bird; there are no mysteries so deep and which seem yet to be
within one's realization.
While a forest is more than trees, yet the trees are the essential part
of the forest; and no one ever really knows or understands a forest
until he first understands a tree. There is no thing in nature finer and
stronger than the bark of a tree; it is a thing in place, adapted to its
ends, perfect in its conformation, beautiful in its color and its form
and the sweep of its contour; and every bark is peculiar to its species.
I think that one never really likes a tree until he is impelled to
embrace it with his arms and to run his fingers through the grooves of
its bark.
Man listens in the forest. He pauses in the forest. He finds himself. He
loses himself in the town and even perhaps in the university. He may
lose himself in business and in great affairs; but in the forest he is
one with a tree, he stands by himself and yet has consolation, and he
comes back to his own place in the scheme of things. We have almost
forgotten to listen; so great and ceaseless is the racket that the
little voices pass over our ears and we hear them not. I have asked
person after person if he knew the song of the chipping-sparrow, and
most of them are unaware that it has any song. We do not hear it in the
blare of the city street, in railway travel, or when we are in a
thunderous crowd. We hear it in the still places and when our ears are
ready to catch the smaller sounds. There is no music like the music of
the forest, and the better part of it is faint and far away or high in
the tops of trees.
The forest may be an asylum. "The groves were God's first temples." We
need all our altars and more, but we need also the sanctuary of the
forest. It is a poor people that has no forests. I prize the farms
because they have forests. It is a poor political philosophy that has no
forests. It is a poor nation that has no forests and no workers in wood.
In many places there are the forests. I think that we do not get the
most out of them. Certainly they have two uses: one for the products,
and one for the human relief and the inspiration. I should like to see a
movement looking toward the better utilization of the forests humanly,
as we use school buildings and church buildings and public halls. I wish
that we might take our friends to the forests as we also take them to
see the works of the masters. For this purpose, we should not go in
large companies. We need sympathetic guidance. Parties of two and four
may go separately to the forests to walk and to sit and to be silent. I
would not forget the forest in the night, in the silence and the
simplicity of the darkness. Strangely few are the people who know a real
forest at dark. Few are those who know the forest when the rain is
falling or when the snow covers the earth. Yet the forest is as real in
all these moments as when the sun is at full and the weather is fair.
I wish that we might know the forest intimately and sensitively as a
part of our background. I think it would do much to keep us close to the
verities and the essentials.
_A forest background for a reformatory_
Some years ago I presented to a board that was charged with establishing
and maintaining a new State reformatory for wayward and delinquent boys
an outline of a possible setting for the enterprise; and as this
statement really constitutes a practical application of some of the
foregoing discussions, I present the larger part of it here. With
delinquents it is specially important to develop the sense of obligation
and responsibility, and I fear that we are endeavoring to stimulate this
sense too exclusively by means of direct governing and disciplinary
methods. The statement follows.